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Growing Early Cabbage On Black Covering Material
Growing Early Cabbage On Black Covering Material

Video: Growing Early Cabbage On Black Covering Material

Video: Growing Early Cabbage On Black Covering Material
Video: CABBAGE PRODUCTION tips with Elizabeth Benjamin 2024, March
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A lot of dresses, a lot of crunch, and her name is … cabbage

White cabbage
White cabbage

Early cabbage Parel F1 ripens.

Many gardeners do not grow cabbage due to the fact that it requires too much attention to itself. She has many diseases and a huge number of pests, perhaps more than other vegetable crops grown by gardeners.

She needs a huge amount of water for irrigation. In stores, this cabbage is inexpensive during the salting period, so many gardeners refuse to grow it.

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So I haven't grown cabbage for more than fifteen years. Only in the crisis 90s, a sufficiently large plot of land was allocated for it. She planted early, middle, late varieties of white cabbage and cauliflower, as well as exotic varieties for us: Chinese, Brussels sprouts, broccoli and kohlrabi. Alas, the site turned out to be infected with a keel. The fact is that once it was a state farm land on which cabbage and other crops were planted.

My plantings hurt, I fought as best I could, and then I refused to grow cabbage crops altogether. And when last season I decided to grow cabbage, I realized that I could not plant my seedlings here because of the threat of a keel disease. Therefore, I decided to plant cabbage on my cousin's plot (she has a plot a few houses from ours), because cabbage crops have never been planted there for more than fifty years.

The difficulty in growing cabbage seedlings is that the seedlings are often attacked by the black leg, and the plants die. Spores of this disease are most often found in the ground or cabbage seeds are infected with it. To prevent this from happening, I sow cabbage seeds into a mixture of soil made up of washed coconut substrate, washed river sand and crushed peat tablets. I mix it all well. For the first time, there will be enough nutrients in this soil.

I decided to grow early cabbage, last season I sowed its seeds on April 9, the day of the leaf according to the lunar sowing calendar. I think this is a late date. This season I will do it earlier - in mid-March, as I usually did before.

I poured the sown seeds with Extrasol, placed the boxes in a plastic bag and put them on a glazed, non-insulated balcony. At the time, the temperature outside was -5 ° C. On the balcony, it was no higher than + 8 ° C. Under such conditions, the seedlings will immediately harden and will not stretch. The main task when growing seedlings is to grow them stocky, then the harvest will be good.

On the third day - April 12 - all the seeds sprouted together. So that the cabbage seedlings did not take up much space on the balcony, I did not dive and did not plant them in separate pots, but on April 26 I took them to the dacha and planted them in a greenhouse (made of cellular polycarbonate) one plant in a row at intervals of 10 cm along the ridge. The plant already had one or two true leaves. I planted it on a garden bed that was prepared for tomatoes, and the soil there was moderately filled with incompletely rotted compost. I poured Energen (one bottle for 10 liters of water).

All landings were covered with dense spunbond from the sun. I took it off five days later. I did not water it often, as it was still cold outside and the earth did not dry out quickly. On May 1, I poured Novofert universal with a fertilizer solution (according to the instructions). The seedlings looked very strong, stocky and large.

On May 18, we planted cabbage seedlings outside. They were planted in the evening so that the plants would take root better, as the weather was rather warm for this time. I used to plant seedlings of varietal (non-hybrid) cabbage in late April, and harvest early cabbage in early June. Last season I didn't have a place for cabbage ready, so I was so late.

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White cabbage
White cabbage

F1 Early Market Princess

Under the cabbage, my cousin and I dug out a good piece of land in her garden, overgrown with dandelions, nettles and thistles. The big disadvantage of this site was the presence of snails on these weeds. We destroyed the snails that came across during the cultivation of the land, but from their eggs they later hatched offspring, which we then had to tinker with.

But they did not cause significant damage to our cabbage, because they sat only on the lower leaves, and we constantly checked them, collecting pests. The ridges were not made, because this piece of land was at the bottom of the hillside - there was a level place without a slope. In addition, all surface water from the slope must flow there, and then less water is required for irrigation.

