Carrots and Cabbages

Friday I went gleaning in the morning. I told myself before I left that I had to water my brassica seedlings. The weather has been hot and sunny and they needed the water. So what did I do? Yes I forgot. I came back and they were all wilted. I wasn't sure if they were going to live or not. Luckily they bounced back. A bit of some of the leaves died, but nothing major. If they had died I still would have had time to replant. Well all except the kale as I've used up my kale seed.

But because of that I decided they really needed to get in the ground. The carrots were as big as they were going to get and I needed that garden space.

So out they came. I decided to wash them off fairly well before bringing them into the kitchen as they were very dirty.

These carrots are all Mokums and Yayas. The Mokums are longer and thinner and the Yaya shorter and fatter. They both did pretty well.

Even though they both had nematodes. I did get a fair share of split and stumpy carrots from that, but all in all they grew through the problem well. There was a bit of carrot fly damage but just on a few carrots. The row cover worked out well.

I was too hot to want to plant up that day and wanted to give the poor cabbages a chance to recover from their ordeal. So I just tossed the row cover back to keep the cats out.

This morning I finally got to putting them into the ground. I have three Michihili cabbages, 4 Napa cabbages, 9 kohlrabis, and 8 Early Jersey cabbages. I picked the plants that had the least damage to their leaves. I'm hoping they will be fine. Such stress can cause plants to bolt. I hope they won't. If you notice I had the hoops up for the row cover already.

I have three tall row covers. And all three were being used, but the one on the fresh eating carrots didn't have to be tall. Most of the cabbages were out already, with just one left that is still sizing up. So I took the tall row cover off of here and moved it over. Now this patch has a short row cover. And I have a lot of those. I think my garden is a row cover jigsaw. Not only do I plan where to put my crops, but in that design I also plan what row covers to use.

Do you see the weird hump in the front of the row cover? Well my brick paths are pretty and all, but they need a foundation. The first foot into the beds is packed hard and not something you would want to grow in. The big hoops won't go in far enough to hold up. So I've been using my little wire hoops to hold it out at the ends. Those can penetrate a bit more and don't need as much support.

The broccoli have one of the other tall row covers. I removed one row of the broccoli as I harvested it. The other half will give me side shoots this summer. But the empty spot got five more broccoli plants. Half are Fiesta and half Arcadia. I'm not sure which one has one more as I didn't pay attention, but it doesn't really matter. I'm sure they will all grow well. To make sure the older plants don't shade these out before they get started, I broke off the lower leaves. I do this anyway at this time as the lower leaves start to die. If I leave them on they will spread a black mildew disease around the whole patch. So I keep the older leaves off before they die off and rot.

I now have much of the fall garden planted up but there is a lot to do still. I still need to get the next succession of lettuce planted. I need to sow the next succession of turnips and beets. I wish I could plant the kale, but it will go in after the onions, so I need to pot up the transplants I have. I think potting up once will be enough. The onions ought to be out in a few weeks. A little later in the season I'll be direct seeding (probably) my baby Asian greens and the fall spinach.