Cabbage Types

Early Cabbage Types

These cabbages grow quickly and mature quickly, so they must be harvested quickly. These are the standard sort of cabbage grown.

Jingan

55 days from planting to harvest. From the Far East comes this exceptional early green cabbage. Two pounds in size, this mild, small-cored variety has enough variability to offer the home gardener a longer window of harvest. Top notch quality for slaw or kraut.

Derby Day (Golden Acre)

58 days from planting to harvest. Dark-green heads have attractive pale hearts. The flavor, especially of the heart, is extremely sweet and tender. The uniform, round light green heads run 3 - 5 pounds and about 5 - 7 inches in diameter depending on spacing. English seed.

Charmant

66 days from planting to harvest. Medium green with yellowish-white interior. Forms dense heads of 3 - 4 pounds. Stands for weeks without splitting and is suited to close spacings. Matures its head one to two weeks after Derby Day and eight to nine weeks before Danish Ballhead. Eating quality is excellent, with a full rich flavor.

Ruby Ball

88 days from planting to harvest. Ruby Ball is clearly the best early Red Cabbage. The attractive firm red heads have a mild sweet flavor, and weigh in at 3 - 4 pounds. Ruby Ball also holds in the field a long time, for extended fresh harvests. Japanese seed.

Julius

90 days from planting to harvest. Very attractive, blue-green color with a fine, highly-savoyed head. The firm, well-packed cabbage heads average 3 - 5 pounds and will hold for weeks without bursting. Sweet and mild-flavored.

Autumn Cabbage Types

For Late Cabbage Salad Succession

Slaw or salad is the primary purpose of most gardeners' cabbage patches. And the finest cabbage salads of all are made from the savoy types; very thin-leaved, very tender, very mild and tasty.

However, these thin, tender, succulent leaves are not very cold hardy, so for very late maturity in maritime climates, the Europeans developed extra hardy types (January King and Wivoy) with thicker, tougher leaves. Extra-vigorous, hybrid savoys are the easiest-to-grow type of cabbage.

Red Rodan

140 days from planting to harvest. Large-framed, round, red cabbages average 8 - 10 inches in diameter. Very hard 2 ³/4 pound heads are surprisingly tender for a variety that often can stand until March without rotting. Vigorous plants make Red Rodan one of the easier types of cabbage to grow. Danish seed.

Danish Ballhead

125 days from planting to harvest. 7 - 10 inch diameter, 3 1/2 pound, well-protected, light green heads have good field-holding ability into the Winter. Mild and tender, Danish Ballhead is a general-purpose cabbage for kraut, slaw or cooking. Danish seed.

Gloria

86 days from planting to harvest. Medium large 8 - 10 pound, blue-green heads with a very white, crispy, tightly packed interior. This Summer-planted cabbage is perfect for sauerkraut. Small-cored and resistant to black rot.

Bently

145 days from planting to harvest. A medium-sized 4 ¹/2 pound, white cabbage with exceptional holding ability makes for extended harvest time. Bently is a sweet, mild cabbage with a good head wrap and moderate-sized core. In past Winter trials, Bently withstood a week of 19 degree weather with no ill effects. Harvest January-March. Highly recommended as a cabbage for very long storage. Dutch seed.

Rougette

150 days from planting to harvest. An exceptional red cabbage variety from France. The 2-1/2 pound heads are uniform throughout with a firm wrap and medium core. Rougette's most distinctive characteristic is its leaf and head color--a beautiful burgundy red with a striking velvet glow. Its appearance, along with its clean yet robust flavor, will surely be a favorite for gardener's fresh use or storage.

January King

160 - 210 days from planting to harvest. This French heirloom is a most dependable Winter cabbage variety. Flattened green heads with purplish markings on the veins and slightly savoyed outer leaves. The heads are between 3 - 5 pounds and quite compact. Very cold hardy with the ability to stand in the field until March. Best planted early in July. English seed.

Savonarch

77 days from planting to harvest. Vigorously growing, beautiful plants produce uniformly large 8 ¹/2 inch, light green, flat-topped, white-cored, medium-dense heads that make the finest-tasting cabbage salads. Long field-holding ability.

Wivoy

160 days from planting to harvest. Highly savoyed, medium-green, vigorously-growing large plants develop a crinkly 3-pound head very late in Fall and don't get hard until January. The heads are fairly tender and have a mild flavor, resisting rain, frost and freezes until the end of March. This variety has withstood freezing down to 7 degrees and showed no damage after being frozen solid for weeks.

Overwinter Cabbage Types

(August sown) In England, spring cabbages are called a gambler's crop, and the varieties available from their seed houses are numerous--but most of them fail to work.

Sowing must be timed so that they make some growth before Winter cold and low light levels check their growth . . . enough that they'll head out well in spring, but not so much that they bolt before heading out!

Culture

Spring cabbages need well-limed and well-manured soil at planting time. Sow the seeds outdoors late in August and before mid-September; or mid-October if growing them under coldframes to transplant out early in spring when they're 6 - 8 inches tall. If this is your first attempt at spring cabbage, try several sowings 10 days apart. Doing this will give you a feel for the plant. The plants should be spaced out about 18 inches in all directions. In late February, side dress the plants with bloodmeal (one teaspoonful per plant) and again late March so that large heads are obtained.

Source: Texas Department of Agriculture