Heirloom Cabbage Varieties and Other Members of the Brassica Family

By William Woys Weaver

Heirloom Vegetable Gardening by William Woys Weaver is the culmination of some thirty years of first-hand knowledge of growing, tasting and cooking with heirloom vegetables. A staunch supporter of organic gardening techniques, Will Weaver has grown every one of the featured 280 varieties of vegetables, and he walks the novice gardener through the basics of planting, growing and seed saving. Sprinkled throughout the gardening advice are old-fashioned recipes — such as Parsnip Cake, Artichoke Pie and Pepper Wine — that highlight the flavor of these vegetables. The following excerpt on heirloom cabbage varieties was taken from chapter 10, "Cabbages."

Buy the brand new e-book of Weaver's gardening classic in the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store: Heirloom Vegetable Gardening.

A Brief History of Heirloom Cabbage Varieties and Other Brassicas

1. Cabbages that form heads: Brassica oleracea var. capitata L. American truck farmers usually divide this into the Wakefield group, cabbages with pointed heads, and the Copenhagen group, cabbages that form heads in the shape of round balls. Actually, there is also a third group which includes the drumheads, cabbages with broad, flat heads. One of the best known of the early American varieties in this last group was Large Bergen, also called Great American.
2. Savoy cabbages, characterized by blistered or puckered leaves: Brassica oleracea var. bullata. Savoys come in a variety of head shapes, from very loose, leafy heads resembling kale to monstrous drumheads. For flavor, I think the best savoys are the smallest varieties. Savoys are also extremely hardy, more so than many of the other heading cabbages.
3. Italian broccoli, asparagus broccoli, sprouting broccoli, and all forms of broccoli that do not form solid heads: Brassica oleracea var. italica Plenck. These are easy to grow, but sensitive to drought and cold weather.
4. Portugal cabbages or couve tronchuda, cabbages with thick stems used like celery: Brassica oleracea var. tronchuda. There are many subvarieties. In the St. Gall cloister garden (A.D. 820) in Switzerland, a bed was set aside for cabbages (caulas) of a sort similar to the tronchuda group.
5. Kohlrabi: Brassica oleracea var. gongylodes L.
6. Broccoli and cauliflowers: Brassica oleracea var. botrytis L.
7. Brussels sprouts: Brassica oleracea var. gemmifera. This group is the most recent historically, for it did not appear until 1785.
8. Cow cabbages, tree kales, collards, and rosette-headed kales: Brassica oleracea var. acephala. Most of the oldest forms of cabbage belong to this group

Brassica Seed Saving Advice

Most of the heirloom varieties presently available date from the nineteenth century, one of the exceptions being Early York, an English variety introduced from Flanders in the early eighteenth century. A strain called Large York was once grown extensively around Philadelphia; its equivalent among the Pennsylvania Dutch was Large Early Schweinfurt, a Palatine variety introduced in the eighteenth century, but not available commercially in this country until almost a hundred years later. Even Chinese cabbages have been known in the West for a much greater length of time than many gardeners would suppose. The chou chinense (pe-tsai), a member of the genus Brassica, but of the species rapa, and several Chinese mustards were introduced into Europe in 1836. According to an article in Le Bon Jardinier (1839), the seed was brought from China by missionaries. Otherwise, a large portion of the surviving heirlooms are improved strains rather than facsimiles of the original introductions. The difficulty of overwintering cabbages of all sorts for seed-saving purposes has greatly limited the availability of many varieties among seed savers. More reliable is the seed from the small seed houses listed at the back of this book, since several of them specialize in heirloom cabbages. They are able to grow many different varieties under contract, whereas the home gardener must rely on one or two varieties brought to flower at different times—hand pollination is simply out of the question. Serious seed savers might want to refer to J. M. Lupton’s Cabbage and Cauliflower for Profit, first published in 1894, as a useful guide to raising heirloom American cabbages. His article “Development of the Cabbage” in the American Garden (1890, 289–91) is particularly useful for understanding how cabbages were evaluated in the nineteenth century and why some varieties were preserved while others were not.

 

Storing and Harvesting Cabbage Varieties

 

Seed saving is compounded by the fact that cabbages are out-pollinating, which means that pollen must be transferred from one plant to another rather than from flower to flower on the same plant. Therefore, many more plants are required to produce seed with a good genetic balance. Ten plants are an advisable minimum. There are several ways to deal with this.

 

First, whole plants can be dug up, potted, and stored over the winter in a cool shed, cool enough to keep them dormant but not so cold that they freeze. Or, if there is sufficient corn in the garden, save the stalks and bury the cabbages as shown in the old woodcut. The corn stalks form an insulated barrier, especially effective if the cabbages are laid in a shallow pit. Throw sod over the corn or a tarp so that raccoons cannot dig into the hill. In the spring, replant the cabbages and let them bloom for seed.

 

Second, there is another method that also saves a great deal of space. When harvesting the cabbages, trim them off as close to the head as possible, leaving the stem undamaged. Mark the stems of the plants that produced crops most true to type. Dig up those stems with their roots and store them in damp sand in a Styrofoam ice chest. Put the chest in a cool shed or garage where the stems will not freeze. Planted in the spring, the stems will develop sprouts and flowers. Seed can be saved from these flowers.

 

Lastly, cabbages can be propagated by cuttings, which eliminates the necessity of saving seed. Select the stems of the best plants and slice them into quarters from top to bottom, making certain that each piece has roots. Dip the roots in hormonal rooting compound and plant in sand in flower pots or in a cold frame. In the spring the cuttings can be planted like seedling cabbages. This process can be continued from year to year, thus perpetuating and increasing the cabbages with the best traits. This technique is especially useful where several varieties are being grown together and there is a definite need to avoid crosses. Cuttings can also be taken from woody stems by slicing across right above the leaf nodes, but this method is tricky and requires experience. Normally, roots will develop at the nodes where sprouts would form. However, if the stems are too green and soft, the cuttings may rot before they take root.

 

I have used all of these techniques successfully for everything except kohlrabi. I have not attempted it with kohlrabi due to the nature of its root, and frankly, it is much easier to order fresh seed so that I can concentrate on the cabbages that are rare or difficult to obtain. At some point, every gardener must decide which vegetables to perpetuate through seed-saving techniques and which to obtain from seedsmen. It is far better to grow one or two of the oleraceas well than to drown enthusiasm in a baptism of crop failures or strange-looking culinary mules.

 

Other brassicas treated in this book include rocket, two cresses, and radishes. In general, the seed viability for the cabbages, kales, cauliflowers, and Brussels sprouts listed in the following pages is four to five years. However, I would suggest not saving seed beyond three years. Old seed sometimes produces deformed plants, and weak plants are particularly vulnerable to insects and disease. Formerly, it was common practice among gardeners to plant two-year-old seed, as the Gardener’s Magazine (1828, 246) pointed out: “All the brassica seeds are apt to run when newly saved and early sown.” There seems to be some logic to this.