You may think that growing cauliflower and broccoli are exactly the same, but guess again! Despite coming from the same Brassicaceae family, cauliflowers are in fact, more demanding with their living conditions, and gardeners can’t apply the exact same method for growing broccoli as cauliflower.
So if you want to know how to grow cauliflower from seed to harvest successfully, don’t miss any tips I have on planting this deliciously crunchy vegetable!
Overview
Level of difficulty: Intermediate
Nutrition: Alongside vitamins, cauliflowers are also a great source of folate and fiber, crucial in cell growth and digestive health. Thanks to their many healthy components, cauliflowers attract people who want to prevent cancer and promote weight loss.
Furthermore, the vegetable is commonly consumed during pregnancy, thanks to its various benefits to babies’ regular spine and brain formation.
Height: Cauliflowers can grow up to 30 inches tall, with the foliage propagating freely toward the sun. However, thecrownor the cauliflower itself rides close to the ground and requires careful watering to avoid damaging florets or the “meat” of the vegetable.
Season to sow: Cauliflowers are commonly sown in spring from March to May when the weather has gotten a bit warmer but still cool enough. This is the time when gardeners can skip indoor germination and directly engage in outdoor propagation. But indoor germination is recommended if you want to sow in late winter or early spring before the last frost.
Time to vegetate: It depends on the variety, but most cauliflowers take 85 to 140 days from seeds to harvest.
Lifespan: Cauliflowers are a single-harvest crop. So after 85 to 140 days, the supposed time it takes them to mature, these vegetables are harvested, and their lifespan terminates.
Tips For Choosing Cauliflower Cultivars
Do you know that cauliflowers come in numerous colors, not just white? This may be a huge factor in deciding what kind of cultivars you should plant. Typically, you should sow:
- Amazing cauliflower: White cauli with medium-sized curd and self-blanching characteristic that protects the cauli head from excessive sun exposure. This variety also is very heat and cold-tolerant.
- DePurple cauliflower: Purple caulis for gardeners who want to add a touch of color to their veggie dishes. Depurple cauliflowers have an amazingly sweet flavor compared to most other hybrids.
- Alverda cauliflower: Green Alverda caulis have a mildly sweet flavor and crunchy texture, making it a perfect veggie supplement for greenies. The size of this variety is medium, and it boasts tight florets. Of course, it won’t be extra mentioning that it is pretty resilient when facing hot or cold temps.
- Snow Crown cauliflower: White cauliflowers with a mild and sweet flavor. The hybrid is also early-harvesting and is one of the easiest cauliflowers to grow!
How To Grow Cauliflower From Seed To Harvest Step-By-Step
From seeds to germination is a meticulous process that you must go through. I will divide them into manageable steps, so ensure you check them out!
Germination
For seed germination, start indoors first and then transplant the sprout to garden soil. Make sure that the indoor temperature is from 60 to 80oF max. On the other hand, you can sow directly into your garden soil if you start in late spring or early summer. In the first case, here are the steps:
Step 1: If you want to plant various cauliflowers at the same time, prepare a cell-flats tray with a suitable number of cells. If that’s not the case, prepare pots that are at least 12-inch-wide and 10-inch-deep to sow each cauliflower plant. It’s possible to germinate seeds in the same pot and thin out the population later.
Step 2: Fill the cell flats with well-drained yet water-retentive soil.
Step 3: Cauliflower seeds are quite small, so it’s not necessary to make deep holes to sow them. I recommend creating holes no deeper than 1½ inches. Then, sow each seed in each hole and fill them using the same soil blend, just enough to fill them without squashing the baby seeds.
Step 4: Water thoroughly, but keep the water level not too high that it forms puddles, just enough to keep the soil damp. Then, place the cell flats or the pots in a spot where they receive at least 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight daily. If not possible, you must provide artificial sunlight to ensure a normal growth.
Step 5: Keep watering moderately daily or once every 2 days to stabilize the moisture level to trigger seed germination. From 7 to 10 days, you should see a baby sprout breaking through the ground surface to reach the light source above. These are cotyledons and are first but not true leaves.
Seedling
From 10 to 17 days post-sowing, you should be able to see the first pair of true leaves emerging. By then, consider repotting to avoid having to dig deeper holes and risk breaking the roots along the way. The watering schedule is still the same, and no need for fertilizer yet.
Of course, after all this time, you should remove the seeds that haven’t broken the surface yet since they aren’t viable. Even if they sprout after a few days more, chances are these seeds produce smaller curds or weaker immune systems to fungi and bacteria. So ditching them is still advisable.
Transplanting to containers or garden beds
Step 1: When it’s time for transplantation (when the seedlings are about 2-3 inches tall), fill your pots or garden bed with the same soil blend and mix in a bit of fertilizer.
Step 2: Create holes that are around 2 inches deep or more, depending on the length of the roots. Just make sure that the holes are deep enough to cover the entire roots with a small part of the main stalks.
Step 3: Carefully remove the entire seedlings that you want to repot without damaging the stems or the roots, and place them in the new garden bed or pot.
