Kitchen Garden

Simon Courtauld

It hadn’t occurred to me, until I started growing kohlrabi, that the former Chancellor of Germany, at the time of reunification, was called Mr Cabbage. The other part of the name, ‘rabi’ (in my dictionary ‘rübe’), apparently means turnip, and the vegetable is said to have been introduced to Germany by the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne. But it is not very helpful to compare its appearance to a cabbage-turnip. It has also been likened to a Sputnik satellite, which is a rather better description.

Kohlrabi is of the brassica family: it has a leaf stalk growing on a swollen stem base. It is not, strictly speaking, a root vegetable but is the only one with a spherical shape that grows entirely above ground. It reminds the gardening writer Anna Pavord of a strange-looking egg from which a baby dinosaur

might suddenly emerge. The seed can be sown until July, and the plants should be thinned to about nine inches apart. I have gone down the easier route this year and bought plantlets, of the variety Korist, at a garden centre. They should be ready for harvesting in about eight weeks, or three months from sowing.

The purple-skinned varieties, such as Purple Vienna, are said to do well from a late sowing, and both white and purple do better than turnips in the hot, dry weather we enjoyed last summer and which may be repeated this year. Apart from watering, kohlrabi needs very little attention when growing and is reasonably free of pests and diseases.

Kohlrabi plants are best picked when no bigger than a cricket ball. Don’t be tempted to leave them to grow any larger (unless they are for showing), as they are likely to split and become fibrous – a mistake I made a couple of years ago. Once the skin has been peeled from the bulbs, they can be grated raw in salads or roasted with thyme; and the leaf stalks can be cooked as ‘greens’.