CAULIFLOWER MULTI-HEAD F1

A charming, easy to grow variety that produces a main curd plus 2–4 smaller side curds, giving gardeners multiple harvests from a single plant. Pick the main curd early to ensure the best flavour and to naturally encourage the additional curds to develop, extending your picking period with very little effort.

Cauliflower needs care and attention to grow properly. They take up quite a bit of space, need rich, deep soil and need plenty of watering, especially in summer. Caterpillars, pigeons, slugs and snails will all try to eat them before you can, but if you can grow your own, it’s really worthwhile.

Sow Cauliflower seed from March outdoors in drills, or from January indoors in pots. Germination normally takes 14-21 days.

Outdoor sown plants should be transplanted into their final quarters when 6-8 inches tall. Pot grown plants can be thinned to one plant per pot and the spare seedling re-potted into its own container.

Cauliflowers do best in very fertile soil, digging in a bucketful of well-rotted manure and raking in a general purpose fertiliser, will help growth. Firm the soil by treading before planting.

If Cauliflower development stalls at any point they produce small, deformed heads. To avoid problems, water the young plants well on the day before transplanting and make a hole deep enough to hold the plant with the lowest leaves at ground level. Fill the hole repeatedly with water, this will ensure the plant is sitting in a large area of moist soil. Tread in to firm the soil very well against the roots.

Optimum spacing depends on the time of year and the variety. As a rough guide, space summer and autumn cropping types 60cm (2ft) apart and winter cropping varieties 75cm (2.5ft) apart.