'Song TJS-65' Green Stem Cauliflower Variety

Hey, everybody. We're here to talk about cauliflower today, specifically 'Song TJS-65', which is our tropical type, green stem soft-curd cauliflower, which is on the right side of this picture. Then the left is a standard cauliflower.

Growing & Appearance

Some of the differences are pretty obvious. The 'Song TJS-65' cauliflower, the curd's a little bit not quite as white. The head's a little bit bigger than the European one. And on the backside, if you look, the petioles tend to be green on the soft-curd types versus white on the European one.

There are some differences in growing these different types of varieties. The European type really likes to have good conditions, adequate water, it really likes cool weather, high fertility. The 'Song TJS-65', on the other hand, it likes all those conditions, but it tends to do better under conditions where fertility isn't as good or there's more hot weather, or water is kind of inadequate compared to a European one.

Those are the main differences as far as growing and appearance.

Eating Quality

The other thing is eating quality. The European one is definitely a good tasting cauliflower, but the 'Song TJS-65' is a lot better eating quality.It's sweeter, it's more tender, and as you can see here, the way the florets are, it's a lot easier to break them apart and prepare them for cooking. These types are really popular in Asia. In fact, it's probably in some countries they grow more of this than the European type. And the reason they do is basically because of the eating quality, although I think the ability to cut the florets very quickly is also an advantage.

I can show you also how you can cut the head and make a whole bunch of florets with one cut. First, here's a European type here. You can cut the stem off and you basically have this head like that. To get florets, you need to do quite a bit of cutting. You can cut that and then you have some nice florets here ready for cooking. It takes a little bit of time. Then the 'Song TJS-65', because, again, it has these long petioles compared to the European type, it's a lot quicker to cut. You can just do a cut like that, get rid of the stem. You're just about ready to cook very quickly. And I think another advantage too with these long florets is the stem is really the best eating part of the cauliflower, so you have more stem. And if you were doing something like a dip, you have that long stem and you can dip it. The European one, you're going to have the short stem.

Here are some examples of florets from the European type on your left and the 'Song TJS-65' on your right. The European one you can see it's snow white, very small stem, good for cooking, a little difficult for dipping maybe. And then on your right, the 'Song TJS-65', it's got the longer pale green stem, real good for dipping, a little bit yellowish—that's typical of those—but just overall real nice eating quality. So again, on your left is the European type, and on your right is the 'Song TJS-65'.

When to Harvest

Now we're going to talk a little bit about when to harvest. For the European type, when to harvest, this is 'EarliSnow', which is our standard early variety. And you can see the head right now, It's just full and dense, and it's ready to harvest. That's a real nice head of cauliflower. Then for the 'Song TJS-65', you can harvest it at a variety of stages in development. So here's a head that's similar right now to a European type in appearance. It's a little bit larger, a little bit flatter. You can see a little yellower. And if you cut it, you can see that already, the petioles are a little bit longer than on the European type.

This would be a perfectly good time to harvest this. If for home use or if maybe you're selling into a market who is used to a European-appearing cauliflower but wants something with better flavor, you could harvest it at that stage. You can still do the one-cut process like we did earlier with the head that was a little more mature, it just might take a little bit more cutting. This I think would be when you might initially want to harvest.

Then the plant right here to the left, this one you can see has grown several more days than the other one. So now it's gotten a lot wider. And when you cut it, you can see that the petioles or stems are quite a bit longer now. So what this means is that you would have a longer product for dipping or for cooking, a longer stem, and also you just have more overall yield because the head has become a lot bigger. You probably have 50% more product to eat versus harvesting at this stage. This would be about the maximum size to harvest it.

The next plant right here, you can see this one is basically starting to bolt. It's very elongated. This is generally past where you would want to harvest it. But if you wanted to, you could still use these florets right there either for home use or for selling. What you will notice is it's not quite as nice at this stage as like a dedicated variety like the 'Fioretto 70', but you still could use it for that.

That's a summary of the difference between a typical European cauliflower and then the 'Song TJS-65'. Thank you for listening today.

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