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What to Do When Flowering Cabbage Bolts

Your flowering cabbage has bolted — a natural response to winter cold or summer heat that triggers tall, yellow-flowered seed stalks. Once a biennial bolts, the show is over. The plant exhausts its energy flowering and setting seed, then declines. You can't restore its compact, colorful rosette form.

Enjoy the architectural beauty of the bloom spikes, then remove the plants. For next season, plant fresh starts in fall for winter color or in early spring for a shorter display before summer heat triggers bolting.

Annuals: Preventing Cabbage Worms in New Zealand: Row Covers, BT, and Companion Planting; Early Sarracenia Flowering in Mexican Highlands: Normal for Latitude; Marigold Timeline: From Seed to Peak Bloom in 8 Weeks; Second-Year Cabbage: Bolting Means Game Over; Transplanting Mature Flowering Quince: Root Ball and Hole Preparation; Flowering Kale in Late Season: To Cut or Save Seeds?; Choosing Leafy Cabbage Varieties and Natural Pest Control; Organic Cabbage Pest Control: Diatomaceous Earth and Cayenne Solutions; Flowering Shrubs: Plan for Continuous Seasonal Color; Growing Cabbage: Versatile, Nutritious, and Cold-Hardy

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