What IS that cabbage?

ClareBroommaker's picture

Anyone know what green round cabbages are most common is USA commerce? I admit I really like the never identified variety (varieties?) we get in any grocery store in the midwest. Would try growing that variety if I knew what it was.

P.S. Does anyone here grow cabbage to seed?

Sweet Tatorman's picture

A lot of cabbage is grown here in Georgia. Link below to an extension service publication which lists some common recommended varieties.
I have grown from seed but in general cabbage does not do well for me due to insect issues so I have not planted in recent years.
https://extension.uga.edu/publications/detail.html?number=B1181

ClareBroommaker's picture

I had no idea cabbage was a big crop in the state of Georgia. That seems counterintuitive, but I see from a google glance that it is a year round crop. Huh, I'd never have guessed it.

What are your cabbage pests? My worst cabbage pests have been the green caterpillar of the cabbage white butterfly. They were suspiciously scant last year. Suspicious as in, uht-oh, what freak thing has happened to this missing slice of nature? And what else is going to domino down? Not my cabbage family crops, anyway.

Sweet Tatorman's picture

My worst is the cabbage butterfly. Also commonly aphids. Depending upon the year an assortment of others.

SLClaire's picture

I don't know what the green round cabbage is. Most likely it's a hybrid variety, based on the commercial seed catalogs I have seen. The one I grow in my Spanish Lake, MO garden is 'Golden Acre', an heirloom open-pollinated variety. It's round and green, not as big as the grocery store varieties (the biggest ones I grow are around 3 pounds or so), but it grows well here and heads up by July, so I can harvest all of them over a month before I start the fall cabbage-family crops. Doing it that way keeps the harlequin bugs away.

ClareBroommaker's picture

I think I must have grown Golden Acre before. It seems like it is one of the seed varieties always available at dollar stores--and I do buy seeds there.

Last year I grew Danish Ballhead because it is one of the shorter season ones. I see on my seed packet that I started seed on March 8 and again on April 25. It is supposed to be a 90 day cabbage. I harvested beginning on July 19 and they were also mostly about 3 pounds. Still have a few seeds to plant this year.

I recall having been pleased with Copenhagen Market and growing it a couple years in a row, but I don't remember what I liked about it in particular. Size? Taste? I don't know.

One year we grew Ferry's Round Dutch. It was good with heads up to 5 pounds.

I also had a single head of one of those exhibition size cabbages in my flower garden one year. It was grown with a neighbor kid who'd been given a plant a school to grow out and submit to a scholarship competition. It grew to 9 pounds under great weed, drought, and insect pressure. We had planted it next to cleome. As you have trouble with harlequin bugs, you might know that they love cleome above all else. Cleome was the main meal and that big cabbage was dessert.

Ken's picture

Cabbage is one of those species that really needs an experienced grower to raise decent seed. Try Johnny's Seeds to try to identify a cabbage with similar traits to the one you like. https://www.johnnyseeds.com/

ClareBroommaker's picture

I could kick myself for pulling up a cabbage before our coldest weather in January. It had a little secondary tuft of leaves on it and might have grown to flowering if I'd protected it till the growing season. I was just thoughtless in yanking it up.

It would just be cool if I could save my own seed.

My garden buddy and I grow cabbage, both red and green every year for cole slaw and sauerkraut. We start them from seed and the varieties we use are Red Express for the red one and Golden Acres for the green one. Both are pretty fast to mature and both are round. Last year wasn't a good one for use but most years we get a good crop. We are zone 7 at 4200 feet in elevation and we irrigate with drip lines since we are in a desert.

Sorry, I think I mis-read your post. While we grow cabbage every year, we don't grow it for seed.

ClareBroommaker's picture

Yes, I grow from seed, too. But as you figured, I was wondering whether anyone saved their own cabbage seed. I guess I could have worded that better.

Do you have a hot summer? I think of cabbage as being better for cool, long summers, but the fact is they grow pretty well here. (And are a commercial crop in Georgia! Who'd have thought?)

Definitely my worst cabbage was savoyed, small headed, green one that I planted very close to a crape myrtle and which got a lot of shade. It made pretty silvery edging to the mint filled bed around the crape myrtle, but was a loose head and not very productive. I won't do that again.

Yes we have hot summers and last years, started early which is why we think our crop failed. We haven't gotten the timing right for a fall crop yet, but we will try again this year.

PS, I really did mis-read your post, it was clear to me when I re-read it.

lathechuck's picture

... I put a floating row cover over it, to keep the cabbage-worm moths out. That it did, but it didn't keep the slugs out, and apparently it kept the slug-predators out, so there were many slugs hidden in the head. (It's always something.)

Around here I get cabbage whites and slugs eating my kale. The leaves are frequently holey. I give the really badly holed ones to my crickets and mealworms for food. I don't grow cabbage, but I'd imagine the pests are similar.