There are three types of cabbage; green leaved with smoothe green leaves; red cabbage, with purplish red leaves; and savoy cabbage, with crinkled leaves.

Cabbage can be direct seeded or grown from transplants. To produce large heads, space plants 20 inches or more in rows 36 inches apart. Smaller heads can be grown spaced 12 inches apart.

Before planting add 6 to 8 pounds of 5-10-10 fertilizer per 100 square feet and work it into the soil. Follow up in 3 to 4 weeks with a side-dressing of about 1 pound of ammonium nitrate per 100 feet of row.  Cabbage responds very favorably to the cool, moist soil under a mulch.

Begin harvesting when heads are firm and glossy and about the size of a softball. Cut beneath the head, leaving some basal leaves to support the new growth of small lateral heads.

Problems:

In warm weather the heads of early varieties tend to split after they mature. A solution would be to plant at any one time only the number you can use during the 2 to 3 weeks maturation period.

Another approach would be to root-prune the plant by simply twisting off the plant enough to break some of the roots