In order not to weed cabbage plantings all summer and water them less often, I decided to try to plant cabbage seedlings on black spunbond. It was a risky move, because in hot weather the cabbage could get hot on it. But I already knew that the summer would not be hot, and therefore I took a chance, especially since this cabbage is early, and it should have ripened before the July heat.

The plot of land was well dug up and leveled with a rake so that there was a flat surface, and it was closed with a spanbond for its entire width (we took No. 90 - it is more dense and of high quality), pressing it down along the edges with bricks so that there were no holes where snails and others could crawl cabbage pests. On spunbond, with an interval of 60-70 cm, I made cross-shaped cutouts, placed them in a checkerboard pattern.

The virgin land on the site rested, but was not at all fertile, so I added 2 handfuls of ash to each hole, one teaspoon of double superphosphate, azophoska, potassium magnesium, 1/4 teaspoon of AVA (powder) and several handfuls of compost. All this was well mixed with a garden shovel. But next time, I will apply fertilizer randomly, followed by a shallow (half a shovel's spade) digging, and put the compost into the hole. I did this one small bed later, in order to compare the result afterwards. And I came to the conclusion that this is how it should be done. The seedling roots will not burn with fertilizers and will grow better.

After preparing the beds, I started transplanting seedlings from the greenhouse. In order for it to painlessly take root and not wither in the following days, it was necessary to remove it from the ground without damaging the roots. To do this, I poured it abundantly and carefully dug it out with a garden scoop, not very wide, but slightly curved inward. The clod of earth was wet through and through, and the earth did not fall off from the roots. She carefully laid out each root ball on a piece of plastic wrap and set it on the bottom of the bucket so that the seedlings were located there in one row, and each plant was in its own film house. I had to go for seedlings several times.

Having made a deep hole in the ground on a plot prepared for cabbage, I put a bag of seedlings there, then carefully pulled out the film and covered the seedling with earth to the lower leaves. The sister immediately plentifully and carefully, so as not to wash out the soil, watered the plant. They did not spare the water. Planting alone is inconvenient, because alternating planting with watering is too time-consuming, but together it turns out very efficiently and quickly.

After all the seedlings were planted and watered, then the planted plants were shed again with Energen's solution. So that cabbage butterflies and leaf beetles do not encroach on our cabbage and so that it does not then be watered with insecticides, the planted seedlings were closed on top with white dense spunbond. He also protected her from the sun.

Many experts recommend to loosen the soil under the cabbage plants several times, but it was impossible for us to do this - the holes in the spanbond are small, only so that you can water in them. But thanks to compost, the soil under the plant became loose, and there was no need for loosening.

Often there was no need to water the cabbage; under the black spunbond, the ground remained wet for a long time. It was very cold in June, and the cabbage did not suffer from this, because it was seasoned. The ground beneath the black spunbond was warm. To water the cabbage, the white spunbond was removed, and then it was immediately returned to its place so that pests did not crawl. The plants were watered abundantly, sparing no water, right into the hole in the black spunbond. Once every ten days, the plantings were fed with a solution of liquid manure (a mixture of horse, chicken, sapropel, Extrasol).

White cabbage
White cabbage

Cabbage Parel F1

We removed the first heads of cabbage three months after the day of sowing seeds - July 9th. It was a hybrid of the early Parel F1 cabbage. The weight of the heads of cabbage was from one to 1.3 kg. We liked its taste very much. In addition, of all the planted hybrids, he was also the most beautiful - his plants looked like green roses. The color of the leaves is a very beautiful salad color. This hybrid will take pride of place with us in the new season.

A week and a half later, the second planted F1 Early Market Princess hybrid was matured. Her appearance was not very beautiful until the heads of cabbage grew: at first the leaves were bluish in color, it differed from Parel F1 and lost to him, but when the heads of cabbage matured, then the appearance became very much even nothing. The main thing is that it tasted good too, and the weight of the heads of cabbage was the same, but it grew longer, so I won't plant it again. The crop was filmed in full technical maturity of the cabbage: when the topmost cover leaf cracks. This cabbage is very juicy and crispy.

