Week 42 - Bed 9

The remaining calabrese plant in the foreground continues to send out bright yellow flowers.

In this photo of a sprouting broccoli plant from above, you can see the lean to the right, towards the light, and away from of a few trees to the north-east (top left) and the side wall of a house to the west (towards bottom of photo).

The Brussels sprouts plants are short, but healthy and are starting to produce the small buds that will form into sprouts in the next few months.

The three kale plants are relatively small as well, but seem healthy and will produce greens through the winter and into the spring.

Week 39 - Bed 9

The one remaining calabrese plant continues to send out flowers, so we have decided to delay pullng it out.

Week 38 - Bed 9 Planting

Most of the plants in this bed are doing well, but there are a few stunted plants, including the calabrese flowering in the foreground that could be removed. This could leave a bit of space to plant something else.
Over the entire bed, under all of these plants, we sowed:

• White Clover - a low lying nitrogen fixing crop that is suitable for undersowing

The clover will grow where there is space under the brassicas for the next few months and will survive the winter. When the brassicas are finished and pulled out, the clover can remain until we are ready to sow into the bed next spring, at which time it can be dug in as a composting crop, adding fertility to the soil.

Three reasonable sized sprouting broccoli plants.

Two small Brussel sprout plants.

Three Pentland Brig Kale plants. This variety can grow quite big, but in the limited space, poor fertility and overshadowing of this back garden, we cannot expect too much.

Week 37 - Bed 9

We have added some well rotted horse manure around the base of these winter brassicas to provide a boost of fertility for the rest of the season and into the spring.

Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli.

Darkmar 21 Brussels Sprouts

Pentland Brig Kale

Week 35 - Bed 9

One of the broccoli plants has produced a head and flowered since we were last at the garden 2 weeks ago, tis crop needs to be harvested promptly.

The Brussels Sprouts are growing well and untouched by any pest, apart from some early slug damage to the lower leaves.

One of the kale plants from above.

Week 31 - Bed 9

Four weeks after transplanting the brassicas are doing reasonably well. The very wet weather has helped the transplants become established, but has prevented them from growing very quickly.

One of the broccoli plants has produced the central edible head, but it is a shame that the plants had not grown larger before flowering.

The kale plant is well established.

We harvested the remaining turnip, which have become quite large, to give more space for the other plants.

Week 27 - Bed 9 Planting

We dug up all of the brassica transplants out of this bed and selected the healthiest plants for transplanting back into the bed at wider spacing, keeping in mind that the turnip will likely be harvested within the next few weeks.

We transplanted three plants of each vegetable, listed from foreground to background in the photo above (south to north):

• Waltman Calabrese Broccoli - autumn maturing variety, with a small central head followed by large number of side shoots
• Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli - early variety producing many purple spears from early March
• Darkmar 21 Brussels Sprouts - a early variety producing large, dark green sprouts in Oct-Dec
• Pentland Brig Kale - a very frost hardy and heavy cropping leafy winter veg with a distinct flavour, with leafy side shoots and spears like broccoli

There were many transplants left over, some of which immediately went to another garden and a few were temporarily heeled in to save them in case space became available in a neighboring garden - see the clump in the foreground of the photo above.

The weather conditions were damp, cool and overcast when we transplanted the young plants, but the sun came out shortly after and the plants stated to wilt because the disturbed roots could not suck up the amount of water that the plant needed. These plants will recover with a good watering and will be helped by the cool wet conditions that are forecast.

We sowed significantly more brassica plants that we had space for, We could have sowed only a half row of each and still had enough. The remaining mix of brassica seedlings that we did not have space for were steamed for dinner!

Week 26 - Bed 9

We cleared out all of the radishes (which would be too big by next week) thinned the turnip and cleared as much of the bed as we could to make room for the brassica transplants next week. The Kohl Rabi never became established.

Beautifully coloured Red Drumhead Cabbage seedlings ready to transplant.

Week 23 - Bed 9

Kale seedlings six week after sowing.

Six week old turnips needing thinning.

Week 21 - Bed 9

All of the brassica seedlings starting to show.

Week 17 - Bed 9 Planting

We removed the sod and dug this bed the previous week and in the fine seedbed we sowed one short row each of the following brassicas (listed order from south to north) for transplanting later in the summer:

• Pentland Brig Kale - a very frost hardy and heavy cropping leafy winter veg with a distinct flavour, with leafy side shoots and spears like broccoli
• Darkmar 21 Brussels Sprouts - a early variety producing large, dark green sprouts in Oct-Dec
• Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli - early variety producing many purple spears from early March
• Waltman Calabrese Broccoli - autumn maturing, with a small central head followed by large number of side shoots
• Holland Late Winter Cabbage - large, white, solid, hardy variety
• Cour di Bue Summer Cabbage - large pointed heart variety, maturing in early autumn, light green in colour
• Red Drumhead (Cabeza) Cabbage - large, solid, ball shaped, deep red variety to harvest from summer to autumn
• Vertus Savoy Cabbage - medium late variety with round flattish heads, medium green, well curled and frost hardy

In the same bed we also planted 2 short rows each of the following brassica family plants:

• Cherry Bell Radish - fast growing scarlet, globe shaped variety
• White Globe Turnip - purple topped, flat, white flesh variety - not to be confused with the Swede Turnip
• Larno Kohl Rabi - pale green variety