Tuesday 30 June 2009

High Maintenance Brassicas.

After pulling up my cabbages because they had some speckly yellowing of the leaves - suspected mildewy sickness? I was thinking, as I always have, why bother with brassicas? They are fussy; needing rich, limey soil, they are greedy for food and water and space, they are eaten by everything - birds, slugs, aphids, cabbage whites, root flys, flea beetles, moths - oh but not eaten by teenagers and the fussy other-half and they can suffer any number of ailments from various mildews and club root. And although I like eating them I don't love them, not like I love tomatoes or asparagus or raspberries or onions or garlic or most other things. So I was thinking what am I going to put in the brassica bed - perhaps some runner beans I dunno but I wasn't thinking "umm, yeah I'll definitely do more high maintenance brassicas in there!" Well then along came our friends 'the vegetarians.' They are lovingly nicknamed 'the vegetarians' because once when I was chatting to them, a flock of low flying canadian geese flew over, I pretended to aim and shoot them with my hoe that I happened to be holding and they were appalled and declared their love and respect of all animals! Anyway along come our lovely allotment friends with gifts of two cauliflower seedlings, two cabbage seedlings and a brussel sprout seedling. I had given them a couple courgette plants a few weeks ago. So here I am in a quandary. I smiled graciously thanked them and thought to myself well at least I don't have to worry about what I put in the bed. Or do I!?!

3 comments:

Carrie said...

The only brassicas I like/love are pak choi and rainbow chard and broccoli - things you can stir fry. The 'real' cabbages are yucky and always seem to be the first to get distroyed by the birds, plus I utterly hate cauliflower - HATE IT. I say grow only what you really want to eat and forget about the rest! xx

Jo said...

I love brassicas, and cabbage especially is one veg which my fussy 14 year old WILL eat without any complaints.
You're right though, they are high maintenance. I've got my brassicas netted against pigeons and Cabbage White butterflies, but the slugs still got to them!

Garden Girl said...

I'll go for purple sprouting broccoli, and romanesco (spiral) broccoli, but other than that... I eat them, but don't love them.

Perhaps you can't possibly grow your gift seedlings because you have some horrible brassica-killing disease? Not exactly club root, but something equally nasty?