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Large solid heads of good-keeping winter-long storage cabbage are pulled, root and all, in late fall when temps are cool, but well before a hard frost. I strip off the outer leaves and hang the heads upside down inside paper bags from the barn beams. As time goes by, outer leaves will soften and/or show mold spots, and they are stripped off and given to the highly appreciative goats. By spring, any surviving heads will be stripped to half their size and bleached nearly white.

Jade Cross Brussels sprout plants are also pulled, roots and all (but waiting till after two or three good frosts), stripped of leaves, and also hung upside down from the barn beams. We twist them off the stalk as needed. Outer leaves also go to the goats, who quickly learn to read your mind and begin bleating the instant a cole-harvester heads toward the hanging bags. Cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts, and late cauliflower are all naturally fibrous crops that hold well for fresh-picked use in the early winter-storage garden.

I have always left the kale in place and picked it even after snow becomes so deep that harvesting requires snow-shoes and a snow-digging shovel. Kale especially benefits from frost; it loses its rank wild flavor and argumentative texture and becomes sweet, tender, and mild. It actually keeps nicely in a snow-pack. Protected from sub-zero cold, the leaves remain dark green and edible, so long as they remain hard-frozen till dunked in the cooking pot.

The late-season cauliflower and harvested broccoli stay put as well. Broccoli stops growing, of course, but you can cut already-developed frost-sweetened side sprouts and secondary heads till they are used up. Frosted broccoli—younger leaves and stems too—sweetens and mellows much the way kale does.

Cauliflower is not a long-keeper. The leaves become soft when frosted, but so long as temps remain above hard freeze but cool enough so the heads don't try to flower—and so long as they are covered with mulch—the curds hold well without getting black mold till a hard freeze threatens. Then I pull the plants, remove all the leaves, wrap them in two paper bags, and hang them upside down with a nail through the root in the warmer end of the barn where the animal stalls are. The paper bags are used to keep critter-litter dust off. A passing squeeze will tell you if the produce is still good. The curd-florettes, cut from the root and core, will also keep for a month or more in plastic bags, refrigerated or in a 40°F cold cellar.

For late-season corned beef & cabbage, slaw, and kraut, I plant one of Stokes Seeds' long-term-storage, 100-day-plus hybrids, such as Albion. Since frozen cabbage is sure to rot in inside storage, I pull the best heads for inside cold-storage well before hard frost, as detailed above. But I pile old mulch up around the smaller heads and harvest them for fresh eating from the garden till well after snow falls. The outer-wrapper leaves that are frozen to softness would be discarded anyway, and I think that a little frost sweetens the inner head of a cabbage just as it does kale and broccoli.

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