Cabbages and kale under the row coverYesterday morning I noticed that my schedule says to plant my storage carrots on July 10th. Last year I did it on the 6th. You would think I would have plenty of time, but carrots won't size up here if not planted early enough. The neighboring trees and houses will shade the yard a lot in the fall. So I have to get them in early enough to start sizing up before fall hits. I can wait until November to pick them but I can't wait to plant.
But first I had to free up the bed which had kale, cabbages, and a few turnips.
It is good that I've pulled the cabbages as a couple had just started to split. No real damage had been done but there would have been if I waited much longer.
Cabbages always seem so wasteful. You grow all those wonderful leaves, but then you cut them off and just leave the inside leaves.
Well my compost is well fed. Too bad I don't have neighbor with chickens. I'm sure they would have loved those leaves.
I picked two Early Jersey cabbages and three Point One. Each kind had over 5 pounds. So these cabbages aren't huge, but that is a lot of cabbage to be eating. Luckily they keep well.
It turned out that the timing for the kale couldn't have been better either. Some aphids had started to take up residence. There weren't many of them. But as I picked them I tore off the infected parts. I suppose I could wash them off, but that was way too much work. Mostly they came in big clumps on small parts of the leaves. But with the arrival of the aphids, it means I'll have to start checking my broccoli plants. The one problem with growing them year round is that you can't avoid the aphids. So I'll be getting my soap sprayer out soon.
And in the afternoon I finally got the carrot seed planted. I hate planting in the afternoon, I much prefer to do my garden work in the morning. I don't mind sweating with hard work, but when I'm just sitting there in the sun it feels worse for some reason. And it takes a while to seed the whole bed. But it is done. I have one more bed that needs to be transitioned to fall crops. That is the carrot bed that will turn into brassicas. I think that will get done next week sometime as the transplants are almost big enough.
It looks like some parasitizing wasps made it under the cover too, there's a few mummies amongst the living. I always like seeing that, but they never keep the aphids under control. I've seen hover fly larvae and lady beetles wipe out an aphid population, but not generally on brassicas. I had to resort to a Pyganic treatment on my broccoli recently, nothing else seemed to work. Pyganic is organic approved, but it's strong stuff and I don't like to use it unless absolutely necessary.
ReplyDeleteHi Daphne, Your cabbages look good. Do you store them in the refrigerator? I didn't know chickens like cabbage leaves. Instead of putting mine in the compost I will give them to my neighbor who has chickens. Thanks for the tip! Nancy
ReplyDeleteHi Daphne, I've been reading your blog for awhile now, and I look forward to your posts.
ReplyDeleteI have installed hoops over my raised beds similar to yours, and am looking for the row covers like yours where they keep out the insects. Do you remember the name of yours? or can you direct me to a site where I might find some like them? I would greatly appreciate it.
http://www.veggiecare.com/products.html
DeleteI'm assuming you mean the white ones. They are expensive (from Australia). This is their fifth year in the garden and they are starting to show wear. I use rebar at the bottom to help hold them down and I'm getting holes where the rebar wears, in addition I'm getting some wear where the clips are holding them on. I also use fabric netting (from a fabric store, the brown wispy row covers) which is really cheap, but tears so easily and doesn't last from year to year. I'm thinking of trying Enviromesh to replace it eventually if I can get it in the states.
Our third lot of carrot sowings so far are surviving slugmeggedden
ReplyDeleteI have just been out picking off caterpillars from my Savoy cabbages. You have to be on your guard all the time! I harvested a few carrots yesterday - the first this year - and they were pretty good, with no fly damage at all, which is a vindication of my use of Enviromesh.
ReplyDeleteI planted my carrots super late this year, but I'm hoping that it will be a learning experience. The last time I did a "fall planting" of carrots, I sowed them in early August, which was much too late. It was also a shadier bed (and so is the current one), so I'm sure that slowed things down as well.
ReplyDeleteAfter digging up the garlic I planted basil in one bed and thinking of putting carrots in the other... we have has so much rain that it's been hard to get anything to do well this year. Except the things I planted straw bales. ... are thriving :)
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