Growing cauliflowers

Growing cauliflowers are relatively easy but they do take up a lot of room, saying that you can grow them all year round as they have winter, summer, and autumn varieties and they can be grown when you have space in your garden to maintain your regular crops.

They can be sewn indoors during the cold seasons and hardened off and transplanted out; or they can be sewn directly into the ground during warmer months and they take around 5 months from planting to cropping and when they come they all tend to come together so having storage capacity is essential.

For growing under glass around this time of year you can get seed trays and make rows around ¾” deep (20mm) and put your seeds into them and cover and stand in a plastic bag on the kitchen window sill to germinate.
Alternatively you can grow them in 3” (75mm) pots and put them into plastic bags and leave them in the pot to grow before hardening off. If you grow in seed trays it may be wise to harden the whole tray off and plant outside or transplant into 3” pots and let them grow before planting out.

Prepare your ground by winter digging and leaving the ground for the frost to do its thing and then add lots of well rotted muck and compost and dig or rotovate it in until the soil is fine if you have a rotovater and your ground is ready.

Cauliflowers come in different types generally denoted by their size and the smallest varieties need 6” (150mm) between plants and another 6” (150mm) between rows and the largest varieties need 24” (600mm) between plants and rows so be aware of this when selecting your varieties as smaller varieties are more winter varieties.

When you plant out there are a few niceties and the first is to overwater your seedlings or young plants the day before you plant them out and when you plant them in the ground you plant them deep enough so their bottom leaves just touch the ground and water the ground well.

Let your cauliflowers grow and as soon as the middles form you need to feed them every 10-14 days with a high nitrogen fertiliser and during warmer periods you should never let the soil dry out and when you water always ensure it is watered deeply into the soil so the roots pick the water up.

Harvest before the middles begin to separate or begin to turn yellow and remember they have a habit of all coming together and seeming speak to each other to decide what day they are all ready so you need to be prepared for masses of them and be prepared to harvest by cutting the centre below a few of the leaves and blanch and freeze.
As they come in seasonal varieties I would suggest only growing a few at a time and repeat for winter, summer, and autumn cropping so you get different varieties all year round and you don’t become over run with them and they aren’t unnecessarily taking up freezer space.

Container Growing

From my own experiences they don’t grow well in containers and the smaller varieties tend to do better than larger varieties and they are still not worth the time and money to grow unless you have the time and large containers as they tend to dry out and often need multiple watering’s a day on a sunny day.

They can be pickled and pickle well and are nice as pickled cauliflower or as mixed pickle.

I love caulis but dont' have the space to grow them, I tried once and got a cauli the size of a tennis ball, so not worth the effort, as you say they dont' grow well in a container. Got a farm shop not far away that does massive caulis so I get mine from there. I like them roasted in wedges, or done in a roasting tin with onions, garlic, oil, cumin and papreka, turns out a bit like a veggie doner kebab, lovely in a wrap with salad and chilli sauce.