Prized cabbages

While I am on the subject of cabbages, I had to show you the ones we picked over the weekend. The one above is the largest we had and it easily weighed well over five pounds. It was firm, the leaves were very tight and it is the best cabbage we have ever grown in our garden.

 I don't think it was quite the size of a basketball, but close. The cabbage on the right is our prized cabbage without the outside leaves. The one on the left is large, too, but not nearly as large as the one on the right.

My sister used this huge cabbage to make an enormous bowl of delicious slaw to go with the fish fry we had over the weekend. The ingredients, grated cabbage, carrots and onions from the garden, celery seed, lemon juice, salt and pepper and lots of Duke's mayonnaise.

I think I am bragging a little about our giant cabbage but I also think, anyone would want to show it off if they had struggled in the past few years, to have any cabbages at all.

We did do a few things differently this year. First, we planted early. The cabbage plants were in the ground by mid-February. We fertilized with a more balanced fertilizer and we sprayed often with BT or bacillus thuringiensis which did seem to keep the worms at bay when the weather became warm. We also mulched the cabbages and I think that was a factor as well.

The best thing -- it is an organic cabbage.