Cauliflower is a delicious vegetable, but simply if you know how to cook it. The good news is, in that location are many recipes that practice their best to bring out the flavors and textures of this veggie.

Growing cauliflower

The not-so-skillful news is, it can be a hassle to grow cauliflower in your garden. That's because the near precious part of the establish, the head, needs as much care and attention as yous can spare.

Growing Cauliflower – Common Problems

Sometimes the cauliflower will grow headless. Just a bunch of dark-green leaves flapping most in the wind. Or the head becomes full of fuzz which doesn't sit well on your natural language. And between the plant wilting and the heads turning royal, there's a lot to watch out for and ready.

This is why nosotros put together this list of the top 5 problems with growing cauliflower, and the best solutions for them.

Fuzzy Cauliflower Heads

Cauliflower heads that you buy at the grocery store are usually bald. They are shine with no trace of fuzz or abnormal growth on them. Otherwise, you lot wouldn't buy the veggie. But when you lot grow it in the garden, you might discover a fuzzy growth on the surface of the head. This is known equally ricing and it'southward just as bad as it looks.

Problems with growing cauliflower: Cauliflower fuzzy

Ricing is often the result of inadequate growing conditions surrounding the immature cauliflower institute. These often take to do with either temperature or water. As a cool-season plant, cauliflowers flourish in temperatures averaging 60 degrees F. If the weather warms upwards all of a sudden, and the temperature rises steadily for a few days in a row, the fuzzy growth would emerge.

Another possible cause for ricing is irregular watering and lack of nitrogen. If you lot expose the young plant to longer periods of drought followed by sudden soaking, that could trigger ricing.

How to Set It

Since some causes of ricing in cauliflower are preventable, while others are beyond your command, information technology would exist better to grow varieties that are naturally more resistant to ricing. The veggie is quite sensitive and the balance between head and leaves is so tenuous that any change in the temperature or wet can bring cluttered changes to the establish. Here are a few solutions to forestall the ricing problem in cauliflowers.

  • Check the frost schedule in your area and decide whether you need to beginning the seeds indoors first or sow them directly in the garden.
  • Don't transplant the seedlings if the temperature outside is beneath 40 degrees F. That could irksome the growth of the plant and lead to headless veggies.
  • Transplant the seedlings when they're below four inches loftier. That volition reduce the transplant shock since the heads haven't developed yet.
  • Feed the plant with nitrogen-loftier fertilizer once every two weeks immediately later on transplanting them. The maximum number of side dressings is iii applications.
  • Side apparel with potassium once forth with the three nitrogen applications.
  • Make sure the soil pH is between half dozen.5 and 6.8 throughout the life of the constitute.
  • The veggie should get six hours of sunlight every mean solar day.
  • Give the plant 1.5 inches of water every week.

Cauliflower Plants Wilting

If yous're new to growing cauliflowers, so the establish might surprise you one fine morning time with wilting. It'south a common problem that happens also frequently and usually spells the end of the cauliflower season, since wilting veggies will non recover.

Cauliflower plants wilting

Every bit the leaves wilt away, the heads stop growing and might actually shrink. Somewhen, the constitute dies out and the all-time thing you can do is to pull upwardly the plant by the roots and dispose of it safely.

But what causes cauliflower wilting? Equally it turns out, the sensitive plants are prone to wilting because of diseases such as clubroot and verticillium wilt or information technology might be stress causing information technology.

How to Fix It

As with everything related to cauliflower, sometimes you lot have full control over the wellness of the plant, and other times you just have to accept the fact that the harvest is gone. This applies to stress as much as the fungal diseases that target this sensitive vegetable. Here'due south how to combat and forbid cauliflower wilting.

  • Stress: When it comes to stress, there'south a lot y'all can practice to maintain a good for you environment around the plant. Fifty-fifty with the temperature fluctuations, you tin nonetheless protect the veggie against severe cold spells by using row covers. If you have a short jump that turns into total-blown summer apace, then you can start the seeds indoors early so that the veggie matures before the temperature rises above sixty degrees F. Some other cause of stress is irregular watering so make sure your plants are getting one and a half inches of water a week.
  • Clubroot: This fungal disease specializes in cruciferous plants, including cauliflower and cabbage. The fungus strikes on hot days and subsequently the leaves become xanthous, they start to wilt at which point in that location's no recovery. Check the roots for signs of abnormal growths and remove the infected plants to foreclose the spread of the affliction.
  • Verticillium wilt: Some other mucus that targets cauliflower plants in damp conditions. What makes it a serious disease is that information technology infects the plants when they well-nigh maturity. Starting from the lower leaves, information technology moves upward toward the head. The fungus lives in the soil for years and infects new plants. So the best action is to plant disease-resistant varieties.

