Cauliflowers
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 will give gardeners 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. Technically, there are two sorts of cauliflowers, summer and winter. The former is a proper cauliflower, while the latter variety is a type of broccoli. The names ‘summer’ and ‘winter’ are a bit misleading. Some summer cauliflowers are sown in winter under glass, for harvesting in late spring or early summer. Maincrop varieties of summer cauliflower are sown outdoors in spring for harvesting in summer and autumn
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.
We love the taste of the cauliflower and so do the pests. Caterpillars will not only eat the leaves but can get into 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.
Cauliflowers react badly to poor cultivation techniques. They are a very hungry crop and need plenty of nitrogen to grow well.
A large white cauliflower with tight white curds is a thing of beauty and producing one will give gardeners a source of much satisfaction
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.
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.
So you need rich firm soil, you need to plant properly and protect against pests for a good specimen.
Country Gardener’s pick of the varieties
The best variety of fig tree to go for is Ficus carica ‘Brown Turkey’, whose fruit ripen in late August, and have a reddish-brown skin, red flesh and a sweet flavour.
You can also try F. carica ‘Brunswick’, which ripens a few weeks earlier, and whose greeny-yellow skinned fruit have a sweet tasting pink flesh. F. carica ‘White Marseilles’ ripens in early September with fruit that have a light-green skin and green flesh.
Cauliflower Purple Graffiti: The Purple Graffiti variety is striking and retains its colour when cooked. The flavour is not quite as good as the normal white varieties but it remains a colour alternative and worth growing
Pavillion: Cauliflower Well- protected, solid, deep curds that keep their quality over an extra long period. An Australian variety which is a vigorous, generous cropper, producing curds from mid September through OctoberSow May to June. Sow thinly into well raked soil, 1cm (½ inch) deep in drills 23cm (9 inches) apart..
Clarke Cauliflower: Very adaptable variety which from successive sowings can be harvested from mid June to late October. Reliably produces high quality, very deep and heavy curds with a good percentage of florets suitable for freezing. Sow late winter to early spring under glass, spring out of doors or for earliest crops, in autumn to over winter in a frame.
Country Gardener Pavillion
Brown Turkey
Brunswick
Clarke Cauliflower 15
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