Preparation Of Ridges And Sowing Of White Cabbage

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Read the previous part. ← Growing seedlings of white cabbage

Preparing the bed for growing cabbage

Our site is a former swamp. In the fall, when digging the soil with a full bayonet of a shovel or pitchfork, I bury the waste of all plants that have borne fruit or faded into the garden bed - leaves of beets, carrots, radishes, cabbage, etc.

As well as cut stems of Jerusalem artichoke, goldenrod, phlox, helenium, asparagus, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and other vegetable and flower crops. If the autumn is rainy, then I am already calm, the water quickly leaves, the more so that the earth is roughly dug up, I do not break clods.

Whether to add dolomite flour to the ridge in the fall is up to each gardener himself. Sometimes I bring it in in the fall, and sometimes I don’t pour it at all, I look at the previous culture, how it looked. If there is manure, then I bring it in too - generously, I do not regret it. It turns out about two buckets per 1 m². In the spring, I scatter mineral fertilizer over the garden. Here, each gardener must decide for himself how much to make. Above, I have already given the ratio of the necessary elements for different types of soil.

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Since my soil is peat-boggy, I need to apply fertilizers in the ratio N: P: K = 1: 1.5: 4. I still use Azofoska, where the ratio of N: P: K = 1: 1: 1, which means that my cabbage does not have enough potassium. Therefore, I must not skip the potassium supplement. Remembering the situation in 1998, when because of the rains I could not feed the cabbage with mineral fertilizers, now I sometimes add potassium along with Azofoska in spring. Now they sell potassium magnesium, I use this fertilizer, you can use potassium sulfate, potassium chloride.

What do I do in the spring if there was no manure in the fall? There are options here. If there is manure in the spring, then I scatter it, dig up a cabbage patch. After that, I scatter mineral fertilizers and close them with a rake. If there is no manure in the spring, then I also scatter mineral fertilizers over the dug-up bed, embedding them in the soil. Then I dig holes for seedlings - wide and deep (30x30 cm), fill them with compost or humus. Cabbage will sit in these holes.

There is a third option: I scatter mineral fertilizers, compost, humus along the ridge dug up in the fall. I close everything up with a rake or pitchfork to a depth of 8-10 cm. In this case, there should be at least two buckets of humus or compost per 1 m². In this version, I definitely do one top dressing with mullein infusion. You cannot teach to deoxidize the soil in words, every gardener should know his garden, the characteristics of his soil. I have different soil acidity in different places on my site. I know their features. Last fall, I prepared a bed for cabbage where in the spring of 2014 it would be enough for me to add only ash.

When planting, the seedlings must be buried at the first true leaf: when watering, the earth settles, and then roots form on the stem. I once used this feature of cabbage in my practice. When I first found keel on cabbage, I decided to check: can the seedlings take root if I cut off the damaged roots along with the stem? She freed all the seedlings from the soil, washed the roots and cut off even those roots with a stem where there was no keel.

I planted a whole ridge, but then I had to water and water the planting. An article about this experience with a photo of the garden was published then in the magazine "Household Economy". The cabbage turned out, but I was interested to know: will the keel remain on the cut plants? Yes, it was, but on single plants, and at the same time the keel did not have time to grow large and did not cause harm.

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People say: "Cabbage loves water and good weather." When planting seedlings in the holes, I do not pour water, but with my hand I rake the soil, put a glass of seedlings in the hole. If I see that it is shallow, then I deepen the hole, then I take the plant out of the cup and put it in the hole, cover it with earth until the first true leaf, without pressing it with my hand. Only after that I water. And I do this several times until the water is no longer absorbed into the soil. After that, I sprinkle the holes with humus, and if not, then with compost. My favorite weather for planting seedlings is rain. Then it takes root very well.

We mark the garden

How much distance to leave between plants when planting? There are standards for early maturing varieties and hybrids. But I define it according to the situation, since I already well know what space this or that variety or hybrid will take on the ridge with its leaves. There are options - 40x40 cm or 50x50 cm. Here is an example from practice: I have cabbage seedlings of variety Number One 147, the ridge is filled with manure and mineral fertilizers, besides, I also added Omug biofertilizer.

