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!?!