The major end of season harvests are starting to stack up! We had one heck of a season for cauliflower this year and it was definitely pushing the point of harvesting!
We’ve generally found that cauliflower is greatly influenced by seasonal conditions. Some years, we get relatively small “normal size” heads and other years, we get these massive monstrosities that push our knowledge of what to do with cauliflower! This variation makes it difficult to know how many plants we should grow, since we oscillate between barely enough and way, way too much. There’s simply no good way for us to predict what will happen.
Cauliflower can be an exceptionally finicky plant to grow, too. Even though we have optimal growing conditions for it at 65 north, we’ve found it highly variety dependent. Honestly, once we found a variety that consistently worked for us, we stuck with it. We grow the “Amazing” variety of cauliflower and it’s been a solid winner for us season after season. We no longer get skunked since growing this variety, which we can’t say the same about the countless other varieties that we tested out.
Cauliflower is a relatively heat sensitive vegetable, so it’s good to harvest them out once you start to see any kind of head separation on your plants. The Amazing variety does have very good field hardiness, though, and it’s much more bolt resistant than most varieties we’ve tried. This can make for some rather massive cauliflower heads, sometimes pushing a ridiculous 5+ pounds.
Cauliflower is likely one of those veggies that doesn’t make very many people’s “favorite” list. Like many things we grow, home grown cauliflower is in a class above your average “boring” grocery type. We find our home grown cauliflower rather sweet forward and very flavorful, which is why we put a focus on growing it. Cauliflower is exceptionally high in nutrition, antioxidants and fiber, too. So, while it may not be a “favorite,” it’s a very good veggie to integrate into the diet.
We do use the blanch and freeze technique for the majority of our cauliflower preservation, which keeps us in good supply all the way until our next growing season. (We’ll again link our preservation article in the comments below.) We usually keep a couple of heads for fresh eating as well. In bumper crop years like this one, we also usually try to share our harvest with others. Even though we enjoy cauliflower, there’s such a thing as having “too much” and we’d rather share the nutrition with folks who don’t always get the opportunity to eat home grown.
Once you harvest, it’s important to use up your cauliflower relatively quickly. It’s not a long lasting veggie in the refrigerator, so using it up or preserving it within a week or so is an important goal. If your goal isn’t preservation like it is for us, you might also be well served by staggering your harvests. Prioritize harvesting any heads where they are starting to break apart, followed by those tight heads.
We’re excited about this year’s cauliflower harvest. We decided we’re going to try our hand at “deep fried cauliflower” this year, which is something like a vegan equivalent to hot wings. We haven’t decided if we’ll go Korean style or stick with a more traditional “buffalo” influence, but this will be a first attempt for us. We’ll be finding other uses as well, it’s definitely going to be a week of eating cauliflower here at Frosty Garden!
