- Date Published:
- 24/01/2008
Grow your own cabbage
Cabbages are popular and versatile vegetables grown for their compact leafy hearts.
The leaves can be shredded onto salads, boiled, steamed and stir-fried to accompany meat and vegetarian dishes or transformed into a healthy soup.
They are easy to raise from seed sown outdoors and classified as spring, summer, autumn or winter cabbages according to their harvesting time.
What you will need
- A packet of cabbage seeds and plant labels
- A seed tray and seed compost (for raising seedlings under cover only)
- A general organic fertiliser, some organic liquid fertiliser and well-rotted manure
- A spade for digging over the vegetable plot and a hoe for weeding
- A rake for preparing the seed bed
- A watering can
- A length of string with pegs at each end for marking out individual rows
- A short stick for creating seed drills (shallow grooves made in the surface of the soil)
- A ruler for marking out planting distances
- A hand trowel for transplanting
- Cabbage collars for placing round the young plants to protect them from cabbage root fly (available from garden centres)
- A knife for harvesting