How to Grow CABBAGE - Complete Growing Guide

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the Empire Gardener Channel in today's episode we're gonna be doing another Emma Gardner redo this is where we take an older Emma Gardner video and we redo it with better video quality better public speaking skills and I'm no longer an adolescent So today we're going to be redoing how to grow cabbage and so with that hopefully you guys are going to enjoy let's go [Music] so the first step to growing cabbage is successfully is understanding the soil now this is where a lot of gardeners go wrong because when you look at cabbages you think oh this is beautiful Lush plant it's super green it's a leafy green crop it probably needs tons of nutrients and if you stop there you'd be correct they do need tons of nutrients but the soil type is really what throws a lot of gardeners off they actually because they're a Brassica like a more compacted soil not compacted as in like you could make pottery out of it but they do like kind of a lack of air gaps and that's because when you grow brassicas any Brassica but especially cabbages they're very prone to what's known as root not nematodes and root not nematodes thrive in very aerated very fertile soil and so what I prefer to do when I'm growing cabbages is I pick a spot in my garden that I have not yet amended with lots of compost I will still amend it yes I will still amend it with a little bit but I let my soil kind of compact over time and that's going to reduce the air gaps and it's going to allow me to actually help compact the soil around the roots which has been proven by many many different soil scientists to actually reduce the risk of root not nematodes by up to 75 percent so what we have done is we picked a bed that we actually kind of let kind of slightly degrade again not a bad thing if you've got nutrients so we're going to be using a granular fertilizer to provide the nutrients we are growing in you know just aged compost it's just compost over time will break down and degrade and start to compact that's what happens naturally so rather than fluff this bed up and make it absolutely pristine and perfect like we would normally we're going to go in a slightly compacted soil and so you'll notice this soil has a slight grayer color to it it's slightly more Dusty and broken down and that's very very normal and it's very good for brassicas so what we're going to do is we're going to dig a hole and we're going to plant our plants okay we're going to talk about lots more on how to grow these but I want to show you what we do here get two for the price of one nice all right so what we've done we dug our hole we're going to fertilize super important we'll talk about fertilizer in a second and we're going to plant our cabbage now it's going to sound crazy but what we want to do is we don't want this to be nice and loose because we don't want to run the risk of getting root not nematodes what we're going to do is we're going to take our fist or our Palm we're going to press we're going to compact that soil around the plant now you might be thinking holy cow Luke has absolutely lost his mind and I in fact haven't this is how you can grow very successful cabbages and most soil scientists will tell you that to grow the best cabbages you need a soil that's about 50 percent more compacted than others than other crops in your garden so whereas a tomato you plant your plant throw it over top you want that nice loose soil for good root development however the the roots on cabbages are prone to root not nematodes and that compaction reduces the air gaps which then reduce the root not nematode or the risk of root not nematode I should say and so that is a step that so many gardeners do not get and if you take anything from this video it is compacting the soil now it is very important to have the right type of soil because if you do this with clay soil you're going to completely collapse the soil it's going to completely suffocate the roots and it's going to kill the plant over time with things like root rot because it's going to hold on to too much moisture in the soil this soil can compact right it can compact if I squeeze it tight but it also still breaks apart right that's what you want to go for you want to go for a soil that is fertile and it is you know loose but it can be compacted without you know without killing the without being detrimental and killing the plant so that's the first thing is the soil now let's talk about fertilizing all right so now we're going to talk about fertilizing which is really important as well you see all this growth does not just happen because of magic it happens because of high nitrogen now if you remember cabbage is a leafy crop and the more leaves it creates the larger and Tighter the head can be and so we really want to focus on nitrogen now we are fertilizing with Trifecta which is a 5 10 4 it's 5 5 nitrogen 10 phosphorus and four percent potassium it also has beneficial bacteria and fungi as well as trace minerals in this fertilizer so it's well balanced I always recommend going with a well-balanced fertilizer simply because it's like a multivitamin you should be taking a multivitamin yes you might need iron but it's also not going to hurt you to get some other vitamins in your diet as well right so plants need nitrogen all plants need nitrogen to create leafy green growth but especially your leafy crops they focus primarily on nitrogen so we're going to focus a lot on nitrogen now you don't have to use Trifecta you can use something like blood meal you could use something like a fish fertilizer a you know chicken manure anything like that that's going to have lots and lots of nitrogen in it because what we want to do is we want to encourage lots of leafy green growth now you want to make sure that the fertilizer you go with is not going to be so strong that it ends up burning your plants a lot of gardeners make a mistake of going with like a urea which is like a 60 zero zero sixty percent by weight of just nitrogen it's very harsh it has a lot of nitrogen but it's so concentrated and so harsh that it can end up too much of any good thing can be a bad thing right so that's why I like to go with something gentle and well balanced but it's got a good focus on those macronutrients to help provide that plant growth