Brassica oleracea var. capitata f. rubra
Red cabbage, red-headed cabbage, red ballhead cabbage: its color comes from anthocyanins, pigments that have the distinctive ability to react like a pH indicator. Add vinegar during cooking and it stays bright red; without acid, it turns an unappetizing bluish purple. This bit of chemistry explains why every traditional recipe adds an apple or a splash of vinegar.
Characteristics:
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Dense, colorful head: tightly packed purple leaves that are very crisp.
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Excellent storage: it keeps for several months in a cellar after harvest.
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Hardy: it tolerates cold well and is harvested late in the season.
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Raw or cooked: finely sliced in a salad or slowly braised, it has two very distinct culinary lives.
Sowing advice:
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Exposure: sunny.
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Soil: deep, cool, rich, and well supplied with organic matter. Like all cabbages, it is a heavy feeder: a generous supply of well-rotted compost benefits it. Avoid growing it where another brassica has grown during the previous three years, because of clubroot.
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Method: sow from March to June — under a cold frame in March and April, and outdoors from May to June — at a depth of 1 cm, in a nursery bed or pots. See how to sow your seeds.
Planting advice:
- Transplant at the 5- or 6-leaf stage, spacing plants 50 to 60 cm apart. Bury them up to the first leaves and earth up around the base: the head becomes heavy and the plant can easily topple over.
Care advice:
- Water regularly, as cabbage is sensitive to drought. Mulch generously.
- An insect-proof net placed at planting time effectively prevents cabbage white butterflies and cabbage root flies, without any treatment.
Harvesting advice:
- Harvest when the head feels firm to the touch, before severe frosts. Cut at ground level, leaving the stalk in the soil: it often produces small edible shoots.
- Hung by the root in a cool, well-ventilated cellar, it keeps throughout the winter.
Beneficial companion plants:
Benefits for biodiversity:
- Its extended presence maintains plant cover in the vegetable garden through winter, protecting the soil and sheltering ground beetles and beneficial insects.
- If left to flower in its second year, it produces clusters of highly nectar-rich yellow flowers, valuable at the very beginning of spring.
Uses:
- Finely sliced raw in a salad with apple and walnuts, or slowly braised with bacon and chestnuts. Always add some acidity — vinegar, lemon, or apple — to preserve its color during cooking. It is also excellent for lactic fermentation.
Harvesting your own seeds:
A biennial, it goes to seed in its second year. Leave one plant in the ground over winter — in cold regions, store it in a cellar and replant it in spring — then harvest the brown, dry seed pods. Brassica oleracea varieties cross very easily with one another: isolate your seed plant. See how to save your seeds.
Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Auvergne Volcanoes, we choose reproducible, non-hybrid varieties, test them for germination rates, and carefully sort and package them without any chemical treatment. Our belief: to give gardeners back the ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.
Color for the vegetable garden, and a vegetable that lasts all winter.
