Cauliflower got its name because its edible heads are huge inflorescences. They are tasty, nutritious and decorate the garden with their appearance. However, cauliflower is much more expensive than its white sister, because they plant it less often. One of the best mid-early varieties is Snowball 123.
Description of cauliflower cultivar Snowball 123
Variety Snowball 123 of French origin, in the territory of our country is allowed for cultivation and use since 1994. Belongs to the number of mid-early varieties, it is considered one of the market leaders in its segment.
Appearance
Cabbage of this variety is not large. The outer leaves are erect, their main color is bright green, with a bluish tint. The leaves are large, grow strongly in height, almost completely cover the head, protecting it from bright sunlight and protecting it from darkening.
This allows you not to break leaves to cover the head, which must be done when caring for the vast majority of varieties of cauliflower.
The head of cabbage Snowball corresponds to the name of the variety ("Snow globe"). It is very dense, round, sometimes slightly flattened, medium hilly. Weight - from 0.8 to 1.2 kg, some specimens reach 2 kg.
Cauliflower heads Snowball 123 almost round, white, even
Grade characteristics
Cauliflower Snowball 123 has a relatively short growing season: from the first seedlings to harvest takes from 85 to 95 days. This is a universal cabbage: the excellent taste of the heads allows you to use them for cooking a wide variety of dishes. It is well stored, but it is better to cut the portion of the crop that will not be used fresh in the next 1-2 weeks into pieces of convenient size and freeze it. The cabbage is boiled, fried, pickled: in any form, its structure remains dense, and the taste is excellent.
Cauliflower is fried even with whole small inflorescences
The variety is stable fruiting. Harvest can not be called very large, from 1 m2 they collect about 4 kg of products, but it does not depend much on weather conditions. Cabbage Snowball 123 is characterized by increased resistance to most dangerous diseases: immunity protects it from infection with fungal diseases and various rot, which allows you to do without serious preventive spraying. However, the resistance to the keel disease is low, it is also affected by such a common pest as cabbage fly. As for the seedling stage, the black leg remains the most dangerous disease with improper agricultural technology.
Video: Cabbage Seeds Snowball 123
Advantages and disadvantages, differences from other varieties
The main advantages of the variety are experienced farmers consider:
- early ripening;
- great taste;
- presentable presentation of the heads;
- high content of vitamin C;
- stable good crop;
- resistance to fluctuations in temperature and moisture level;
- the ability of the outer leaves to cover the heads from the bright sun;
- resistance to most diseases;
- excellent transportability;
- universality of purpose.
Specialists do not note the drawbacks that distinguish Snowball 123 from other varieties; they are the same for cauliflower as a whole and are associated mainly with moodiness to growing conditions. The disadvantage is the poor preservation of the ripened heads on the garden bed, so you should not be late with the harvest. The disadvantage of the variety is the serious affection of the keel in adverse conditions.
Among the varieties of the same ripening period, cabbage Snow globe wins in unpretentiousness to growing conditions and taste. Compared with later varieties, it undoubtedly loses in yield: heads weighing 2 kg are a record, while for some late-ripening varieties this is the norm.
Features growing cabbage Snowball 123
From the point of view of agricultural technology, the Snowball 123 variety does not have significant features compared to planting and growing other precocious varieties of cauliflower. Due to the short growing season, you can get several harvests of cabbage over the summer.
To get the first crop, you can sow seeds for seedlings at home in early spring, and even better - in greenhouse conditions (the culture is quite cold-resistant). If planted seedlings are planted in the garden at the very beginning of May, in mid-June it will be possible to harvest. To obtain a second crop, seeds can be sown directly in open ground in early summer, and cut heads off in September.
Growing through seedlings
Most often, cauliflower is grown through seedlings, because they want to get the crop early. However, in most regions, direct sowing of early ripening varieties into the soil is also possible: Snowball 123 with this option has time to give a full crop. If you sow seeds for seedlings in early or mid-March, already in the first month of summer, the heads will be ready for use. In the southern regions, sowing of seeds is possible even in February.
It should immediately be noted that it is extremely difficult to grow high-quality seedlings in a city apartment. This applies to any variety of cabbage, cauliflower is no exception. In the heating season, cabbage seedlings at home are very hot. Therefore, you can engage in seedlings only if the apartment has a relatively cool, but sunny window sill.
