<aside> 💡 Unlike the other chapters in this book this one isn’t totally based on experience, it reflects a series of experiments in varieties and timings for 2022 that I’m refining. My objective remains the same as with all of my other veggies, a varied, selection of flowering brassicas over a long period.
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Cauliflower is a member of the brassica family and the main harvestable part of the huge single central flower. There are many variants that mature at different times of year, from sowings that mainly take place in late winter and spring.
I use a rating system to help me decide what to grow and it considers lots of factors, but the main ones are how tasty it is, how healthy it is to eat, how expensive it is to buy, how big it's harvest is, when it's harvest period is and whether I can buy it organically and if not how much it's sprayed.
Cauliflower scores very badly in this system even though it’s very versatile and healthy. It has some very considerable downsides: it takes a long time to grow, it’s difficult to grow successfully, it takes up a lot of space and its single flower harvest is easy to spoil due to adverse weather and pests. Almost uniquely in the brassica family, it doesn’t have a great leaf harvest, although some people find way to cook the huge leaves, we haven’t.
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To mitigate - to some extent - the disadvantages we only grow a couple of successions of cauliflower during the periods when we have most space, spring and autumn and concentrate on quicker growing flowering brassicas, or those with a more reliable and longer harvest period like calabrese and purple sprouting broccoli in summer and winter
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If you freeze cauliflower then you can grow as much as you want, each plant produces one main head. We don’t freeze cauliflower though, so this makes life a lot more complicated.
Cauliflower sown at the same time will usually all flower at the same time and if you are lucky will hold in the ground for 2 weeks, 1 week in late spring and summer. So if you are growing for a small number of people you probably won’t want to harvest more than 0.5 plants per person per week, although some people love it so much that they could eat a lot more than that. It also doesn’t hold in the ground at all and soon spoils.
As a result for small numbers of people I’d grow it only as a treat, maybe 2 plants/month, spread over March to June, that’s a total of 2m2. If you have a lot more space and are feeding a lot more people I’d grow 1m2/month of harvest.
This guide gives you lots more options of course.
Cauliflowers are large demanding plants to grow, they need plenty of sun, regular water, lots of organic matter and protection from pests. They are difficult, but not impossible to grow in containers, but you would be growing for the fun of it, rather than to save money or make a big contribution to your diet.
If your experience of cauliflowers is based on what’s sold in the supermarket then you’d be forgiven for thinking that cauliflowers are all large and white and that they don’t have much in the way of leaves. Once you grow them you realise that the reality is very different: