Thursday 10 March 2011

Brassica Protection and considering crops to sow

This year, I want to eat some brassica’s. After the last year when el butterfly decided to strike with evil intentions and a family of thousands to feed, I decided it was time to get tough. The brassica’s need to be protected.

My technique with netting so far has been to make a wigwam with beanpoles, and try to use this as a temporary fruit cage. It hasn’t worked so well. Just not practical. Whatever solution I chose has to have two main uses:

  • It has to carry fleece during the first through weeks of spring... while they are seedlings
  • It has to carry netting during butterfly season

And I want to also have something that doesn’t cost too much but at the same time is practical for watering too. So far in my research I have come across http://kgarden.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/brassica-netting-against-cabbage-white-butterfly/ which seems to be the most practical solution.

I like how simple it looks... that will make it easy to make, and I don’t have great DIY skills.

Why am I planting Brassicas?

Well, I admit for a long while I didn’t. But due to health complaints with her eyes, the doctor said my mother should eat a lot more green leafy vegetables. So, rather than buy them from the shops, where they tend to be a tough and quite expensive proposition, I thought I’d grow my own.

Brassicas are also useful in crop rotation... it isn’t good to keep on planting the same species of veg in the same places.

The downside is that they can be slightly more difficult to grow, they do have a lot of pests, and to be honest – personally I don’t like the taste of most brassicas. I have come to the conclusion I can live with kale, so that will be an experiment this year... trying out chard and kale to try to improve our health.

When will I dig out the brassica bed?

It is coming to that point in the year where, even if the soil is not quite workable yet, I am pondering... I need to redesign the veg plot a little, the original design has been swamped with Rhubarb and Raspberries, and other perennial soft fruit, which we love... but which makes digging a little difficult.

It is the downside of our approach to gardening, which is more or less haphazard, while we understand the theory of design... it is our private space, and we often do things that are wrong simply because it is our.

Deciding which brassica’s to plant.


I am thinking cabbage, kale, and maybe a few other brassica’s... I wonder which ones you recommend?

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