Step 4: Pack the dirt around the stems so that it gives the young seedlings some support and water generously but not outrageously so that the dirt sticks to the roots.
Step 5: Keep up with the watering schedule once every 2 or 3 days. After transplanting for 10 to 14 days, start using fertilizer and apply once every 4 weeks before the edible crowns enlarge. Stop with the fertilizer when the crowns are reaching their full potential size.
Adult plant
After 50 to 100 days more, the cauliflowers reach their adult stage and are almost ready for harvesting. Throughout these days, consistent watering and fertilizing schedule are expected. And, of course, pest control is crucial to secure an edible curd.
Harvest
Unlike broccolis which grows side shoots after gardeners harvest the main crown, cauliflowers only produce one single head of consumable freshness, so harvesting this vegetable is relatively more straightforward.
When you find the crowns large enough, between 6 to 8 inches, it’s time to cut the stems. Leave only 1 to 2 inches of stem attached to the curd or crown and store the vegetable in your fridge or shelve for a maximum storing time of 4 to 10 days.
After that, you can ditch the plants and amend the soil to prepare it for the next crop. Don’t reuse the soil repeatedly, as it affects the yield unless you want to plant a crop that can tolerate poor soil next! As we sow the seeds in spring and the maturing process of cauliflowers varies from 2 to 3 months, expect to start the replenishment in early fall.
How To Care For Your Cauliflower Crop
Remember I mentioned that taking care of cauliflower requires more effort than broccoli? Don´t worry because it´s not by much. Learn how to provide the best living condition for your cauliflower crop right here!
Light
Like most vegetables, cauliflowers need at least 6 hours of exposure to direct sunlight per day to thrive the best. So it’s best to plant the species outside in an open garden or a large pot that has access to sunlight without much moving.
In hotter months of weeks when sun exposure is too intense, blanching cauliflowers is a technique to keep the pale-white color and maintain the mildly sweet flavor as well. All you have to do is bind the foliage around the white curd to keep the sun from darkening it and causing its flavor to worsen.
Temperature
In general, this species thrives the best in temperatures between 60 to 70oF and no higher or lower than that. If the temperature rises over 85oF during the day and doesn’t cool off lower than 75oF at night, the florets will bolt and become inadequate for consumption.
The lowest temp cauliflowers can tolerate is 25oF, with inevitable damage to the foliage, which undoubtedly affects the growth of the crown. But they can still grow the heads more or less, making them one of the most frost-hardy vegetables nowadays.
Watering
The germination period is always when plants need the most water to make the seeds sprout. So during this time, daily watering with a moderate amount is recommended. The first inch of soil should always be moist to trigger water imbibition.
When the seeds have sprouted, thinning out the watering schedule will keep the roots from asphyxiation and rot. So consider watering once every other day or about 3 times a week. Once our caulis have reached the maturing stage, watering once or twice a week is sufficient, especially if the soil doesn’t drain very quickly.
Oxygen
Every plant’s root system needs access to oxygen to grow healthily, so providing a well-drained yet moisture-retentive soil to our cauliflower crops makes up a big portion of its caring condition. The soil blend may contain components like loam, clay, and well-rotted manure to add both moisture retention and better drainage.
Diseases
Caulis’ diseases are quite common, and they manifest in most crops that don’t receive a splash of preventative fungicide or overwatered crops. We can witness conditions like:
- Black rot
- Leaf spots
- Downy mildew
- Diamondback moth
- Stem borer
- Root rot
So how do we prevent or treat these harmful diseases and bugs? As I said, all these conditions can be avoided by watering moderately and using fungicide prior to the manifestation of problems.
Start using fungicide 7 to 10 days after transplanting or thinning, and avoid backsplash watering. A drip irrigation is good, but if not possible, you can employ a gentler watering method by applying directly to the soil instead of showing the curds with water. That will keep at least one or two fungal attacks at bay.
Fertilizer
There are various opinions on what NPK ratio we should apply to cauli crops. And my suggestion is: the part that we consume, when matured, will become flowers. So to encourage a larger head growth, implement a nitrogen and potassium-rich fertilizer. These components are well-known for their benefits in developing foliage, flowers, and roots.
I recommend fertilizers with NPK ratios of 15-30-15 or 4-6-3. If not, you can use a balanced fertilizer with a 10-10-10 ratio. As for what fertilizer texture we should use, I recommend liquid types because they distribute better and usually are gentler than granular fertilizers. Apply once every 3 to 4 weeks should be enough.
How to prune cauliflower plants
There is no need to prune cauliflowers unless the leaves appear yellow or rotten because of bug attacks or overwatering. It would help if you only used a pruning shear to cut off the entire leaf.
If there is no abnormal sign, allow the foliage to grow because it plays a huge part in providing energy to the roots and promoting the curds’ growth.
It doesn’t seem so complicated, right? Try planting your first crop of cauliflower with my tips today (or in spring when the conditions are fortunate)!