It is clear to me that under these conditions the plant will form large leaves, the head of cabbage will be large. In this case, the distance will be 50x50 cm. If the soil is poor, there is no manure, but only compost, then the plants of this variety in this case can be left with a distance of 40x40 cm or 40x50 cm. Or here's another example from my practice: for many years I have grown early ripening cabbage hybrids Cossack F1, Malachite F1 and made sure that these plants require a distance of at least 60x40 cm on my bed, or 60x50 cm is better. So take a closer look at the plants, they themselves will tell you what area they need to allocate.

As for mid-season varieties and hybrids, this advice can be attributed to them. According to the standard, they need to leave a distance of 70x50 cm, but here, I think, we also need to proceed from the quality of filling the ridge, especially since mid-season varieties sit in the garden until the end of September, and we remove the early ripening ones already in July. It should be borne in mind that cabbage is important not only food, but also light, ventilation under the leaves.

I do not forget to loosen the soil, especially after each watering and after rain. It is believed that on light soils this should be done 4-5 times, on heavy soils - 8-9 times. My soil is not heavy, but I loosen it often. I poke up necessarily - the old varieties twice, and modern hybrids, which have a very low stem, they seem to sit on the ground - I huddle once.

Sowing dates for cabbage

How to understand white cabbage - what to sow, and when to start sowing seeds? Early ripening varieties and hybrids have been mainly used for food and for harvesting since July. But in the northern regions there used to be varieties Number One 147 and Polyarny K-206. And they were used for salting. For this, their heads of cabbage were cooked whole in large cauldrons, and then salted. Now the climate has changed, and mid-season varieties have time to grow.

Early ripening varieties vegetate for 85-110 days, or rather, to be scrupulously accurate, early ripening varieties are also subdivided into very early ripening, early ripening and medium early varieties. For example, I have records for several years. Cabbage of the Malachite F1 hybrid in 1995 ripened in 101 days. She sowed the seeds on April 3, the seedlings grew for 48 days, planted it in the ground on May 21, the cabbage was ready on July 7.

In 1996, heads of cabbage of the same hybrid matured in 125 days, i.e. the hybrid did not meet the early maturing deadlines. Sowed seeds on March 28, planted seedlings on May 18, i.e. it grew 52 days, the cabbage was ready only on July 30. Probably, I wanted to get my cabbage in 1996 even earlier than in 1995, but later I became convinced: the earlier you sow, the longer it grows. But here you still need to decide when the soil ripens in the garden to plant seedlings.

There are folk signs on the timing of sowing cabbage seeds and planting seedlings in the ground. April 29 sowing - Irina seedling. Seedlings are planted on May 18-25 - Arina rassadnitsa. When planting seedlings in the corners of the ridge, folk signs recommend digging or planting nettles (without roots), saying: "Nettles are for worms, and cabbage for us." This was taught to me (19-year-old I worked as an agronomist) women who worked in the fields.

Once I prepared the seedlings for planting, and the soil was not yet ready, it was cold, it was raining with snow. And so I went to pick nettles, and it grows in my place, and I saw that the grass rose only 3-4 cm, i.e. rose a little. And I realized that the sowing dates for Irina are not always suitable. These signs were once written and calculated for the middle lane, and the places where we plowed the land now were not inhabited at all.

I calculate for myself the terms of sowing and planting as follows: early ripening varieties - seedlings grow 50-55 days, hybrids - 47-48 days, some - 35-40 days. Seedlings of mid-season varieties and hybrids grow 35-40 days, late-maturing varieties - 45-47 days, hybrids - 40-45 days.

Mid-season varieties and hybrids are mostly salted. It is desirable that they ripen by the end of September. If they ripen in August, you will have trouble storing it. They ripen in 120-130 days from the day of germination, which means that you can sow seeds on May 1-5. I once sowed a hybrid Rinda F1 on May 8, cabbage ripened on October 1.

Mid-late varieties and hybrids ripen in 130-150 days, they are also good in salting. For many years I have grown cabbage Belorusskaya 455, Losinoostrovskaya 8, Taninskaya and Midor F1. Losinoostrovskaya and Taininskaya are kilo-resistant. I told above about my experiment with pruning the roots of seedlings to get rid of the keel. So, there was no disease on the seedlings of these two varieties.

Late-ripening varieties, and now they are mostly hybrids, ripen in 150-130 days. Their heads are stored almost until the new harvest. But the heads of these hybrids should lie down for four months, only then they can be fermented. As soon as they appeared, I tried to grow them, but since I had nowhere to store the heads of cabbage, I had to give up growing them.

Luiza Klimtseva, experienced gardener

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