PREDICTION:  More people would actually grow, and eat, cabbage if it weren’t for those bowling-ball-sized heads of up to 8 pounds that we all think of as the standard. Whether in the supermarket or garden, there is nothing appealing about that much cabbage all at once; a single head won’t even fit in the vegetable crisper.

European gardeners prefer the mini-cabbages, and Americans can now, too, with a wider selection of them made available by catalogs like Johnny’s Select Seeds. They’re fast to mature (66 to 72 or so days, instead of 85-90ish for the big guys), and just more appealing, in green (‘Gonzalez’) or red (‘Super Red’) or a wacky pointed shape (‘Arrowhead II’) or even Savoy-leaf (‘Alcosa’).