Headless Cauliflower

Cauliflower headless

If fuzzy heads and wilting cauliflower are discouraging enough, there are times when the plant will grow without heads. What'southward the indicate of growing a headless cauliflower, you might ask. And the reply is no point at all. Without the head, the veggie looks like an empty envelope you received in the mail or an e-mail without a body.

Since the head starts developing after in the life of the plant, you lot can easily miss all the clues that tell you that something is incorrect with the plants. And you merely realize that you lot accept headless cauliflowers subsequently in the reproductive phase. By then it's as well late to gear up the problem.

By and large, it'south unusually high temperatures that cause this problem. Merely cold weather and cold soil temperature tin accept the same event on the veggie besides.

How to Prepare Information technology

A headless cauliflower is a misnomer. Because if you look closely, you'll notice picayune heads growing among the leaves. They're chosen buttons, and while they're, in theory, heads, they are no good substitute for a big and well-developed cauliflower head. Then, to make sure that your veggie volition abound a normal head, you lot need to pay attention to these three factors.

  • Temperature: If you have read through the above problems, yous might detect temperature as a mutual factor amid them. The platonic temperatures for the cauliflower are between 55 to 65 degrees F. But if the temperature stays above 70 degrees F or drops below forty degrees F, the veggie will have trouble developing a large caput. In the case of high temperatures, you can blanch the veggies by wrapping the leaves around the head to shield information technology from the dominicus.
  • Moisture: Since you need to give the plant virtually 1.v inches of water a calendar week, that ways the elevation 6 inches of the soil should be moist regularly. Any changes in the moisture levels at that crucial level would touch the head development of the plant. Virtually of the root system of the constitute is close to the surface, so you need to go along the soil moist.
  • Feeding: Both nitrogen and potassium are crucial for the growth of the head of the plant. You might call back that deficiency of those two chemicals can besides lead to a fuzzy head. Severe deficiency can atomic number 82 to headless cauliflowers. This veggie is a heavy feeder and you'll demand to use fertilizer once every two weeks from the early spring until harvest time.

Purple Tint On Cauliflower

Although the prevailing color among the cauliflowers you buy at the supermarket is normally white or creamy, that'southward not the natural color of the head. If left to its own devices, your cauliflower head will choose a different colour, such equally purple. You need to flinch the caput by depriving information technology of sunlight as information technology develops to give it that white albino color.

Cauliflower tint

The primary crusade for majestic heads is often high temperatures. Fifty-fifty with blanching, if the weather turns warm suddenly and the air temperature stays above 70 degrees F as the head matures, yous'll end up with purple cauliflower.

Moreover, some varieties are more than decumbent to turning purple than others. Snowwhite for instance, is a cauliflower variety known for its extreme sensitivity to air temperature. It develops a deeper royal tint that tin be offputting to some people.

How to Fix It

Although you only have one cause for the problem, fixing royal cauliflower is an onerous task. That's because y'all'll be grappling with the air temperature, and that's as unpredictable every bit they come. However, y'all can take the following measures to ensure that the flower head stays creamy and doesn't plough into the dreaded purple.

  • If you lot have hot spring and even hotter summer seasons, then try growing the veggie in the cool fall season.
  • For fall season growing, make sure the head matures in September or October before the temperature drops.
  • Blanch the head when it has reached the size of a golf brawl. Wrap the outer leaves all the mode over the head without actually touching information technology. Inspect the wrapped leaves periodically to make certain insects or fungi are not growing there.
  • Plant varieties that naturally blanch with no man intervention.

Loose Cauliflower Heads

So far, we have been focusing on the bug of the cauliflower caput. That's because the head is the most prized part of the veggie. And you lot'd give information technology your utmost attending and care to make sure it develops well and doesn't become whatever discoloration. But what tin you practise when the head becomes loose?

Cauliflower loose

A loose cauliflower head is another common problem that has to do with inadequate air temperatures too as irregular watering patterns. Even spacing between the plants can crusade this problem, particularly if in that location's not enough room betwixt the ii heads and they finish up jostling for space, which weakens both of them.

How to Gear up Information technology

You don't merely have to pay attending to the air temperature, moisture in the soil, and spacing between the plants. Y'all also need to cheque the chemical balance of the fertilizer y'all use. If you requite it too much nitrogen, you might end upwardly with large but loose heads.

  • Protect the veggies against afternoon sun exposure by providing partial shade during that part of the day.
  • Don't use excessive nitrogen and only utilize nitrogen side-dressing three times during the lifetime of the veggie.
  • Depending on the variety, infinite the plants between 24 to 36 inches to let them enough room to grow.
  • Blanch the heads to protect them against direct sunlight exposure which could heat up the constitute and cause loose heads.
  • Don't expose the plant to stress from the moment the heads develop until they are set up to harvest.