If you are not in a hurry, you can sow seeds for seedlings right at the cottage in a cold greenhouse during your very first spring visit to the site. It’s okay if it will be even mid-April: the harvest will ripen later, but you will be able to avoid any special hassle with seedlings. At this time, you can sow cabbage just under easy shelter, and by the May holidays you can remove it: seedlings will grow in the fresh air, it will be strong, and at the end of May - ready for transplanting to a permanent place.
If there are conditions for growing seedlings at home, then in the first half of March you need to do the following.
- Prepare the soil: mix peat, sand, garden soil and humus in equal amounts (you can buy the finished mixture in the store). It is better to disinfect your soil: steam in the oven or spill with a pink solution of potassium permanganate.
If you need a little soil, it’s easier to buy in the store
- Prepare the seeds. Usually, cabbage seeds of the Snowball 123 variety are sold by serious companies, and they are immediately ready for sowing, but if they have been stored for a long time and their origin is forgotten, it is better to decontaminate the planting material by placing it in a purple potassium permanganate solution for half an hour and then rinse well with water.
Cauliflower, like any other, does not have very small seeds
- As seedlings, it is better to take separate cups, ideally peat pots with a capacity of at least 200 ml: sowing in a common box is possible, but undesirable, cauliflower does not like picking.
Peat pots are good because they plant seedlings in the garden with them
- Drainage should be placed at the bottom of the pots: a layer of coarse sand 1-1.5 cm high, after which pour prepared soil.
- At a depth of 0.5-1 cm, 2-3 seeds should be sown (it is better to remove extra seedlings then to stay with empty pots), compact the soil and water well.
When sowing, you can use any suitable tool
- Covering the pots with glass or a transparent film, put them before emergence in any place with room temperature.
The film will create a greenhouse effect, and shoots will appear quickly
Seedlings at a temperature of the order of 20aboutC should appear in 5-7 days. On the same day, without delay, the pots with seedlings must be transferred to the brightest place and lower the temperature for a week to 8-10ºC. This is the most critical moment: if at least a day the seedlings are warm, it can be thrown away, because the seedlings will immediately stretch. And subsequently, the temperature should be low: during the day 16-18ºC, and at night - no higher than 10aboutC. Otherwise, all labor may be in vain, and the cauliflower on the bed will not tie heads at all.
No less important than the coolness is sufficient illumination: perhaps, the seedlings of Snowball 123 will have to be specially illuminated with fluorescent or special phytolamps. Irrigation is needed rare and moderate: stagnation of water will instantly cause a black-foot disease. If the soil was of high quality, you can do without dressing, although once, in the stage of two true leaves, it is desirable to feed with a weak solution of complex fertilizer. If sowing was carried out in a common box, diving in separate cups to cotyledon leaves is possible at 10 days of age.
A week before planting on the bed, plants are hardened, taking to the balcony. Ready seedlings about 1.5 months old should have 5-6 strong leaves. When planting, it is buried almost to the first true leaflet. Snowball is planted 123 infrequently: at 1 m2 have only 4 plants, the optimal layout is 30 x 70 cm.
Ready seedlings must have strong leaves
Video: growing cauliflower seedlings
Growing in the seedless way
If there is no need for a very early harvest, 123 snowball is best sown immediately in the garden, in a permanent place. In central Russia, this can be done at the beginning or middle of May, but it is better to cover the crops with non-woven material for the first time. In the southern regions, sowing has been carried out since mid-April, or even earlier. It is advisable that by this time serious frosts cease, and zero temperature (or slightly lower) is not dangerous for crops.
If the bed does not have time to ripen by the desired time, you can pre-spill it with boiling water and cover it with a film.
This variety is slightly less demanding on the composition of the soil than cauliflower in general, but still it will not be possible to grow crops in heavy, clay areas. Poor sandy soils will not work. The best option is breathable fertile sandy loam with a near-neutral reaction. The best crops grown to cauliflower in the garden are:
- cucumbers
- potatoes,
- carrot,
- peas.
In no case should you plant Snowball 123 after any cruciferous: radish, radish, any kind of cabbage. It is possible to apply any fertilizer, but it is better to limit yourself to good humus and wood ash (doses: a bucket and a 1-liter can)2 respectively). Sowing seeds in open ground does not present any difficulties and consists of the usual steps:
- Wells in a bed prepared in advance are planned according to the same scheme as for planting seedlings: 30 cm in a row and 70 cm between rows.
