Growing Cabbages Over The Years

A few months back, my youngest sister offered me some very small cabbage seedlings and although I do not have a veggie garden here or even a place for one, I did take, much to her amusement, just four of them and grew them in an old Plastic box with holes in the bottom. Well grew three of them as one did die! Yes, but the other three grew and the other day I went out and harvested one the size of a medium Cantaloupe or rock-melon. Not large at all but it was large enough for one meal and thus the perfect size for us. And that seems to be the norm now, breeding smaller and smaller vegetables for the commercial market, as shoppers seem top prefer them that way. But despite this, my mind went back to when my father was growing Cabbages to sell on his fruit round.

Then, bigger was best, and the bigger the cabbage was, the easier it was to cut into halves or even quarters, to sell to his customers, for very few of which, wanted full ones. In those days, no self-respecting grower would ever dream of trying to sell cabbages that small. But now, growers are planting and growing smaller Cabbages, and other vegetables, to meet a changed market. Where in the past people were happy to buy a half or quarter of a cabbage, these days they would much rather buy a whole small one the same size of a cut Quarter cabbage. Even though this smaller cabbage will cost more, as it costs basically the same to grow a small cabbage as a large one, but for convenience, the market has made smaller cabbages desirable and thus the growers have changed their varieties grown to match the market desired, even if more costly to produce and sell.

What about you and your “cabbages’ whatever they really are? Are you still producing what you always have, even if the market for it has or is changing? Or are you always changing and adjusting and adapting to your market, and thus always able to sell your product without any real hassles or problems? What say you? Do you need to look at the size of your product to see if it still satisfies the expected and preferred needs of your market? Or will you let someone who does steal your market from under you, simply because you won’t change with the times and the market? Over to you fro your reflections now.