Most of Sunday was sunny but a gale force wind blew all day and didn't ease until well into the evening.
I've decided to do a little bit of cheating in an attempt to get some early broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower. Normally we raise our own brassica plants to grow on over winter and go on to produce an early season crop. For the second year in a row our plans have been ruined as two years ago pigeons devastated the crop and last year all our plants suffered from club root.
This is how our winter brassicas look now. The plants were left in the ground over winter hoping that might make a miraculous recovery. Obviously that hasn't happened and a few weeds, ever the opportunists, have decided to grow in the holes in the weed control fabric that should be occupied our brassica plants.
On Sunday I noticed this on Marshalls web site. Now our last foray into plug plants wasn't too successful as the plants received were pretty poor and nothing like the quality of home produced seedlings. However, beggars can’t be chooses, and this collection hopefully will produce much earlier crops than I'm going to be able to produce from an early April sowing. So they’re ordered and according to the information delivery will be anytime soon.
These brassicas will be planted out into one of the beds cleared last autumn. For the last twenty or more years, neither of these beds have been used to grow any brassica plants so should be free of club root. Since this photo was taken, the beds have already been covered with weed control fabric so there’s not too much preparation work required. The new plants will need to be protected by netting to keep the wood pigeons off.
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Your plot is ready for the brassicas. Good job
ReplyDeleteJust hope we get some good plants Endah.
DeleteLets hope the plants are good quality and that they get a good start once they're in.
ReplyDeleteI'm already looking forward to some tasty cauliflowers and broccoli.
DeleteI have given up on growing brassicas, this year I am not going to bother, the pigeons and the cabbage butterfly have destroyed them two years in a trot....
ReplyDeleteMust admit I don't find them the easiest crop to grow either.
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