I found myself with a craving for cole crops this spring.

We’ve been using cabbage, cauliflower, and kale in the kitchen quite a bit over the last year or so, and I thought it might be fun to grow a whole bunch of these delicious crops in our own garden.

This year’s cole crops

Other than the six green and six red cabbage plants that I purchased in the garden center, all of our other cole crops are originating from seeds. I sowed 4-foot rows of kale, kohlrabi, cauliflower, and cabbage. The kale is the bumpy-leaved Dinosaur variety, and the green cabbage is a variety called Pixie. From the name alone you can tell it’s meant to be a small-headed item. The cauliflower and kohlrabi were no-name varieties—or at least didn’t have a variety name on the seed packet.

I sowed the seeds rather later than I had hoped—late April, I believe. Despite the early-season heat and subsequent coolish weather, I had pretty good germination with all of them. Yay, me!

And then … gosh, I don’t know what happened. All of the seedlings grew to about 5 inches tall and then just stopped growing. Why? I had scratched in some fertilizer either at the time of sowing or soon after. They should have been growing just fine. They seemed to sit in limbo or grow just a tiny bit for a long while, even after another dose of liquid fertilizer two weeks ago.

Transplanting Seedlings

This week I thinned my seedlings row of kale, cauliflower, and cabbage to give the seedlings more “elbow room” to grow. And I transplanted out the seedlings that I pulled up from those rows. There is enough spare room in the garden that I could plant a small row of cabbage here, a short row of kale there.

A day after transplanting I saw that only the smallest seedlings fried in the sun. Most looked fine. And several pop-up rainstorms have ensured they have received a good dose of water. I also fertilized them (and the entire garden) the day I transplanted. I have a feeling I’ll be enjoying some slaw and kale chips come late summer.