Last week, I spent some time checking the vegetables my cool-season vegetable garden.
I was looking to see how they were growing and if any were ready to harvest. I’ve also learned (the hard way) that it’s important to check for any insect damage so you can treat it early – I got hit bad by spider mites last summer because I wasn’t paying attention.
I have been checking up on my cauliflower plants lately. Seven days ago, the largest one looked like this…
cool-season vegetable garden
Today, it looked like this…
Okay, this photo doesn’t really show how big it is, so I put my hand next to it to show the scale…
Now, compare this photo with the first one and you can see how big it grew in just one week!
My son, Kai and I harvested this large cauliflower by simply pulling the entire plant out of the ground.
It was quite heavy. Of course, you can simply cut the cauliflower, but you have to pull the plant out sooner or later. We chose sooner.
It was at least twice as large as the cauliflower in my local supermarket. The photo really doesn’t show that though, but this bowl is very wide salad bowl.
I’ve really never noticed how pretty the cauliflower florets are before, have you?
We used some of the cauliflower in our dinner salad, which also included Romaine lettuce and carrots from our garden as well.
Our cauliflower is so huge, I will have to figure out other ways to serve it.
My son’s favorite is smothering it with ranch salad dressing.
I have three other cauliflower plants in the garden. I may have to give some to my mother, since I don’t know how we will be able to eat it all.
***************************
Cauliflower is a cool-season vegetable, which does best when planted from transplants and not seed. I have had no problems with growing mine at all – no insect problems, etc.
What is important for growing cauliflower is fertile soil and regular irrigation.
How about you? Do you grow cauliflower?
Do you have any cauliflower recipes to share?
