Survival Crop – Cabbage

\”Are YOU Ready?\”

First off, thanks for all the well wishes. The hand is almost completely healed. A couple small blisters are doing their thing, but all in all the injury was minor, (I was very lucky, and am very thankful.)

Now, let’s talk about cabbage.  It took me a few years of failures to get cabbage to grow right. There were years I got seedlings from greenhouses that were already root bound. They never made a head. There were years I planted them too close together and only got golfball sized heads.  Other years I timed it wrong, and the cabbage was trying to put on a head during the heat of summer, and had trouble doing so. Early cabbage needs to head up before the heat of summer and late varieties need to head up during the cool of fall.  With both kinds I cover them with row cover if there are lots of white cabbage moths around.

BUT, difficulties aside. When cabbages go right, they produce a dense head of vegetable matter. If planned properly a family can eat off a cabbage head for a couple of days. Stored fresh in a bucket of sand, the heads will last weeks or months in storage. Storage can be upped to indefinite if you ferment them. Sauerkraut and Kim-chi being the most famous of those, and simple to make, requiring only kitchen basics and a quiet place to bubble.  It’s tasty fresh, in slaw or stir fry. It is low in calories, but high in vitamins. Overcooking it releases the sulfur compounds that are responsible for its smelly reputation. Keep cooking to a minimum.

This is a tricky crop to propagate for most home gardeners. It’s a biennial, so you have to keep a head alive through a winter (or it’s root at the very least) in order to get a seed stalk. Here’s the best advice I’ve seen for this process.

I like to get my storage cabbages dug up and in pots in the root cellar before the temperature approaches 20°F. I leave some cabbages in the garden later than that for eating (throwing blankets or other protection over them at night), but vegetables for the root cellar must be in excellent condition. Cold-damaged cabbages won’t last long before rotting.

Cabbages don’t have extensive roots. After removing outer leaves, leaving just the heads, I lift the plants with a shovel, shake off the dirt and place them in five-gallon nursery containers, cramming about five cabbages into each pot. I fill the containers with soil or sand and water well. The heads stay absolutely perfect this way for seven or eight months. Sometimes the humidity causes the outer leaves to rot. I just pull those leaves off and there’s a perfect cabbage underneath.

With cabbages you can have your cake and eat it, too. All you need to plant out in the spring is the root with some stem – there are plenty of dormant buds along the stem that will sprout and go to seed. (Eat the seed cabbage heads last, though, because once the head is cut off, the stem is far more prone to rotting.) If you plant out a cabbage with the head still intact, cut an X in the top to make it easier for the flower stalk to emerge.

For loose-headed cabbages (early varieties. Savoys and collards), make a special planting for the seed crop, timed so you’ll have small plants with little heads when killing cold arrives. Dig the plants, strip all the leaves until only a head about the size of a tennis ball remains, and pot them up for storage like the others. A late summer planting of kale overwinters right in the garden under a layer of mulch if winter temperatures are not too severe.

One cabbage will give you plenty of seed. Everything in this family needs cross pollination by insects, however, so you’ll need at least two to get a crop and you must separate each cabbage variety from all other cabbages as well as any other brassicas. However, it takes far more than just two plants to maintain genetic viability in these biennial crops. Geneticists recommend a minimum of 20 plants of vegetables like onions, leeks, or brassicas. That may be more than most backyard gardeners have space for. If so, you can save seed for a generation or two (in other words, one or two times) before the genetic quality begins to slip, then buy in fresh seed.Harvest Edition 2008 David Cavagnaro

So, if you’re like me, you don’t even have room to plant 20 heads for eating, much less 20 heads for seed. The best thing to do is have a good supply of  seed on hand every year, and rotate the oldest seed out first. If you’re going to save seed from just one or two heads, mark it well so you know when to abandon that genetic strain for fresher stock. If, however you have the room for it, I say go for it! The actual act of saving the seed is pretty easy, the seed stalks are tall and the seeds are in pods.

Cabbages are tolerant of cold and damp. During cold and damp summers, it can be comforting to eat some fresh cole slaw while watching the green tomatoes mock me from the vines.

Do we have any sauerkraut makers? Or cabbage growers in our readership? Sound out in the comments!

- Calamity Jane