Owens Corning

National Gardening Association The White Stuff

Cauliflower needn't be coddled, if you grow it in the fall

by Peter Tonge

Before coming to the United States 26 years ago, I gardened on the eastern slopes of the South African highlands. We lived some 30 miles, as the crow flies, from the warm Indian Ocean but at an altitude just too high to be part of the subtropical coastal plain. So we'd get maybe six to 10 frosts a year. More than that and we'd had a rough winter!

In such a climate, growing cauliflower was simple. If the soil was right, even a newcomer to gardening, as I was at the time, could succeed. Then I settled in coastal New England, where even old gardening hands can fail if they're not careful. The standard gardening advice in North America, in fact, suggests that cauliflower is difficult to grow. Or, as Rob Johnston of Johnny's Selected Seeds in Albion, Maine, likes to phrase it, "less easy" to grow than other members of the cabbage family.

So it's no surprise that few gardeners bother with the crop. That's a pity, because with a little understanding, home gardeners can readily avoid the disappointments often associated with growing cauliflower. And freshly picked cauliflower, steamed and served with a curry or cheese sauce or in soup, makes the effort well worthwhile.

Stress management

The major hurdle with cauliflower is premature heading, a phenomenon known as "buttoning." This occurs when some form of stress during the seedling stage causes the plant to decide to hurry up and make seed -- the end may be nigh! But because the plant is so small at this stage, the head is tiny too. My first attempt at growing cauliflower in New England saw heads about the size of the buttons on my winter coat. It took the whole crop to make a single meal.

Buttoning, as Johnston points out, is frequently caused by seedlings being subjected to frost or even to near-freezing conditions at an early age. A sudden change from cool to unseasonably hot weather soon after transplanting can do the same thing. But the most common cause of buttoning, Johnston maintains, is leaving the seedlings too long in their containers, allowing "tops to grow too big for the restricted root system to support." Six weeks in a seedling tray "is the maximum," Johnston contends. "Eight weeks and you're asking for trouble."

Too much hardening off prior to planting outdoors is another cause of stress. For most plants, hardening off means moving them gradually from shelter under glass to full sun over three to five days and withholding water. But "cauliflowers need less hardening off than most other vegetables," Johnston notes. "And whatever you do, don't cut back on water at this stage." Anyone who can grow good cabbage should be able to grow acceptable cauliflowers, says Johnston. It just takes knowing how to avoid this early stress.

The simplest solution is to plant in summer for a fall harvest. Then there's no problem with cold and no need to grow the seedlings under lights, so hardening off isn't an issue. "Cauliflower leaves grow best in warm weather," says Dawn de Vos, senior plant breeder at Harris Moran Seeds in San Juan Bautista, California, "and heads form best in the cooler weather of fall."

The soil and water equation

Good soil is a prerequisite to the steady, uninterrupted growth that produces dense curds and heavy heads, the hallmarks of a good cauliflower. "Heavier soils grow good cauliflowers," notes de Vos, "but that doesn't mean you can't grow them in sand." Compost, aged manure, or even peat moss dug into light soils can go a long way toward correcting the situation. And they improve the structure of heavy soils as well.

R. Shigema Honma, now retired from the department of horticulture at Michigan State University, bred the world's first self-wrapping cauliflower some two decades ago. Today those kinds, which produce interior leaves that shade the heads to keep them white, have become very popular. Now Honma confines his interest in cauliflower to growing them in his own backyard. Like me, he plants his major crop for a fall harvest.

His approach starts with enriching the soil with compost and spreading a balanced general-purpose fertilizer over the area to be planted. As the seedlings go in they are watered with a very weak solution of liquid fertilizer (a compost or manure "tea" could substitute). Then at four-week intervals until the heads start forming, he sprinkles a little nitrogen -- in the form of urea or bloodmeal -- in a circle about eight inches out from the stem.

The purpose of the nitrogen, Honma explains, "is to get vigorous plant growth that will eventually support a big head. The other needed nutrients -- phosphate and potash -- are provided by the general-purpose fertilizer applied at planting time, he notes.

Of course, Dr. Honma is an expert. But not everyone is, which prompts a caution from Dawn de Vos. "Too much nitrogen can result in all leaf and no curd," she says. Or as John Gale of Stokes Seeds puts it: "Too little nitrogen is better than too much."

But what exactly constitutes too much or too little nitrogen?

