Struggling To Grow CABBAGE? My Secrets To Growing Cabbage From Seed To Harvest

Hey gardener! Welcome to my channel. Today we're diving into a beginner-friendly gardening tutorial on growing cabbage from seed all the way to harvest. I'll show you every step of the way and provide expert tips so you grow an abundance of cabbage in your own garden at home. If you're new here, hello and welcome. My name is Jarah and I teach others how to garden and grow food. This video is one of many grow guides that can be found on my channel where I share my knowledge about growing food and other edible plants. So make sure you subscribe to my channel that way you don't miss any of my tutorials. Alright let's get started with how to grow cabbage. In this garden guide I'm talking about large heading types of cabbages like these right here. This is the mammoth red rock cabbage and this is the savoy cabbage. And I say that because this is not the same as growing like napa cabbage or bok choy. All of those things are also part of the brassicas family and considered cabbages but they don't grow exactly the same. I do have a video on how to grow the napa cabbages which I will link below in the description if that's what you want to do. When you're shopping for cabbage seeds you will find that there's a lot of variety. Therefore let's start this growing guide with a discussion on cultivar selection and differences between cabbage varieties so you pick the best one to grow in your garden. First up we have the standard green cabbage. Some examples of this cultivar include these right here. It's green, it's big and it has a round shape. The leaves are pretty stiff making it a great choice for soups, pan frying, coleslaw recipes and making sauerkraut. Then we have the savoy type of cabbages. Here are some cultivars right here which are almost the same as standard cabbage except that the leaves have a very distinctive crinkled appearance and many say the flavor is like if cabbage and asparagus had a baby. Savoy cabbage doesn't contain as much of that sulfur type of smell or flavor like regular green cabbage so it's said to be sweeter in flavor. It can be used in the same kind of recipes as standard cabbage but it's not the best for coleslaw or sauerkraut because the so they don't hold up as well but they are really delicious when making stuffed cabbage recipes or adding into soups or stir fries. There are some differences when it comes to shape. The standard cabbage usually produces a nice round head of cabbage but some cultivars are more pointed, upright or conical shaped like these varieties right here. These are also sometimes called ox heart shaped cabbage and there are some that are more flat like a cultivar called I often see the flat kind at my local Asian grocery stores. We are all used to seeing the standard green and red cabbage at the grocery store. My favorite heirloom red cabbage is called mammoth red rock which you see growing right here. I don't know why it's called red because to me this looks purple. Then there are white cultivars like these right here. They look very pale light green in color to me not exactly white but the white cultivars tend to be more dry so they make the best kind of sauerkraut and store for a very long time. There are some that are green leaves with like a purple tinge to them. An example of this cultivar is called January king. Very beautiful. I never see those in the grocery store. Basically you wouldn't get to eat it if you didn't grow it yourself. Growing heading cabbages can be challenging especially in warm winter climates because if they're exposed to too much heat it triggers the plants to stop focusing energy on producing more leaves and layers onto the head forming in the center and instead it will start bolting or going to the flowering stage. Once that happens there is no turning back and it's just best to harvest what you can. Planting cultivars that have a little heat tolerance like these right here will definitely help increase your chance of success especially if you're in a warm winter area. Some cabbages are bred to last longer in storage like these right here. They have either very tight layers of leaves and or are low in moisture which helps them last for many months without refrigeration like in a root cellar. Cabbage cultivars are described as early mid and late season depending on how many days it takes to be ready for harvest from transplanting. This is just an estimate because sometimes it will grow faster or slower depending on growing conditions, temperatures, and your fertilizer schedule. If you're in a cold climate it's advantageous to choose cultivars in each category to kind of stagger out your harvest. If you're in a warm winter climate like me here in Florida focus on planting early maturing cultivars since you don't have a lot of cold months in a row to grow them. Here is a list categorizing a lot of different cabbage varieties into early, mid, and late season and I realize I'm dumping a lot of information and different cultivar names for lots of different cabbages and that might be hard to keep up with in video form so I am putting all of that information, the differences between the cultivars, cultivar names, all of that stuff on my website on a blog post about growing cabbages from seeds so that way you guys don't have to flip through this video to try and find those lists and I will link that all below in the description. And lastly there are differences in weight or size of the harvestable head. If grown in ideal conditions a two to three pound size head of cabbage is pretty good. That's a pretty standard grocery size head of cabbage. There are some giant cultivars like Late Flat Dutch which can get up to 25 pounds and Sapporo Giant which can get over 30 pounds. The larger the head at harvest time the longer it takes to grow so just keep that in mind. Hopefully this information will help you narrow down which variety of cabbage you would like to grow in your garden. If you need seeds I definitely have some on my website which I will link in the description below. Okay so now that you have your seeds picked out let's discuss when and how to sow these seeds. Cabbages take a while to be transplant sized. Expect about 10 to 12 weeks from seed. So backtrack 10 to 12 weeks from whatever your target date is for planting them into the garden and then that's when you will start the seeds. General guidelines say to start seeds indoors about 12 weeks before your last spring frost date and then plant them outside. This works great for those of you that in an area where it