Thursday, October 07, 2010

No More Cabbages!!!

I’m giving up on cabbages.
I am also abandoning cauliflowers.
Both continually disappoint in my garden.

This year the cabbages seemed to be doing really well. I grew them under netting which was very successful in keeping them free from caterpillars. However, when the cabbage moth couldn’t spoil the crop, the slugs “stepped” in to take their place. And earth worms haven’t helped either. Both have made their home between the leaves. It’s impossible to use the cabbage without removing each leaf separately to pick off the slugs and worms, this really spoils the appetite.

Instead of wasting more time and garden space on leafy veg failures, I’ll stick with things that do well. This year we tried Kale for the first time. It crops prolifically a short time after planting and it provides a very worthwhile alternative to cabbage.

We’ll also stick with broccoli. The netting idea has helped prevent last years problems in which the broccoli heads were infested with caterpillars. The net keeps away the butterflies, preventing them laying their eggs on the veggies, therefore keeping them free from caterpillars. I’m not sure what type of plants we used this year, but the broccoli heads are massive – dinner plate size – and the smaller side shoots which are usually broccolini-like, are more the size of the normal broccoli heads sold in the supermarket.

2 comments:

Cecelia Dowdy said...

I'm not much into growing vegetables in a garden. I usually plant flowers. However, this year, my father visited my family and planted some tomato and green pepper plants in the back of the house. We've used them throughout the summer. However, I keep forgetting about them back there! It's starting to get kind of cold, so they'll be dying soon! I need to check and see if there are any unpicked peppers and tomatoes back there!

Onesimus said...

Hi Cecelia,
I've never had a lot of success with tomatoes, but I'm determined to give them another try. We are now into our second month of spring so I planted a few.

I kept them under a plastic cover because the nights can still get cold - but unfortunately it wasn't enough. We had a heavy frost and all of the plants died.

I'll now wait until mid November (almost summer)before I try planting any more.