that we're looking for all right so the next thing we're talking about is spacing now spacing is really important for your cabbages because they're very small now but they won't be very small for very long cabbages have absolutely huge leaves and those leaves will definitely trample and overshadow other plants they're going to compete and so what we want to do is we want to space our cabbages out about 10 inches that I find is a really good spacing for me you can go a little bit further than that if you have the space to afford or if you're concerned about overcrowding but in my experience with the varieties that I choose 10 inches is good enough for me so I'm going to go out about 10 inches and then I'm going to have a plant and then another plant and this way my plants are close enough to where the uh the leaves are gently going to be overlapping each other and they're not going to be you know really tightly crowding each other but that overlapping is good because it's going to shade out the soil and as we talk about having shaded soil is really important it's going to shade out things like weeds it's going to help to hold moisture in the soil it's also going to help to cool the soil down so that the plants are less stressed during hot days so lots of benefits to having slight overlapping leaves just you don't want them having a boxing match with each other so it's close but not too close now you are going to notice that I'm going from a green to a purple now why am I doing that well that's because there has been quite a good amount of evidence that shows that by inter cropping different colors of cabbages actually helps with cabbage moths now cabbage moths will hone in on cabbage plants they're those white little butterflies that you see flying around they look like little fairy butterflies but they're moths and they will lay their eggs on brassicas now by alternating green and purple green and purple or green purple and like a like a whiter cabbage or something like that it helps to kind of break up that color variation which in some studies has shown to prevent things like Cabbage Moth or at least reduce them so we're going to be alternating our cabbages and we've done that for years and I can really attribute that to a lot of the reason why we don't have as many Cabbage Moth problems we've always done that ever since I read that study I thought well why not so we're going to be doing that and that's something that really plagues people but if you find that you're having problems with cabbage moths the next thing I want to talk about is pest deterrin so with pests it's super important that we control pests before they become a big problem and with cabbage moths it can become a really big problem really fast and so what we're going to do is we're going to enter crop green and purple to help prevent things like Cabbage Moth but then we're also going to use a product called BT it's known as bacillus thuregensis and it is a beneficial bacteria that you spray onto the leaves of your cabbages and when it becomes ingested by any type of caterpillar it also works on tomato hornworm it works on tent caterpillars in your fruit trees very very very effective but it only affects things like caterpillars and so you're going to spray that onto your plants you can even spray it on right now it's totally fine it's not going to hurt them at all and then it's going to help protect them the final form of pest protection well there's actually two more uh next form of past protection is marigolds now in the beginning we talked about root not nematodes and how planting marigolds next to uh next to other crops can help with root not nematodes in our intercropping video If you haven't seen that video go check it out it's amazing it's absolutely awesome but this video comes back full circle to talk about how we want to enter crop to prevent things like root not nematodes remember how I said we're compacting the soil to reduce the risk of root not nematodes by up to 75 percent well you can also help to reduce the risk of root not nematodes by about 50 percent with the help of marigolds marigolds excrete a chemical in the soil that helps prevent things like root not nematodes and so Michigan State University actually did a study on this about I want to say about five seven years ago or so and uh it was very very effective so we're going to apply those and we can plant those in just different parts of the Garden close proximity to the plants and that's really going to help out as well so you can use that and then the very final form of pest control is with a product called tool it's just a basically tutu material that you drape over your plants and that helps to keep things like the the Cabbage moths from getting into the cabbages all right so now that we talked about pests we talked about fertilizing we talked about spacing and soil I really want to touch on watering so when it comes to Growing cabbages a lot of people think that they can be treated just like any other Brassica now like kale for instance which planted some kale over here kale is pretty drought resistant it's a leafy green much like cabbage but if it doesn't get rain for a week or two it kind of just is okay with it it doesn't love it but it's not really going to suffer whereas cabbage cabbage needs lots of regular water why is that well that's because cabbage forms a really tight head and that head is all leaves it's about 95 water each Leaf is you know in you know independent of one another but they fold over top and each other to form a head and the tighter that head is the the more it's important you get the water into the plant the reason why is because cabbage is when they have a very tight head like that and they start to to dry out what will happen is the leaves will shrink they'll shrivel because they're running out of water and then what will happen is that head will kind of create a little air gap there and that air gap can actually Steam and that's why cabbage heads will actually start to form mold or rot in the center of the cabbage and that's known as head rot or even like there's gray mold that can affect them white mold that can affect them and that's simply from that air gap and that steam being created from the shriveling of leaves so you want to keep those leaves plump the entire time now I find that I'll like right