Will my cabbage produce heads?

[briand97]

Hi,

I live in Oregon and seeded some cabbage last fall... they are growing amazingly well (about 3 feet in diameter, bright green & no holes in leaves) but no heads yet, as of late April. Wondering if this is normal or if something went wrong. I've attached a photo, maybe there is a sign I'm not seeing.

If something did go wrong and no heads are coming, I'm assuming I can still use leaves for sour kraut etc...

[Lindsaylew82]

How have the temps been?

A few things can affect blindness in cabbage.

#1 time. You may just need more time. If the weather has been super cool, it may take longer. I would thing you should have head formation at this point though, so.....
#2 over fertilizing with a high nitrogen fertilizer promotes more of that dark green foliage and can cause blindness. A fertilizer with a lower N and higher P are better for cabbage head formation. Incorporating rock phos or bone meal into the soil is an organic way to go. Or you could make like R Kelley and p........ Can't say that!

Soil ph can prevent availability of all that NPK stuff to your plants so you may want to see where you are ph-wise and try correcting from there.

[Lindsaylew82]

There are some other reasons, but your plant looks super healthy, otherwise, and I don't think they apply here.

You could just pick the outer leaves now and use them for whatever!

[rainbowgardener]

Definitely you can use the leaves. My broccoli has tiny baby heads now, but I keep eating some of the leaves, just making sure I don't take too much, so it can keep feeding itself.

[imafan26]

I agree cold weather will slow things down. Cabbage heads up in its own good time. Cabbages take anywhere from 80-180 days to mature.

I don't even try to grow head cabbages, they take up too much space and in my warm climate I am better off growing the Asian greens and buying my head cabbage at the store.