If you could choose one vegetable to
serve a king, what would it be?
The extravagant French king Louis XIV
demanded that cauliflower be served at
all his feasts. It had something to do
with a girlfriend who liked cauliflower...
but maybe he knew that this common
member of the cabbage family has a
positively royal pedigree - when it comes
to health: one cup of cauliflower has
more Vitamin C than an orange; it's high
in fiber, which helps digestion; and it's
packed with cancer fighting antioxidants.
When we eat cauliflower, we're actually
eating a flower! In fact, we're eating
hundreds of immature flowers that are
bonded together into little lumps called curds.
China and India throw the most
cauliflower, but in the US, it's
California - and that's where we've come
to find out: How Does It Grow?
We're here in Watsonville, Santa Cruz, at
Lakeside Organic Gardens - one of the
country's largest family-owned organic
farms. Lakeside grows many different
crops, including five million heads of
cauliflower each year.
First, they prepare the earth with fertilizer.
(Dick): In our business we have a
saying: "We farm the soil, and the soil grows the crop."
Because lakeside grows their cauliflower
organically, that means they don't use
chemical sprays to kill the bugs that
eat the cauliflower plant; instead, they
release predators like ladybugs that
like to eat the bad insects.
(Dick): We grow plants that attract the good bugs.
(Nicole): Is that like these white flowers that you see here?
(Dick): Yeah, these are Sweet Alyssum. So you'll
see them around the edge of our field.
They also use a natural soap spray, since
bugs breathe through their skin when the
soap covers their body they suffocate.
But there's another secret to growing
cauliflower organically: penguin poop.
Lakeside is the country's largest
importer of Peruvian Guano - aka seabird
excrement. Guano is used as a fertilizer
and is super rich in nitrogen because of
all the fish those seabirds eat. And
nitrogen is key to plant growth - it's a
main ingredient in chlorophyll - the
substance that plants make to convert
sunlight to energy.
When the cauliflower is the size of a
tennis ball, farmers take some of the
biggest leaves, and tie them over the
head. They do this for one reason only: we
like our cauliflower white. If the head
is exposed to the sun, it turns yellow
and even though it tastes exactly the
same, we won't buy it!
(Dick): what we throw away in California for cosmetic reasons could end World Hunger...
When the cauliflower is 6 to 8 inches in diameter, the harvest begins.
Right in the field, the cauliflower is trimmed and wrapped.
Before being shipped, it will be cooled
down to preserve its freshness.
If the cauliflower is harvested too late,
the curds begin to pull apart within
just two days - that's when you can really
see how the cauliflower is just a big
bouquet of flowers waiting to bloom.
Cauliflower is delicious. Cut up and
roasted in the oven at high heat - the
natural sugars caramelize, it gets tender
and sweet. But for the love of God, don't
boil it - it'll turn to mush! And that is
no way to treat a vegetable fit for a king