When preparing holes for cabbage, a 30 x 70 cm pattern is used
- In each hole, it makes sense to add as a local fertilizer 1 tbsp. ash and 1 tsp. azofoski, well mixed with the soil.
Instead of azofoska, you can take a pinch of bird droppings.
Azofoska - one of the most convenient complex fertilizers
- Having spilled each hole with warm water, seeds are sown in it. Depth - a little more than in pots: up to 2 cm. It is better to sow 2-3 seeds and then remove the extra shoots.
You can sow seeds in the groove, and then thin out
- Around each hole it is worth immediately lightly dusting the ground with ash to scare away the cabbage fly.
Not only cabbage is dusted with ashes: this excellent fertilizer repels various pests
Care
Care for cabbage Snowball 123 is the same as for most garden plants.
Watering
Watering should be carried out regularly, but excess water is useless. Their frequency depends on the weather, but on average in the first month they are watered 2 times a week, then - 1, first bringing in a bucket of water per 1 m2 beds and then more.
Water is poured under the root, especially after the heads begin to be tied.
After each irrigation, the soil is loosened, while weeds are destroyed. While it is possible, loosening is accompanied by a small hilling of plants with the addition of a small amount of ash and humus.
Fertilizer
In the short time that Snowball 123 spends on the bed, it must be fed at least twice (and if the soil is not nutritious, more often). The best fertilizer for this cabbage is mullein infusion (1:10) or highly diluted bird droppings.
To obtain a safe concentration of litter, you must first mix with water (1:10 by volume) and let it brew for several days. After this, the resulting mixture was diluted another 10 times.
The first time they feed cauliflower (0.5 l per bush) 3 weeks after transplanting seedlings or a month after emergence when sprouting when sowing seeds in the garden. After 10 days, double-dose top dressing is repeated. At the age of two months, it would be nice to add mineral fertilizers to the infusion of organics: 20 g of nitroammophoska and 2 g of boric acid and ammonium molybdate per bucket. Without these microelements (molybdenum and boron), cauliflower is not so good: the yield is less, and the heads are coarser.
Pest and Disease Control
With the right care, Snowball 123 gets very rare. But various caterpillars and slugs seriously eaten cabbage. With a small amount, they must be collected manually and destroyed, in severe cases, the plantings are treated with Enterobacterin or infusions of various plants, most reliable of all is burdock leaves.
If cauliflower is carefully looked after, then pest control will come down to using only folk remedies. Enough prophylactic dusting with tobacco dust or wood ash, in some cases it is necessary to add spraying with infusion of tomato tops or onion husks.
Harvesting
You can not be late with the harvest, trying to get larger heads. If they have already begun to crumble, they must be cut off urgently: the quality of the product will fall hourly, it is better not to bring it to this. The heads are cut with a knife, capturing the stems: in their upper part they are also very tasty. It is better to do this in the morning, or at least not during the sun.
Video: Cauliflower Growing Tips
Reviews
Cauliflower Snowball 123 I grow the second year. The cabbage is tasty, the heads are medium. In that year, I bought this cabbage seedlings, planted in mid-May, harvested in mid-August. This variety is medium early, therefore it ripens well, I hardly plant late varieties, sometimes it does not ripen before frosts.
Tanya
//otzovik.com/review_3192079.html
Snow globe (aka Snowball 123) is an excellent early ripening variety! From landing to harvesting takes 55-60 days. The socket is medium in size. Rounded, dense, very white head. It weighs 0.7-1.2 kg. Very tasty variety. Eat fresh and freeze.
ludowik
//www.agroxxi.ru/forum/topic/874- what- grade-colour- cabbage- choose/
Look at Cabbage Snowball and Vinson. I am very happy, the germination rate was 100%, everything was tied up, the heads of cabbage did not bloom, there was no need to close - they were white.
"Anton's mom"
//forum.sibmama.ru/viewtopic.php?t=1140631&start=180
But the main advantage of the variety is early ripening. Cabbage Snowball 123 is ideally suited to market early products. She has an excellent taste and pleasant appearance. A high content of ascorbic acid and other vitamins allows you to use it for baby food.
"A guest"
//kontakts.ru/showthread.php?t=12227
Any cauliflower is a valuable dietary product, and the 123 Snowball variety also has a great taste. They grow it in all regions except hot and cold. Agricultural technology of cauliflower is not as simple as white cabbage: the measures for cultivation are the same, but the conditions must be observed more strictly. In the hardworking hands, Snowball 123 gives good yields of beautiful and mouth-watering heads.
