Grower’s Corner – cabbages
Lots of people hate cabbage, because they remember the awful smell of school dinners and the terrible taste and texture of cabbage ribs surrounded by slimy over-cooked flesh. However, there are new kinds of cabbage on the market, and many ways of cooking cabbage that render it delicious rather than disgusting, such as stir-frying or in coleslaws.
To grow your own cabbage, whether winter, spring or summer, the system is always the same, although winter cabbages are less prone to problems. Either sow seed in trays or into a seed bed, in row half an inch deep and six inches apart. Sow the seed thinly into the drills and cover them over with soil and to keep the seed bed moist, always use a fine spray. When the cabbage plants are about an inch tall, thin the seedlings to about three inches apart in the rows. They are ready to plant out when they are between four and six inches tall. Water the previous day to get them ready to move.
Plant them on to a foot between plants for compact varieties or eighteen inches if they are ‘large-headed’. However, if you’ve grown spring cabbage plant them about five inches apart and use the thinnings as spring greens for Sunday dinners. One key point with cabbages is that planting them out whether from pots or seed beds encourages a stronger root system to be established in their permanent bed – they will always do better than if you plant them in situ.
Hoe regularly to keep down weeds but don't loosen the soil too much as they like a firm bed – in fact it’s a good idea to earth up around the plant stems of spring cabbage and firm the soil down to help support them. Cabbages that are rocked by wind do not do well. Protect smaller plants from sparrows and the bigger mature plants from wood pigeons, both of whom like all brassicas. String and canes will work when the plants are small, for larger plants just canes can be enough.
Apply a foliar feed each month to summer growing cabbages as the plants absorb many more nutrients through their large surface area than they can be granular feeding at the roots.
Cabbage problems
Cabbage root fly can be a problem which can be addressed by putting horticultural fleece over seedlings and when the plants are established, protecting them by cutting dinner-plate sized discs from old underlay or roofing felt, cutting through to the middle and then laying them around the base of each cabbage. Because the fly lays eggs at the base of the cabbage plant, this can foil the attempts of the larvae to get into the cabbage.
Caterpillars – if not checked can destroy cabbage plants. They feed on the underside of the leaves and the best answer is to pick them off and squash them, or use nematodes.
Cabbage club root is a fungus that causes the roots to become stubby and swollen so that they don’t convey water and nutrients to the leaves which then become yellow and bitter. Even worse, spores produced by the fungus can survive in the soil for up to five years. Prevent club root by practicing crop rotation – seedlings purchased from garden centres or plant stalls can easily introduce the fungus too.
- Cabbages do best in a reasonably firm soil, so leave it for several months between digging the plot over and planting.
- If the soil is acid, apply lime during the preparation, as this discourages club root.
- Pick a reasonably sunny spot for cabbages and if possible site them where peas and beans grew the previous year.
Cabbage photographs by echosforberg and merfam, used under a creative commons attribution licence