That answer isn't easy to come by. For my part, I rely on liberal quantities of compost, which provide a plentiful supply of nutrients without overstimulating the plants. Two trowelfuls of screened compost goes into the bottom of each planting hole. Once the plants are thoroughly established, I spread an inch-thick mulch of unscreened compost over the surface of the soil. This way, nutrients leach down into the root zone every time it rains or whenever the garden bed is watered. The mulch also encourages vigorous earthworm activity in and around the roots, which increases the availability of nutrients.

If my compost reserves have dwindled or if I feel the need for additional nitrogen, I sprinkle a handful or two of cottonseed or alfalfa meal around each plant and cover this with a thin layer of shredded leaves or straw. Occasionally, I'll use bloodmeal but I've found it's so fast-acting that it needs to be applied with the same care as highly soluble chemical fertilizers.

The other key to successful cauliflower is consistent watering, which keeps soil nitrogen available. "That means watering twice a week, not every day," points out John Gale. He also suggests never watering after 4:00 p.m. "Those leaves need to be dry after dark, to avoid possible disease problems." For home gardeners who don't want to store huge heads in the refrigerator, Gale further suggests planting cauliflowers close together, on 16-inch centers. The dense spacing provides good leaf cover to protect developing curds and keeps heads small -- "a little larger than fist size."

It's a good idea to plant early, mid-, and late-developing varieties all at the same time. That way you'll be picking the harvest for a month or more. Open-pollinated varieties give a more extended harvest than the hybrids, which tend to mature at a more uniform rate.

After several years of making do with just broccoli, in my fall garden I now plan a regular place for cauliflower. After all, cauliflower is more than just a white- curded broccoli. It has a different texture, and a subtly different flavor. I've recently discovered that finely chopped (or blended) cauliflower can add a new dimension to potato, leek and even cheese soups. And modern-day cookbooks list far more creative ways to prepare cauliflower, including many borrowed from Asian cuisines. Take the Japanese dish, "Gandangan." Besides cauliflower it includes carrots, a red bell pepper, garlic, lemon juice, brown sugar, cayenne pepper and coconut... a startling range of ingredients for anyone brought up to think of cauliflower as simply a "steam and serve" dish!

No, cauliflower doesn't have to be associated with bland anymore. And it certainly needn't be thought of as too difficult to grow.

Orange Cauliflower?

You bet. Eat lots of it, it's better for you! And we'll probably soon see kinds that produce second, third and even fourth heads, like broccoli.

While many consumers view cauliflower as just another run-of- the-mill vegetable, plant breeders look on it as anything but mundane. Major breeding programs hold the promise of good things to come for both commercial growers and home gardeners alike. Most of the changes, of course, will be small things: two days earlier, tighter (or looser) wrapper leaves, rounder heads. But some dramatic changes are on the horizon as well.

Michael Dickson, a breeder at New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva who introduced a drier cabbage two decades ago and thereby saved the sauerkraut industry millions in processing costs, discovered an orange-curded cauliflower in specimens he was working with back in 1980.

After several years of work he released an orange variety, rich in beta-carotene, to commercial breeders, not as the final product but as a variety that was pretty good at coloring up the curds of other varieties it was crossed with. As Dickson puts it: "On its own its a pretty scrawny thing, but as a parent it makes a darn good dad."

So far he's seen nothing worthy of commercial release since - - "it takes more than good color to make an acceptable cauliflower." But he suspects that some commercial breeders might be getting close.

One who feels he's almost there is John Gale of Stokes Seeds. He believes he has a variety that could be ready within a year. "Cauliflower is nutritiously pretty good right now," he says, "but with beta-carotene it will be that much better."

Meanwhile, Tim Peters, formerly with Territorial Seed Company, now in business for himself as Peters's Seed and Research Company in Myrtle Creek, Oregon, is actively pursuing winter hardiness and multiple-heading traits in his breeding programs.

While a cut-and-come-again feature would appeal to home gardeners, a major reason for Peters's approach is to include this quality in winter-hardy strains to make the harvests more dependable. Should a cold winter kill the growing tip, side shoots would take over and still provide a reasonable harvest. He already has varieties that produce an original head followed by three side heads that together "match the original head in weight and sometimes are 1 1/2 times as heavy."

Peter Tonge, longtime garden columnist for the Christian Science Monitor, tends his brassicas on the shores of the Massachussetts Bay.

Copyright NGA

Reprinted with permission HouseNet, Inc.

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