in today's video we show you a complete
guide to grow the best cabbages in your
garden and since this is a complete
guide these are the things we will be
looking at in our video today let's
start with the planting technique
cabbage seeds can be sowed directly into
the soil but i recommend that you start
your seeds indoors six to eight weeks
before transplanting your seedlings this
gives a head start to growing cabbages
i'm using a 6-cell seed starting kit
here with some perlite and peat moss as
the growing medium and these are the
cabbage seeds as you can see very tiny
just put one or two seeds per cell in
the seed starting kit and once the seeds
germinate the seedlings come out you can
transplant them into containers or onto
raised beds
now if you're growing cabbage in warm
areas like California for example
where the winters are mild you can grow
cabbages either in early spring all you
can grow them in fall or even in the
winters cabbage is a cool season crop
and it grows very well in cool
temperatures so you can see here that
after a few weeks you can see the
seedlings emerge and at this stage they
do need some liquid fertilizer you can
use a weak fertilizer like compost tea
or just use fish emulsion or seaweed or if
you're using synthetic fertilizers use an
all-purpose synthetic fertilizer at half
the dose
now your seedlings will look like this
when they're ready to be transplanted
now I want to show you the container mix
that I use to grow cabbages
here is one part vermiculite which is a
high draining moisture retaining mix and
to that we add one part compost now in
my one part compost I've also added some
chicken manure or that will help add a
lot of nutrients to the soil
and make sure you break up the compost
very well and to this mix i'm going to
add one part of peat moss
so essentially what we've done is we've
added about thirty percent peat moss
thirty percent compost with some manure and
thirty percent vermiculite so this is a
great mix for growing cabbages during
hot days the vermiculite will help
retain the moisture in the soil and if
you don't have vermiculite or you
think we're vermiculite is expensive
you can substitute with perlite so once
you substitute with perlite the watering
requirements go a little higher because
perlite based container mixes dries up
quickly but the vermiculite will help
retain the moisture for the soil and now
let's look at how we plant our seedlings
so this is a standard 16-inch high 16 inch
wide container and cabbages grow the
best in this kind of a container
so if you are looking to grow cabbages
in a decently sized container this is
the container size you should look for
it has about seven gallons of soil and i
also have some five-gallon pots here
that you can grow cabbage in and they grow
very well in these five gallon pots as
well so let's look at transplanting
these seedlings into these five gallon
pots now although you can direct sow
cabbages i highly recommend that you
start your seeds so that your seedlings
as you're seeing here when you're
transplanting them they're very healthy
there is no risk of them getting
destroyed by cutworms or any other
insects because by the time the
seedlings that reach this size there's a
much better chance that they won't
survive
whether you're planting them in
containers and raised beds or in the
ground and it also gives you a head
start into the growing season while
there are other veggies growing in your
garden you can still prepare your
seedlings and cabbages must be grown in
full Sun they need about six to eight
hours of sunlight every day and as far
as watering goes it really depends on
the temperatures in your area if you
have hot sunny days water your cabbage
plants daily but during cold winter
days or cloudy days when the soil can
retain adequate moisture you need to
water your cabbage plants maybe two
three times a week
so that's a good guideline for watering
your cabbages
now let's take a look at the different
types of cabbage you can grow in your
garden
the first type of cabbage is called the
savoy cabbage the savoy cabbage is a
very different kind of cabbage from your
traditional cabbage because it has a lot
of these curly leaves that form the
cabbage now the taste of the savoy
cabbage is distinctively different from
the regular cabbage and I like the taste
of savoy cabbage and a lot of other
people do too
so as you can see here they look a lot
different than traditional cabbage but
are great to grow in your garden
and the second type of cabbage that we
will look at is the red cabbage this
cabbage comes in various varieties the
one that you're looking at right now is
called the Red acre cabbage and it's a
great variety to grow in your home
garden especially in containers and red
cabbages have more nutritional value than
traditional cabbages and the next
variety of cabbage that you can grow in
your garden are the giant variety of
cabbages and these cabbages have very
high water and fertilizer requirements
but once you do grow them successfully
they produce very large heads and taste
wise i did not like this variety a lot
it produces rather bland tasting
vegetables but some people do like the
