A GIFT FROM THE GARDEN

Nothing shouts Christmas like red cabbage, says Monty Don – and it’s even more rewarding to grow your own

One of the Don family’s essential elements of Christmas dinner is a large pot of braised red cabbage. We have it first with the goose (or turkey – we waiver between the two) and then with cold meats and even in sandwiches until it is all finished by the New Year. The combination of the slowly cooking cabbage, apples, brown sugar, juniper berries, cinnamon and vinegar is as much part of our Christmas trigger as the lights on the tree.

But first you must grow your red cabbage. The seeds are sown in April along with all my other winter brassica crops such as savoy cabbages, Brussels sprouts, kale and broccoli. As well as red cabbage you can grow red Brussels sprouts such as ‘Red Bull’ and ‘Red Rubine’, red kale, and purple cauliflowers such as ‘Graffiti’ or ‘Purple Sicily’. This year I grew mine in an outdoor seed bed and transplanted them from there to their final growing position, but I also sow into plugs and then pot these on into 7-8cm pots ready for planting out about 4560cm apart in mid-summer.

Red cabbages can, in fact, come in a range of colours from purple, red and pink to blue and grey. Their colour is partly determined by the soil – acidic soil makes them redder, neutral more purple and in very alkaline soil such as chalk they tend to lose their redness and become a yellowy green. When cooked they all turn a purplish blue – although vinegar will stop this and ensure they retain their red colour. Talking of vinegar, red cabbage pickles wonderfully and is easy to turn into sauerkraut – all you need is salt and water – which has become very trendy recently.

Cabbages were probably brought to Britain by the Romans and they’ve been a staple ever since, not least because of their extreme hardiness – red cabbages are better at withstanding the extremes of weather than their green cousins.

Until the 16th century it seems likely that all cabbages were loose-leaf – like our spring greens or what the Americans call ‘collards’. The round-headed form was first described in the 16th century and the first mention of a red one in Britain was in 1570 – so we can reasonably assume that this was when it arrived here – after almost certainly having been brought over from Germany. By the 19th century breeding had become extensive and sophisticated, with varieties ranging from savoys with wrinkled leaves, Brunswick and other smoother drumhead (round) types, to red, white, green, summer, spring and autumn cabbages.

I plant them out when the roots have filled the 7-8cm pot without pressing against the sides if I am growing them under cover, or when they have made sturdy 15cm seedlings if in a seed bed. I plant them quite wide apart, with spacings of about 60cm, firming them in really well. Cabbages, like most leafy brassicas, will become very top heavy so the more firmly their roots are anchored into the ground, the better they will stand when fully grown. Even so, they may need staking later.

For the first month or so there is an awful lot of bare soil between the growing cabbages, so I use this to raise a catch crop of lettuce that will grow quickly and can be harvested and cleared before they run out of light and room from the growing cabbages. This year, in a burst of enthusiasm for all things red, I grew ‘Red Oak Leaf’ and a red variety of cos lettuce.

Pigeons are the biggest pest my cabbages have to contend with over winter, but they seem to prefer green to red, as do the caterpillars of cabbage white butterflies.

This all makes red cabbage not only a delicious addition to the Christmas table but an easy, rewarding and handsome vegetable to grow. n

Monty with his red cabbage