It's been windy and felt on the cool side since the almost summery weather of the weekend but in truth the temperatures have only returned to their average values for mid April. However, this is the driest start to April I've recorded with only 0.6mm (0.02in) having fallen so far this month. This might be a statement I regret making by the end of the month.
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| Temperature & Rainfall Records for April 2017 |
As you may be aware, if you're a regular follower, our plots at the allotment suffer from club root. If possible it means that we only grow club root resistant brassicas on the plot as there is no cure for this disease of the root system.
As you can see from the photo above the plant develops roots which are swollen resulting in stunted plant growth and in severe cases the brassica will die off completely. To make matters more difficult on the plot not all our beds suffer from this problem so I try to keep a note of which beds are affected.
In order to try to overcome this problem or a least to reduce its effects we are growing our early brassicas in 5" (125mm) pots.
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| Cabbage "Regency", Cauliflower "Helsinki" & Calabrese "Aquiles" |
None of these early varieties are club root resistant. They will be planted out in a bed which is in a four year rotation plan and has never shown any signs of club root but hopefully growing bigger plants in larger pots will give us a better chance of a good early crop. It's also worth mentioning that so far we have never suffered with a club root problem with any of the varieties we've grown that have been sold as "club root resistant" varieties.
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May I know what varieties of brassica are club root resistant?
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Here’s the list of club root resistant brassica seeds we’ve tried so far:
DeleteCabbage: Kilaton (Grown this for a few years without any problems)
Cauliflower: Clapton (our go to cauliflower and it hasn’t let us down
over the last few years)
Brussels Sprout: Crispus (we’ve had decent crops of this variety)
Last year we tried
Red Cabbage: Red Lodero (sowed seeds too late to produce a crop. We’re trying it again this year. The plants didn’t get club root.)
We’re trying these for the first time this year:
Calabrese: Monclano
Cabbage: Kalibro
All our seeds have been bought from Kings Seeds but I think most of the seed companies sell the same varieties.
I’ll be updating my blog on how our new varieties perform this year.
Thank you for the information, Martyn.
ReplyDeleteCauliflowers are one of my favorite vegetables ,I think we'll try to plant them this year.
I will wait and look forward for the update on how your new varieties perform this year.Happy gardening!