Yes, the bitterness is because of the heat and is common with brassicas.

I don't leave the cabbage stems and babies in summer, but leave them in fall and winter.

Cabbage babies that sprout in high temperatures tend to be loose-leaved and puffy---not hard, firm heads like you get in cooler weather. It is a heat-related thing, and there's no reason to waste space on them in hot weather because the flavor will be unpleasantly bitter. I usually have all my cabbage out of the garden by mid-June in a cool June and early June in a hot June because of the way the heat affects the plant performance and flavor. I just harvested my last cabbages earlier this week. I've had them last a couple of months in the extra fridge out in the garage, so we can eat them over an extended period of time. I also make sauerkraut and freezer slaw with some of them, because I always grow a lot more than we ever could eat fresh. Because of the cool, prolonged rainy spell in May, it has been a really good year for cabbage, but their season is ending.

oh good I don't feel so much like I ripped them out before they were finished...I did get one baby that was 1/2 pound and very nice but it was from the very first plant I cut and the momma was 5 1/4 . That hooked me for planting a ton in the fall.

I am going to venture into fermenting before I have to move, once I get in the camper I wont have as much room. Although I am gutting the kitchen to redo and make it more user friendly.

I want to make a batch of sauerkraut. I have one softball size head of cabbage. I would like the recipe to include onion, hot pepper, and maybe garlic. Will this safely work? Any ideas?

The recipes for sauerkraut in every canning book that I have only use cabbage with no other vegetables added, so my answer to your question is that you probably cannot free-lance and just add something to the cabbage. Remember that free-lancing and adding unapproved and untested ingredients to canning recipes is dangerous, and I assume it could be dangerous as well with fermentation. This is because the pH might be altered which could negatively affect the safety of the fermented product. Someone who is highly trained in food preservation would be the person to answer this question for you because master food preservers know what additions or substitutions can be used safely and which ones cannot.

Having said that, I bet you could use a kim chi recipe. Linda Ziedrich has several kim chi recipes in her book "The Joy of Pickling" and one of them that I remember has only cabbage, flaked pepper, scallions, garlic, ginger, water, salt and a small amount of sugar. Kim chi normally is made from Chinese cabbage and is fermented for a shorter time period than sauerkraut so it is not quite as sour, but the flaked pepper (you could control the heat by the type of flaked pepper you choose) can amp up the heat. If you want me to post that recipe here for you, let me know.

If you were to go to the Harvest Forum here at GW, the canning experts there could tell you if you could make a small batch of sauerkraut with onion, hot pepper and garlic added. Since you only have a small head of cabbage, I assume you are going to ferment it and then eat it shortly thereafter instead of canning it after the fermentation is done? If so, be sure to tell them you intend to eat it shortly after fermentation finishes and do not intend to can it (unless you do intend to can it, but that's gonna be a really small canning batch!).

Scott, I have fermented saurkraut successfully (ask me about the unsuccessful one, ha). The trick with fermenting is the right proportion of salt to veggie. You can ferment pretty much any vegetable. Many of the old time recipes throw a bunch of stuff together in an old crock without much concern. Some people add whey or purchased cultures to speed the fermentation. They preserved food this way long before we started canning. That said, read up on it, preferably from a modern source. This company has a lot of info. Cultures for health

I also fermented pickles last year, and DH was pleased. His grandmother used to make saurkraut and back east the deli's all had a barrel of sour pickles.

If you want kraut in vinegar, that is canning, and you have to follow canners rules.

I am not planning on canning it. I did put some serrano in it. Guess I will wait and see.

For future reference, here's a recipe for Southwestern Kraut that sounds pretty similar to what you wanted to make. In any food preservation recipe, you can substitute one kind of hot or sweet pepper for another in the same amount as they all have a similar pH.

Southwestern Kraut

That looks pretty good to me! Probably could sub 1 jal for 1 hab I suppose. Thank you!