Planning a vegetable garden this year? Consider cabbage.
I didn鈥檛 make any resolutions on New Year鈥檚 Day but I did eat . That鈥檚 because cabbage is reputed to bring prosperity. And to ensure that the roof of your house won鈥檛 blow off.
We spent a boatload of money to have our roof replaced in 2009 and we are perched on a windy site, so we could do with both the prosperity and the guarantee against gusts and gales.
Although I don鈥檛 dote on cabbage, as the Greeks and Romans are said to have done, I do give it more respect than did the 17th-century herbalist Nicholas Culpeper. He focused on its flatulence-producing effect, writing that 鈥淐abbages are extremely windy鈥� as windy鈥s can be eaten, unless you eat Bagpipes or Bellows.鈥�
Culpeper might have been less faultfinding had he known that raw cabbage is one of the garden鈥檚 best sources of Vitamin C 鈥� more per calorie than orange juice 鈥� and an excellent source of . It鈥檚 also a vegetable recommended for losing weight, although I wouldn鈥檛 wish a cabbage soup diet on anyone. Nor do .
Cabbage was one of the vegetables brought early to North America, first to Canada in the 16th century by the French navigator Jacques Cartier. It鈥檚 been largely uphill since then. Despite the many ways it can be prepared in the kitchen 鈥� a Google search of 鈥溾�� turns up 3,410,000 鈥� cabbage gets little respect from gastronomes.
And not a whole lot more from plant breeders. Cultivars may number in the , but don鈥檛 expect a wheelbarrowful of new cabbages every spring.
, which trials new vegetables and flowers for home gardeners, has awarded its prized red, white, and blue seal to a cabbage only 16 times since 1934. (The last award was in 2000 for 鈥樷��.)
In inventory, the number of commercially available nonhybrid cabbages decreased by more than half between 1980 and 2000, one of only a handful of vegetables to 鈥渓ose鈥� so many varieties.
Despite being on the breeders鈥� back burner, you can find green (aka white), blue-green, and red cabbages; smooth-leaf and savoy cabbages (which have seersuckerlike leaves); round, flattened, and pointy cabbages; and cabbages ranging from the size of to as small as .
There are varieties for truncated seasons, such as 鈥樷��, and cabbages like 鈥樷�� for warm climates, where seeds most often are sown in the fall. Or choose cultivars such as 鈥樷�� have resistance to fusarium wilt, a soil-based fungi that causes leaves to wilt and die.
If you鈥檇 like to try an heirloom cabbage, an old, open-pollinated cultivar developed more than 50 years ago, check out the online catalog of , a family-run seed company in Pennsylvania. Among its offerings are the savoy 鈥楧rumhead (1797) and 鈥楨arly Jersey Wakefield鈥�, a conical-shaped variety introduced in 1840.
Most of New England offers just the conditions cabbages like 鈥� cool summers and even moisture. Short- and midseason cultivars, which are ready to cut in fewer than 85 days, tend to have a milder flavor than late-season cabbages, which take more than 85 days to mature. Days-to-maturity with cabbages, don鈥檛 forget, are from transplanting, not from sowing seeds.
Karan Davis Cutler is one of eight garden writers blogging at Diggin' It. She's a former magazine editor and newspaper columnist, is the author of scores of garden articles and more than a dozen books, including 鈥淏urpee - The Complete Flower Gardener鈥� and 鈥淗erb Gardening for Dummies.鈥� She now struggles to garden in the unyieldingly dense clay of Addison County, Vt., on the shore of Lake Champlain, where she is working on a book about gardening to attract birds and other wildlife. She blogs regularly for Diggin鈥� It.
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