snows or your ground freezes. However if your winters don't get cold like that most likely those of you in the southern parts of the United States zones eight and up it's best to plant them in fall so they grow during the coolest parts of the year fall winter and into spring. A more accurate way of figuring out when to transplant cabbage seedlings into the garden for warm winter climate areas is by finding the first month of your fall season where the average max high temperature is at 85 degrees Fahrenheit or below. To find this I recommend you go to this website right here enter in your zip code scroll to the bottom it will show a chart with the max average high and average low temperature per month. Using my garden as an example the first month where my maximum average high temperature is at 85 degrees Fahrenheit or below is October. So that is when I will transplant my seedlings into the garden. I need to backtrack 12 weeks from here which lands me in July or early August to start these seeds however keep in mind seedlings in Nebraska's family get stunted in growth if exposed to high heat which is exactly the situation outside of my garden during the months of July and August. We're talking days and days in a row of temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit therefore you have to start seeds indoors to avoid the risk of stunting the seedlings. For my indoor seed sowing setup I get a mini greenhouse and attach some 5000 kelvin shop lights for the daylight range or some grow lights with some zip ties and I'll put links to Amazon in the description below so that you guys can find the very same supplies and products that I use when I'm starting seeds. I like to use at minimum a four inch size pot and I sow about three seeds per pot. I like this four inch size pot because this is big enough to house the seedling for the entire 12 week growing period so I don't have to waste time potting up and they germinate very quickly in about three to five days if you have good quality seed. These seedlings are two weeks old at this point I will thin them out to two seedlings per pot and if both of them survive I plant both of them in the same planting hole. Start fertilizing with a liquid fertilizer when the seedlings grow their first set of true leaves. This will help the seedlings grow quickly and be nice big healthy transplants in about 10 to 12 weeks. In about 10 to 12 weeks your seedlings should look something like this and now it's time to transplant them into the garden. I'm going to show you how to do this just using this grow bag to demonstrate but it's the same exact process no matter how you're growing your cabbages whether it be in ground in containers grow bags what have you. To grow cabbages ideally you have to pick a perfect spot in your garden. Choose an area that gets full sun. These plants require a lot of energy from the sun to get nice and big. You also want to choose an area with very good soil something that's rich in organic matter because they are nutrient hungry. I filled up this grow bag honestly with the cheapest compost I could find that I get at my local Home Depot and my plants really love it. I don't add anything else into it I just grow straight into this compost. Also make sure you choose an area that doesn't get waterlogged because these plants are easily susceptible to root rot if the soil stays too moist. So if you're in a humid or wet environment like me here in Florida even though when we're growing these over the fall winter and spring that's technically our dry season but still it really helps sometimes to grow things in grow bags because a con of using grow bags is that they do dry out quickly but it really helps me be more successful growing certain crops that really don't like moist soils. Another example of that are herbs. So anyways anytime that you are transplanting something into the garden make sure you add some sort of fertilizer into the planting hole that will help boost your seedling just help it get off to a great start. Right here I've mixed a little bit of Espoma Garden Tone it's an organic granular fertilizer. I really love their products and I mix that with some crab meal because nematodes is an issue here in my garden it's always something that I have to worry about. So I do like to add some crab meal into the planting hole as well. Crab meal is made out of chitin which is a food source for beneficial nematodes that eat the bad ones so I just always add a little bit of crab meal in there too. I don't measure this stuff out I just mix it in here to make it easy to spread around in my garden. So just sprinkle some of that into the planting hole mix it a little bit with the surrounding soil you don't want the roots to come in direct contact with the fertilizer especially if you're using synthetic stuff. If you're using organic stuff you don't have to worry about that too much it's not going to burn the roots of your plants but the synthetic stuff will so just be extra careful. Mix it up well with the soil. With anything in the brassicas family you're going to plant it at the same exact ground level as the plant the transplant itself it's not something like tomatoes where we actually bury half of the stem. So anyways pop out your seedling and put it in the planting hole. Push up your dirt and close that in. After planting it just pat down that soil so the roots make good contact with the surrounding soil and will start to expand. Water this in and watch this plant make sure that no pests or something get to it. This is a tender young seedling it can't handle that much pest or disease type of damage so just take care of it so it will grow into a nice big plant for you. And that's it it's very easy to transplant your cabbages and just so you know cabbage plants get really big. It depends on the variety but expect plants that get like two to three feet wide and possibly just as tall. So these things need a lot of space if you overcrowd them they're going to have issues getting access to sunlight because the other surrounding plants are blocking it and that's going to result in stunted in size plants. So I noticed that cabbage really benefits by planting it with some extra space. I would say plant one every two maybe even three feet if possible. I usually follow square foot gardening guidelines which says plant one of these per square foot so one every 12 inches but I find when I do that they compete the plants are smaller they just kind of struggle a little bit. They grow so much better when they're given at least two feet in between each plant so if you're