Cabbage

Cabbage is the dependable winter favourite that rewards you with a heavy, solid head wrapped in smooth, pale-green leaves. The flavour is fresh and mildly sweet, crunchy when raw and turning tender and gentle once cooked, which is exactly why it stars in stuffed cabbage rolls (mahshi), warm slaws, quick stir-fries and homemade pickles. A cool-season vegetable, it heads up beautifully through Egypt's mild winter and stores well, making it one of the most generous crops you can grow.

Planting

Cabbage is a cool-season crop, so time it for the cooler months rather than summer heat. Sow seed about 1 cm (1/2 in) deep in modules or indoors, or about 2 cm (3/4 in) deep when sowing outdoors in a drill. Germination is best at a soil temperature of roughly 10-29 C (50-85 F); seedlings emerge in about 15 days at 15 C, 9 days at 20 C and around 6 days at 25 C, while a steady indoor room temperature of about 16-21 C (60-70 F) with bright light gives the strongest early growth. Choose a sunny site, since cabbage grows best in full sun but will tolerate light shade for part of the day. Move seedlings to their final spot after about five weeks, once they are 10-15 cm (4-6 in) tall with five or six true leaves. Space compact varieties about 30 cm (1 ft) apart and larger ones up to 45 cm (18 in) apart, in rows roughly 60-75 cm apart.

Fertilizing

Cabbage is a hungry plant that needs nitrogen to build its leafy head. Feed with a nitrogen-rich fertiliser once the plants have settled into their final position but before they begin to form heads. A practical approach is to side-dress with nitrogen about 2-3 weeks after transplanting, once plants are well established (for example, roughly 0.34 kg of urea 46-0-0 per 30 m of row). Go easy on heavy nitrogen late in the season, as too much at that stage can cause the heads to split.

Care

Keep the soil consistently moist for steady, even heads. Aim for about 2.5-4 cm (1 to 1.5 in) of water per week, and during dry spells give established plants a thorough soaking roughly every 10 days. Watch for the common pests of cabbage: cabbage caterpillars (imported cabbageworm, cabbage looper, diamondback moth), cabbage root fly, flea beetles, mealy cabbage aphid, whitefly, and slugs and snails. The main diseases to guard against are clubroot, black rot and Alternaria leaf spot. Harvest once the head is firm and has reached usable size, cutting with a sharp knife when it feels solid and its base measures about 10-25 cm (4-10 in) across; cabbage is usually ready in roughly 60-100 days from transplanting (about 70-120 days from seed) depending on the variety.

Growing in Egypt

In Egypt cabbage is a winter vegetable, not a summer one, because it develops best at about 15-20 C and tends to bolt or fail to head in sustained heat. Raise transplants from late August through October and plant out September to November, so the heads mature through the cool months of November-February. In the Nile Delta and Lower Egypt (Cairo, Alexandria, Beheira), sow mainly in September-October for a December-February harvest; a later sowing into November also works since frost is rare. In Upper Egypt (Asyut, Sohag, Luxor, Aswan), push the schedule a little deeper into winter, sowing October-November so heading falls in the coldest part of the season and avoids early heat. Avoid a late spring crop that would head after February-March, as rising heat causes loose heads, splitting and bolting.