Other Vegetables

Cast your mind forward to cooler weather in late autumn when roasts and soups will start to be on the menu. Caulflower is a brilliant vegie to use in so many warming recipes and if you start sowing seed now, you’ll be eating home grown cauliflower in a few months time.

Yates Cauliflower Phenomenal Early is a popular, early maturing and easy to grow variety. It produces large, firm heads in 14 – 18 weeks. Here are the simple steps to growing your very own cauliflower:

In a vegie patch that receives at least 6 hours of sunshine a day, mix some Yates Dynamic Lifter Soil Improver & Plant Fertiliser into the soil. This will help improve the structure and quality of the soil and encourage earthworms and beneficial soil microorganisms.
It’s best to sow cauliflower seeds in trays of Yates Seed Raising Mix and transplant the seedlings out into the vegie patch when they’re around 7 cm high.
Watch out for snails and slugs, which can damage or destroy cauliflower seedlings. Control snails and slugs with a light sprinkling of Yates Blitzem Snail & Slug Pellets.
To help grow big healthy cauliflowers, once the seedlings are established feed each week with Yates Thrive Vegie & Herb Liquid Plant Food. Dilute 1 – 2 capfuls into a 9 L watering can and water over the plants and surrounding root zone.
As the white heads (called a ‘curd’) develop, fold the leaves over the top to prevent yellowing.

Caterpillar control

‘Brassica’ vegies like cauliflower are adored by cabbage white butterfly caterpillars, which can rapidly devour leaves. A soon as caterpillars or their damage are noticed, spray cauliflower plants every 1 – 2 weeks with Yates Success Ultra, which is an insecticide that’s derived from beneficial soil bacteria.