Cabbage Greyhound

The cabbage for people who have always thought they disliked cabbage. Greyhound is the British pointed summer variety, named with admirable directness for how fast it grows when it is happy. Sweet, tender and fine-flavoured, with a tightly packed conical head and almost no wasteful outer leaves.

The pointed shape is the difference. The leaves wrap closer around a smaller core, so you get more heart and less waste than a round drumhead, and the texture stays tender rather than turning tough. It is genuinely good raw in a slaw, where the pale sweet heart makes something lighter and grassier than a dense red cabbage would.

It is also more flexible than most cabbages. Plants pulled at six to eight weeks, before the heart has formed, make excellent spring greens — so one sowing gives you two quite different vegetables. Sow small batches every four to six weeks rather than a whole packet at once, or you will have twenty cabbages hearting up in the same fortnight.