Cabbage Head - To Tie or Not to Tie?

Napa cabbage is one of my favorite veggies to grow in my kitchen garden. After researching ways to encourage my cabbage to form a tighter head with more leaves, I decided that tying them up might be the way to go. I ran a little spring-time experiment to see if tying produced results worthy of taking this extra step in the garden.

Let's look at how I tied the developing heads and then the results.

How to Tie Up Your Cabbages

Once the first big leaves formed on my Napa cabbages, I cut some foot-long strips of twine and gathered the leaves of each plant into a bunch (kind of like pulling hair into a ponytail). Cabbage leaves are pretty tough, so try to avoid tearing them if you're handling a growing plant. I wrapped each strip around the leaves twice and tied the ends into a bow. 

Any leaves at the bottom that were too small to be wrapped up into the bunch got cut off. (They made a great dinner salad—nothing wasted!) If I’d left them hanging, they would have acted like a bridge for pests to come nibble my leaves. 

You can still harvest leaves from a tied-up cabbage plant as you would any other cut-and-come-again leafy green. Just untie a couple plants, cut the outer leaves, and tie them right back up.

The Cabbage Experiment

Minus the use of twine around some plants, I I tried to keep all other growing conditions the same for this little garden experiment of mine. The cabbage seedlings were started at the same time and moved into the garden beds at the same time. They received similar hours of sunlight and water. 

To determine the final results, I used the serrated edge of my hori hori to harvest two cabbage heads right at the base—one that I had tied up and one that I had left to grow on its own. 

The Cabbage Heads Results

Let's consider my three reasons for tying up my cabbage heads and whether or not the results matched my expectations.

Reason One: To Discourage Pests

Cabbage is in the Brassica family, and just like its kale, arugula, broccoli, and cauliflower cousins, cabbage is a huge attractor of pests, especially as the weather warms. If you’ve ever tried to grow a Brassica, you’ve probably seen your little leaves covered in pests. When we tie up our cabbages, we reduce the pests’ access to the internal leaves. Obviously, they can still get to the exterior of the plant, but we’ve created an effective physical barrier to those inside leaves we want to grow and be able to eat later. In my experience, physical barriers are really the key to organic pest protection. 

As soon as I tied up my leaves, I noticed some pests hanging out in the areas previously shaded by leaves—the perfect place for them to hide. Tying up the leaves, therefore, made it easier to spot the pests and evict them from my garden.

My first reason, then, proved valid.

Reason Two: To Make Room for More Plants

I love to plant intensively. I completely ignore the suggestions for plant spacings on seed packets and plant things however tightly I think they should grow. In a raised bed, every plant still has plenty of depth to stretch its roots out, no matter how intensively you plant, but one thing that does happen is that some plants can spread out above the soil and prevent their neighbors from growing to their fullest, best self. Tying up cabbages opens up the soil around them so that their neighbors can get more sunlight and their fair share of other resources.

I was able to squeeze a couple more plants in, so my second reason seemed to be valid, as well.

Reason Three: To Encourage New Leaf Growth

Cabbages, as you may know, form their leaves from the center of the plant, and we want to encourage them to continue to grow new leaves—I mean, that’s the good stuff we can eat! What happens, though, is that cabbages sometimes spread out and devote more energy into forming larger leaves, rather than new internal leaves. By tying the leaves up, I hoped to direct the plant's energy where I wanted it to go and encourage the plant to form a nice, full head of cabbage leaves.

At the end of the experiment, I counted the layers surrounding each cabbage head. Both the tied and the non-tied head had 14 layers. The outermost leaves on the tied cabbage were messed up from the twine, but the inside layers were definitely much tighter.

So, Is It Worth It to Tie Up Your Cabbage?

I’m leaning toward it not being worth the extra effort. For one, it was easier to harvest the outside leaves on the cabbages that weren’t tied up.

One major difference I noted was that the untied cabbage head had a much greener center, which fits with what I read about farmers tying up their cabbages to decrease sun exposure and maintain a whiter center. I actually prefer the deep green color over the yellow-white center of the tied cabbage heads. Leaving cabbage to grow and just do their own thing fits more with my style of gardening anyway. 

Either way, I count my cabbage heads a success this year! They grew 14 layers of leaves in a mere 60 days—that’s a win no matter what! 

If your cabbages are struggling to form a head, check out these troubleshooting tips. We've got lots of resources here at Gardenary to help you grow, and we're so grateful you're helping us bring back the kitchen garden one cabbage at a time!