Growing Cabbages

by **assassin** Fri Mar 03, 2023 4:46 am

Growing cabbages can be useful and fun as they are one of the most versatile crops to grow as you can get summer, winter, and spring cabbages which means you can grow fewer but more often and this saves garden and freezer space so you have more garden devoted to other crops and less freezer space taken up. With so many varieties of cabbages you need to do your research to ensure you get a mix of seeds for summer, winter, and spring cabbage to ensure you maximise your growing season and get the different varieties.

Cabbages can be grown from seed or placed directly into the ground and for earlier seeds I prefer to sow them in the greenhouse, you can germinate them on the kitchen window sill and you plant as follows:

Summer cabbage – Sow under glass or outside in February or March and if sown outside cover with cloches.

Winter Cabbage – Grow under glass or outside and plant in April/May and transplant in June/July.

Spring Cabbage – Grow outside and plant in July/August and transplant in September/October.

Soil needs to be rich and dug to a depth of 1 ½ spits or 1 ½ spades deep and should have plenty of well rotted manure and compost added before digging or rotovating to a fine till and the planting area should be lightly compressed by walking over it to firm it.

When you transplant your cabbage plants you water them well the day before and make your hole and put your plants into the holes and you “puddle” them which is not firming the soil around them; instead you fill the holes around the plant with water and let the water wash the soil around them.

Spacing should be 1’ (300mm) between plants for compact varieties.
18” (450mm) for larger varieties
4” (100mm) for spring cabbages with 1’ (300mm) between rows

When the heads begin to form then feed fortnightly with a high nitrogen feed and repeat the feeding every 10-14 days.

Cabbages grow well in containers and are excellent growers so look for varieties especially for container growing as they freeze and pickle well and come in many varieties from dark green to white and even red cabbage which is nice cooked with apples or pickled.