People eat it raw in salads, cooked as a hot vegetable, or pickled as sauerkraut. Red cabbage, with its reddish-purple leaves, is not so popular as the white, but it can be eaten raw or cooked. The savoy type perhaps has the best flavor. Chinese cabbage, also called celery cabbage, is not a true cabbage. Its long, thin leaves form stalks similar to celery.
Cabbage grown commercially under normal conditions is a biennial.
Seed producers grow the plants one year and leave them in the ground during winter. In the spring the plants produce seed. This is called bolting. However, plant breeders have developed varieties that are resistant to cold temperatures. Cabbage seeds are small and look almost exactly like those of cauliflower, broccoli, or other similar plants.