Gardening Surprise

 We have never had enough cabbage from our community garden plot to store.  But this past year was a good year, and we had several heads my spouse tried to store.

He went to get one for soup this afternoon, and this is what greeted him.  There is another head left that hasn't done this, although outside leaves are dried out.

He had been storing the cabbages wrapped in newspaper in a cool place.  Obviously, not cool enough.

Amazing to me, I tried to look online but couldn't find anything about cabbage bolting in storage in a quick search, except here (a third grade cabbage educational page posted by a plant wholesaler.)

The brown base is what is left of the cabbage.  Also amazing is that the cabbage itself does not smell bad.  It is not spoiled, although, obviously, the cabbage plant itself really isn't edible any more.

This is what the bottom looks like.

Another view of the stalk.  You can barely see some flowers beginning. The plant is yellow because of lack of light.  From the page I found about bolted cabbage, it might be edible.

My spouse tasted one of the flowers and said it tasted like raw broccoli, not like raw cabbage.

I did find this about proper storage of veggies without a root cellar (which we don't have).

So, submitting to other gardeners:  has this ever happened to you?