growing in ground and rows very simply just space them two feet apart. If you're growing them in a grow bag like this right here I recommend one plant per every 10 gallons because again they get really big. It's been one month since I've planted this Savoy cabbage look how big it's got. Let's talk about fertilizing your cabbage plants. I like to wait until three or four weeks after transplanting when I start to notice new growth before I start fertilizing my cabbage plants. For cabbages you just need a balanced fertilizer. Anything will do really. Personally I really like Espoma brand Garden Tone and I always have a bunch of it on hand so that's what I'm going to use. Since it's organic I can fertilize pretty frequently which will help keep the nutrient supply consistent and get rapid growth. So I like to add about one-eighth of a cup at the base of my plants every 10 to 14 days. If you're using a synthetic fertilizer you have to follow the directions on that packaging because synthetic fertilizers can actually burn or overdose your plants but you don't risk any of that if you're using an organic fertilizer. And I will just keep fertilizing every 10 to 14 days until I finally harvest my head of cabbage. This is the mammoth red rock cabbage about one and a half months after transplanting. This is my Savoy cabbage two months after transplanting. Look how beautiful those crinkled leaves are. Okay so my cabbages are growing wonderfully in my garden. Let's talk about pests and diseases. The number one pest I get on my cabbages are aphids. They start congregating on the lower leaves and then move their way up. Spray with neem oil or organic insecticidal soap. Since I'm in a hot climate, oil-based treatments like neem has burned the leaves of my plants so I'm more inclined to use insecticidal soap. If you see lots of ants running up your plants then they are farming the aphids because they like to eat a sweet honeydew type substance that the aphids secrete. So set up some ant traps or sprinkle some granules around the area. The second most common pest I get with anything in the brassicas family is worms or caterpillars. A lot of the worms that chew up plants are actually the caterpillar stage of various moths or butterflies. If you notice chewed up leaves and small orange green or black balls it's some sort of worm I promise. If it's a small infestation you can easily hand pick them off your plants but here in Florida there's no such thing as a small worm infestation so I spray with bt at the very first sign of damage to quickly knock the population down because as each day goes by the population increases which will require more spraying. I will link below to the same bt spray that I like to use in my garden. You might start to see yellow spots or brown dried up sections on the leaves. This is one of many different types of leaf diseases or the leaf is just aging. I like to remove the older leaves that are heavily infected to slow down the spread. It also helps to spray with one cup of hydrogen peroxide per gallon of water to clean and disinfect the leaves. Never water your plants overhead because this keeps the surface of the leaves wet which causes growth of leaf disease pathogens like powdery mildew which is a fungus. Alright guys so we're finally to the fun part and that is harvesting these cabbages. I have two left one savoy cabbage and one mammoth red rock. I have allowed these to remain for as long as possible trying to get them to size up just a little bit more but it's starting to get way too hot and I'm running the risk of these just bolting so I'm going to harvest a little bit early. You can harvest the heads at any point really just try to harvest before temperatures start getting past 85 degrees fahrenheit or so because that will encourage bolting. To harvest you just simply cut this off the stem so let me show you guys how I do that. Here's the back of the mammoth red rock and I'm just going to use scissors to cut this through. These stems can be really hard though. I usually just cut it at the stem and I leave the entire root system intact in the soil because those roots will continue to break down and feed some of the microorganisms in the soil. There we go got it to break off. Isn't that just beautiful? A lot of the outer leaves are not really the best for eating. They're dirty, they have bug bites so we remove a lot of these outer ones to get to the center which is the best leaves for eating. Alright so next we're going to harvest this Savoy cabbage and I'm sorry if it's really hard to see things but I have a small garden so I plant things like extra close and I'm surrounded by my tomato plants that are growing wonderfully and just filling up this entire area so it's a little bit hard to see these cabbages but let me harvest it anyways. Look at this one. It's small but it's super cute. Now my red cabbage didn't really have much bug damage but this green Savoy cabbage has a little bit of some chewed up leaves from I don't know one of the various worms that like to visit and inhabit my garden. Nothing too bad and it definitely didn't get into the center of the cabbage which is the most important part that's the part we're going to be eating. So I harvested the last Savoy cabbage. This one is a little bit smaller and you can see that the center leaves have started opening up and spreading out which means this was about to go to bolt so I'm so glad I harvested this today but all in all not a bad harvest for having to harvest these a little bit earlier than I would like. The red cabbage I really like to eat raw. I slice it really thinly and add it to my salads or sometimes I make pho like Vietnamese style pho and I like to add some red cabbage into that as well. As far as these Savoy cabbages they're not the best for making things like sauerkraut which is fine by me because I don't even like sauerkraut but these are really good for making like Polish style stuffed cabbages so if I end up making that recipe I'll try to make a video so I can share that recipe with you guys. I do have a recipes playlist where I try to kind of share ideas with you on what I do with all of my harvests but if you have any delicious recipes that use up a lot of cabbage please comment below and share. Well there you have it a tutorial showing you every step of the way on how to grow cabbage from seed all the way to harvest. If you enjoyed this video and learned something new make sure you subscribe to my channel and give me a big thumbs up that helps out my channel more than you know. Thank you for watching and happy gardening.