now we just planted our our cabbage they could use a little water so I'll find I'll Water my cabbages when they're needed we have cores in these beds so about 12 inches down we 10 12 inches down we planted or we not we didn't plant We buried our straw bales like we do normally if you haven't seen those videos go check them out and that holds moisture in the soil which is important but when the plants need water we're going to be watering I'll find in the summertime that might be once a week or so it's not that often but it is very important to check your soil know when they need water and to water them when they do need it because just simply turning a blind eye to it can actually be a really bad thing for cabbages all right the next step to successfully growing cabbage is understanding the sunlight now when it comes to sunlight and cabbage they really break all the rules now there's an old saying that says root shoots and Roots shoots and fruits needs full sun that's about five to seven hours whereas leaves needs partial sun and you might think well I'm growing these for leaves I'll give them partial sun three to five hours no problem they don't need full sun all the time you'd be wrong cabbage breaks all those rules cabbage loves five to seven hours of nice full direct sun and if you give them more than that they're not going to complain this spot right here gets between like 11 and 12 hours of nice full direct sun and they're going to thrive and the reason why is because yes they are a leaf but those leaves the more they can create the bigger the plant can get the larger the head can be and so again it goes back to you know nutrients it goes back to watering leaves are the most important thing to a cabbage and so the bigger the Cabbage gets the more energy it needs to produce that head and so giving it nice full sun is so important now if you only have five hours absolutely it's going to do fine but any less than that it is really going to struggle to form a nice tight head and that's one thing a lot of gardeners struggle with is they say my cabbages are just kind of like forming these really loose leaves it's not really forming ahead I look at the picture and the very first thing I can tell is it's in the shade I ask how much sun does it get and they say I don't know maybe three to four hours well that'll do it that's exactly why so if you don't get sunlight right you can get everything else right and doesn't matter so make sure you get sunlight right give them nice full sun direct sun if you can give it that for five to seven or even more hours and they're not going to complain so that is the next most important thing and the final thing that is really important to Growing cabbages has everything to do with the season that you plant it all right the final thing I want to talk about is the seasons in which you're planting your cabbage and the seasons between varieties so if that doesn't make a whole lot of sense let me break this down so when it comes to your planting Seasons you can plant in two different seasons of the gardening season you can plant in the spring for a summer Harvest and you can plant in the late summer for a fall Harvest and we'll be doing that basically right now we have our our cabbage in the ground and it's going to be ready to harvest right around the early to maybe mid part of July but then there's gonna be a gap of time where we're not going to be planting anything because it'll be too hot and then around probably late August very early September we're going to put seeds in pots if not directly in the ground and we're going to be growing those for a late fall Harvest basically late fall almost basically early winter there'll be snow on the ground but we're going to be harvesting these beautiful heads of cabbage it'll be one of the last things we're pulling out of the garden and it's a very simple way to grow two successions of cabbage in one growing season so that's kind of seasonally how we plant cabbage but then there's also seasonality between varieties as well so there is known as a early season cabbage a mid-season cabbage and a late cabbage and that basically just coincides with how many days it takes for the Cabbage to form a head and so you have early cabbage varieties like the Copenhagen Market cabbage that's an early variety you have a Wakefield cabbage right which is a mid-season variety you have a uh it could be like a late Flat Dutch cabbage right that's a later variety early season varieties will mature in right around 65 to 70 days mid-season varieties are going to be right around 70 to 75 days and then a later variety is can be right around 80 to 85 days and so that also can kind of help you out when you're picking the varieties that you want to choose because right now basically the world is our oyster we can plant early mid and late season cabbages however as we get closer to planting fall cabbage we're not going to be planting late season cabbages because we don't have enough time to get those to fully mature and form ahead so we're going to be exclusively planting our early season cabbages and knowing this and having this information in your back pocket can really help you out to not only maximizing how much cabbage you're growing but having more success growing cabbage so those are all the things that I wanted to condense into today's video I hope you guys enjoyed I hope you learned something new if you did make sure to hit the like button subscribe if you haven't already and let me know in the comments box down below if you want to see other Mi Gardener redos and what you'd like to see redone we've done over 1500 videos and I can safely say that in the 11 years I've been doing this the information has stayed the same or very close to the same but the video quality and my public speaking has improved exponentially so so uh definitely let me know what you'd like to see redone I don't ever want to have information that you don't want to watch because it's too terrible of quality and so just let me know and I'll be happy to do that so as always this is Luke from the Mi Gardener Channel reminding you to grow bigger take care guys bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 64,384

Keywords: MIgardener, vegetable gardening, organic gardening

Id: RxQdtshiGas

Length: 17min 43sec (1063 seconds)

Published: Fri May 26 2023