Cauliflower Cheddar F1 (orange)

The 'Cheddar F1' Cauliflower is an original and colourful variety that produces heads of a beautiful light orange, which retains its colour after cooking. This Cauliflower is sown from June to July for a harvest from mid-August to October.

With its pristine white and, in recent years, joyfully yellow, orange or purple colour, the Cauliflower is a flowering vegetable whose fleshy meristem is consumed. It belongs to the large family of Brassicaceae (formerly Cruciferae) and bears the Latin name Brassica oleracea botrytis. Sometimes called Cyprus cabbage, the Cauliflower is a biennial vegetable plant originally from China.

First consumed in Germany only 300 years ago, this vegetable has found a special place in our kitchens because it lends itself to many preparations. It can be eaten raw in salads or cooked, plain, in a gratin with béchamel sauce, or accompanied by a curry sauce that complements its flavour very well. It is a low-calorie vegetable and rich in vitamin C.

There are many varieties of Cauliflowers, each corresponding to a distinct growing period that needs to be respected. You can have this vegetable all year round by carefully choosing your seeds.

The Cauliflower is a demanding vegetable, requiring excellent basal fertilisation and regular moisture.

Harvest: The Cauliflower is harvested when its head is compacted by cutting it at ground level.

Storage: Cauliflower does not keep very well. It is best to consume it quickly after harvesting. It can be kept for a few days in the refrigerator. You can also freeze it after blanching it for 3 minutes in salted boiling water.

Gardener's tip: The main enemy of the cabbage is the Cabbage White butterfly (Pieris brassicae), a pretty creamy white butterfly with small black spots that emerges from April-May to wreak havoc on its leaves throughout the summer. While spraying a solution based on Bacillus Thuringiensis is an acceptable curative measure, we prefer to prevent it by installing an insect-proof netting tightly on maraîcher arches. These nets are easy to set up and reusable to protect, for example, your carrot and leek crops.

Note: This variety is labelled F1 for "F1 hybrid" because it results from the cross-breeding of carefully selected parents to combine their qualities. This results in a variety that can be particularly tasty and/or early while being resistant to certain diseases. Sometimes criticised or wrongly associated with GMOs, F1 hybrid seeds are interesting both for their uniformity and their resistance, but unfortunately, their qualities do not pass on to the next generations: it will, therefore, not be possible to recover the seeds for future sowing.