taste as well so try growing it and see
if it is something that you like this
cabbage does produce larger heads than
traditional cabbages and some cabbages
are classified according to the shape of
their head and the one that you're
seeing right now is the longer pointed
head kind of a cabbage now this is not
really a true pointed ahead variety
there are some varieties that actually
looked like a triangle almost like a
pointed head that's growing and i'll try
growing that cabbage variety as well but
this cabbage should give you an idea of
what I'm talking about
as you can see here the head looks quite
pointed and not around at all and this
is the round head cabbage and to check
if your cabbage is ready for harvest
just try to feel on the cabbage head and
if it's hard and it doesn't give in
easily
they're ready for harvest now let's look
at the fertilizer requirement for
cabbages now cabbage as you can see here
is a leafy vegetable it does produce a
lot of leaves and then even the bud is
actually comprised of leaves so it needs
a high nitrogen fertilizer you can use
one of the all-purpose vegetable
fertilizers for growing cabbage i
usually mix in a lot of organic matter
in the soil when I'm growing the
cabbages and then add some fertilizer as
the plant grows so maybe every one month
or so if you're using liquid fertilizers
and then if you're using a slow-release
fertilizer you can just sprinkle them on
the sides of your cabbage at least it 2
times during the growing season once
when you plant the cabbages and once the
cabbages have grown for about two months
or so and we're going to be harvesting
this cabbage these cabbages were growing
in our five gallon container and as you
can see the cabbages are not a huge the
heads are decently sized but please note
that if you're growing cabbages at home
you're not looking for a very big
cabbages what you're looking for is
decently sized heads that are not too
small so that you can use them as needed
and your cooking
so these cabbage heads that are formed from
this five-gallon containers are about
medium sized and that is why the five
gallon container is one of the better
containers that you can use to grow
cabbage easily and we're harvesting some
more cabbage here these are again the
smaller containers the five-gallon
containers and as you can see we are
getting a good quality cabbage from all
these five gallon containers that we use
to grow our cabbage so all-in-all if
you're growing cabbage and dont have
space like raised beds or ground to grow
cabbage you can easily grow in containers
now if your cabbage plant is showing
pool growth you need to check two things
first check the nutrients make sure you
plant is getting adequate nutrition
sunlight and water and the next thing
you want to check is your soil pH now
for cabbage the ideal soil pH is what
you see on your screen here it's between
6.5 to 6.8 and using a ph tester for the
soil you can measure soil pH i will
provide a link to the product in the
video description below and now for some
of the insects that can attack your
cabbage plant here you can see cabbage
aphids on the sides of the leaves and you
can easily get rid of them by spraying
them with soapy water or just using a
water hose to wash them off the plant
you don't really need to use any
chemicals or pesticides to control
aphids and the next type of insect is
the cabbage looper which is a chewing
kind of an insect which is commonly
found on cabbage leaves and to get rid
of it you can just hand pick them or
use BT which is our organic insecticide
to get rid of this insect
slugs - slugs do cause a lot of damages
and cabbage plants because they make
holes in their leaves so you can either
hand-picke them at night or use a
snail and slug bait that contains iron
phosphate now iron phosphate is safe for
organic gardening and this is the only
snail and slug repellent that you should
use in your garden and just sprinkle
this around your raised beds or your
plants and it will take care of the
snails now let's look at growing
cabbages and raised beds now as I
mentioned earlier the more space and
more soil you use to grow cabbage the
better and bigger the cabbage heads turn
out so in raised beds you definitely
have more soil than your five-gallon
containers
and here you can see that the cabbage
head is a lot larger and this is the
regular cabbage variety is not a giant
variety but since we have a lot of space
as you can see here there's no
competition from other plants around it
and it gets all the food nutrition and
sunlight that it needs we are producing
some really good sized cabbage heads here
so as you can see a great harvest and
since this was one of our best cabbage
harvest we thought of weighing this
cabbage and seeing how much it weighs
and as you can see here this is a
four-pound cabbage
it's an amazing cabbage harvest that we got
and now for an easy cabbage recipe
so there you go folks that was our
complete growing guide on cabbages
if you like this video do give us a
thumbs up and if you have any comments
or questions to put them in the comment
box below we'll see you again soon
happy gardening