A spring cabbage from a past gardenChopping up a (store-bought) red cabbage to add to a vegetable mix this evening had me wondering about where it had been grown. A traditional cool-season crop, cabbage requires cool weather and a long growing season to mature.
Was this a freshly-harvested cabbage from somewhere in coastal California? Or somewhere in Florida? Imported from Mexico? Or was it a refrigerated stored cabbage, thanks to the modern equivalent of a root cellar?
Hard to know, since a quick search revealed only that California and Florida were likely sources of fresh cabbage in the US this time of year.
In our normally mild winter climate in South Carolina, most cabbages (and their relatives) do quite nicely planted in the fall (or early spring), but we'd harvest heads in early summer. In colder winter climates (think the Northeastern US or Northern Europe), you'd be able to harvest in fall and store through the winter.
But cabbages of various sorts are grown around the world, and I'm remembering seeing some sort of cabbages in most of the local markets that we've visited, whether in Asia, Europe, or South America. I've posted these images before - totally enormous cabbages grown in the mountains of Northern Vietnam.
Giant cabbages growing near Sapa, Northern Vietnam
Carrying cabbages to market
