Allotment Growing

Growing Cauliflower - How to Grow Cauliflowers

As regular readers of my diaries will know, the cauliflower is not the easiest of the brassica family to grow but a large white cauliflower with tight white curds is a thing of beauty and producing one a source of much satisfaction.

Having said that, we're not limited to white. You can get yellow and even purple cauliflowers, certainly a bright purple cauliflower is a talking point Romanesco is a sort of cross between calabrese and cauliflower producing tight green curds. Whether you consider it a cauliflower or a calabrese is up to you, but grow as a cauliflower.

Cauliflower Growing Problems

They are very vulnerable to club root but you can grow ordinary cauliflowers by following the instructions on coping with clubroot. Clubroot resistant varieties are being bred and the first of these, Clapton, from Thompson and Morgan is now available.

We love the taste of the cauliflower and so do the pests, caterpillars will not only eat the leaves but can get into the curd itself and slugs love to climb the stem to eat away in the sheltered centre leaving brown trails where they have munched their way across the surface.

More than any other brassica, they are vulnerable to those pests as well as the cabbage root fly.

Cultivation of Cauliflowers

Cauliflowers react badly to poor cultivation techniques. Follow the instructions for the ideal brassica bed and you won't go wrong. They are a very hungry crop and really need plenty of nitrogen to grow well

You don't need to grow a lot of cauliflowers to supply the average family and like most vegetables they are best eaten fresh, so sow successionally into modules, thinning at the seedling stage to one plant per module.

The benefit of modules is that they can be moved up to a larger pot without root disturbance. When starting in modules and moving up through the pots, ensure they do not become pot bound. It's easy enough to check the root system, just turn upside down allowing the plant to come between your fingers which form a plate to stop the compost from falling out and lift the pot. If the white roots go around and around then it is pot bound.

Move on to a larger pot but tease the roots out so they do not continue the endless circle. When planting out or moving up to a large pot, cauliflowers and cabbages should be planted deep, up to the base of the first seed leaves. This helps them have a firm stalk.

When you plant them out into the ground, ensure they are well firmed in and watered when so that the roots establish well in the ground.

If they don't establish good roots because they are circling or if when planted out it isn't firm, which allows it to rock and break those minute root hairs that are where the nutrients come in to the plant, then the effect will be the same as soil that lacks nutrients.

This will cause the plant to form its curds ( the bit that we eat) early and a small cauliflower will be the result. In extreme cases these will be golf ball sized!

So to recap; rich firm soil, plant properly and protect against pests for a good specimen.

I mentioned the tight white curds, if too much sunlight gets onto the head then it will go slightly yellow and off colour. To prevent this, bend some of the inner leaves over the head to shade it. If you leave the cauliflower too long after the head has formed then the curds continue to grow, coming apart so once ready, harvest. Some varieties will stand longer than others, check the description in the seed catalogue.

The Purple Graffiti variety is particularly striking and retains its colour when cooked. The flavour is not, unfortunately, quite as good as the normal white varieties but it did convince a young man who hated cauliflowers, along with any other vegetable, to eat this 'super space cauliflower'

Cauliflowers All Year Round

By picking the correct variety and planting at the right time, it is possible to have a cauliflower to cut nearly everyday of the year but more usually from March to November.

There are three types; summer varieties that can be started in late winter to be ready as early as June or July, autumn varieties for October and November and the winter varieties that are very slow to mature, taking 40 to even 50 weeks to mature from March through to June.

Cauliflowers, once cut, can be stored in a fridge for a couple of weeks if wrapped tightly in cling film. A glut can frozen although they tend to go a little mushy. See Freezing Vegetables for more information.

Recommended Varieties of Cauliflower to Grow

• My favourite autumn variety has to be Pavilion, an Australian bred variety. It holds reasonably well in the ground and produces good sized heads with pure white curds. Pavilion from Thompson & Morgan
• For an early crop, try Mayflower. They have to be started early, mid-January usually and will be supplying the table in May and June Available: Dobies
• Gypsy is a good summer variety, start in October and overwinter in a coldframe planting out in March for an early summer crop. Available Thompson & Morgan
• Purple Graffiti produces a nice head, bright purple as mentioned above. The flavour isn't particularly good but it's great fun to grow. Available: Suttons & Dobies
• Violet Queen is another purple, with the RHS Award of Garden Merit. Available from Thompson & Morgan

Resources

• List of Cauliflower Seeds Available from the Allotment Shop
• List of Cauliflower Seeds with Award of Garden Merit in the Allotment Shop
• General Brassica Information
• Cauliflower Recipes