Cabbage

Cabbage is started indoors six to eight weeks before the last spring frost or direct-sown once soil can be worked, and it can also be sown in summer for a fall crop; transplants are set out 12 to 24 inches apart in rows 18 to 34 inches apart. It wants full sun of at least six to eight hours a day and well-drained, fertile soil rich in organic matter, with a pH somewhere between about 6.0 and 7.5.

Cabbage is a heavy feeder and a heavy water user, needing roughly 1 to 2 inches of water a week along with fertilizer worked into the bed before planting and a nitrogen side dressing a few weeks after transplanting. Mulch helps conserve moisture and suppress weeds around its shallow root system, and cole crops should not be replanted in the same ground more than once every three or four years to limit disease buildup.

Imported cabbageworm, cabbage looper, and diamondback moth caterpillars are common pests, often managed with the biological insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis, while cabbage aphids, flea beetles, cutworms, slugs, and nematodes can also trouble the crop; cabbage root maggot larvae tunnel into roots, causing wilting and eventually plant death. Black rot, black leg, and clubroot are recurring diseases, and downy mildew can develop where plants lack full sun, while purple blotch is encouraged by wet foliage; keeping leaves dry and rotating away from other cole crops helps limit these problems.

Depending on the variety, heads mature 45 to 85 days after planting and are cut from the stalk with a sharp knife once they feel firm and have reached full size; leaving heads too long in the garden, or a rain following a dry spell, can cause them to split. Harvested heads keep refrigerated for weeks to as long as four months depending on type, with green and red cabbage storing considerably longer than savoy or napa, and cut or shredded cabbage can be blanched and frozen for use within about a year.

Cabbage is grown for its edible head, eaten both raw and cooked: shredded into coleslaw and salads, added to stir-fries, soups, and casseroles, used to wrap fillings for cabbage rolls, and fermented into sauerkraut for storage over winter.

Cabbage descends from wild cabbage native to Western Europe, related to wild Mediterranean kale and not known to occur in the wild in its cultivated headed form. It is not native to North America and belongs to the broader group of cole crops derived from this same wild ancestor, alongside broccoli, kale, and Brussels sprouts.