In addition to sowing cabbage seeds for seedlings at home, I sowed them in the greenhouse, but a month earlier - on March 9th. I wanted to test these plants for cold resistance and find out: is it possible to sow cabbage seeds in a greenhouse, and not tinker with them at home.

There was no snow last season, so the ground thawed quickly, and there was no need to shovel snow around the greenhouse. Usually I start the summer cottage season in March by clearing snow around the greenhouses so that the beds begin to warm up faster. Snowdrifts do not allow all ridges to warm up at the same time. Therefore, I advise everyone to do it.

The seedlings sown in the greenhouse did not sprout all the way, and were very elongated, because they sprouted under spunbond, and there were cloudy days outside. But when I planted it in the ground, I plunged its long leg into the ground to the lower leaves. She was planted simultaneously with the seedlings sown at home. I didn't like her appearance either.

For myself, I concluded that cabbage for seedlings does not need to be sown in the greenhouse so early, it is better to do this at home and in mid-March, and then plant it with one real leaf in the greenhouse. Cabbage seeds sown for seedlings in a greenhouse, as a rule, are sown frequently, and subsequently the seedlings are not thinned out, so the seedlings build up a bad root system and stretch out. In addition, pathogens are present in the living soil of the greenhouse, which is not present in the artificial soil for cabbage seedlings at home.

I planted one cabbage plant on my plot to check: is the keel preserved in the soil? The result made me happy. The head of cabbage has grown weighing 1.2 kg. I hope that in the past fifteen years this disease has disappeared from our site, especially since we annually introduce a huge amount of organic matter into the soil, renewing it. So now I will grow cabbage and on my site.

It is early cabbage that we love very much: it is tender and crispy, good both in cabbage soup and in salads, so I wanted to eat it all summer, especially since last summer the weather was the most cabbage - it was cold and rainy. And we decided to sow a second batch of early cabbage seeds for seedlings in early June. She sowed in the ridges of the greenhouse so that the leaf beetles did not eat the seedlings. I had to dig out another piece of land in my sister's garden, and also use a bed with tulips - they faded, the stems withered, it was already possible to dig up their bulbs. By the way, I can recommend this method to effectively use the land on the site to other gardeners.

On June 20, the seedlings were planted in the ground, also on a black spunbond. The same set of fertilizers was applied to the ground. To protect against snails, under a black spunbond, she scattered ash all over the ground and spread chopped and crushed arrows of garlic. It was cold outside: up to + 15 ° C during the day and + 7 ° C at night, so this batch of cabbage took root very well. In July it was very hot, cabbage on a black spunbond did not suffer, as it was covered with a white spunbond from pests, which also reflected the sun's rays.

White cabbage
White cabbage

Head of cabbage Parel F1

Hybrids of early cabbage Reactor F1, Express F1 from Sortsemovosch were planted. Reactor F1 matured at the end of August (there were very few seeds in the package), but instead of the hybrid of early head cabbage Express F1 (there were suspiciously many seeds in the package for the hybrid), there was a Brussels sprouts, which would not have grown at such late sowing dates, so I had to pull it out. Last season, this company failed not only with cabbage, there were other crops of the wrong variety, which is stated on the package.

For myself, I decided that this season we will again plant early cabbage on several dates, as well as necessarily late cabbage hybrids, and only on black spunbond. Because during the entire growing season, cabbage had to be weeded only once - a week after planting the seedlings, and then only small weeds around the plants, where there was a space that was not covered by spunbond. This method is very convenient, and, most importantly, there is no need to waste precious time on weeding, loosening, and it was necessary to water less often. Only in the heat did we water the plantings every other day.

Olga Rubtsova, gardener,

candidate of geographical sciences

Vsevolozhsky district of the

Leningrad region

Photo by the author

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