CABBAGES (THREE DIFFERENT ONES)
This week Dirty Nails has been both sowing, tending and eating cabbages. This green-leaved doyen of the veg patch comes in many different varieties that can be sown and harvested practically year-round.
On the plot, he has just put down a line of January King 3. This handsome customer is a big, fat, heavy ‘winter cabbage’, so-called because a harvestable state is attained from December. Warm, moist, weed-free soil is ideal for receiving cabbage seeds. Dirty Nails works from flat wooden boards which spread his weight and protect the growing medium. He turns and rakes the earth into a fine and level tilth, then marks out straight rows with string tied tight between two canes. After carving out a 2cm-deep furrow with a finger tip and depositing the magic pieces sparingly but evenly into this, the back of a hand is employed to brush soil back over and pat it gently even. Soon baby cabbages will be emerging and, when large enough to handle comfortably, the weakest will be removed so that those left standing are at roughly 5cm intervals.
Filderkraut is the German cabbage variety of choice for making sauerkraut. It is a ’summer cabbage’ which, from a sowing made in the greenhouse during February, should yield really sizeable, pointed heads of densely folded leaves from late July to September. Dirty Nails planted his charges out into firm and fertile ground in April. They have thrived since then but a couple succumbed to the cabbage root fly at the weekend. This insect lays eggs around the stem base. Hatching maggots burrow to the cabbage roots and feed away merrily before pupating, emerging and repeating the cycle. Afflicted members of the cabbage tribe go pale and droopy. With no roots for anchorage, the gentlest of tugs will pull them out. Swift removal is advisable. The only non-chemical solution is to fit 10cm-square pieces of carpet underlay, or purpose-made collars, around the stem to act as a physical barrier. But as with all good plans, sometimes even that don’t work!
In the kitchen, the superb so-called ‘spring cabbage’ Wheelers Imperial is on the menu. Seeds were sown on 12 August last as advised on the packet and, since May, some wonderful flame-shaped hearts have graced the dinner table. Spring cabbage literally melts in your mouth, being arguably as near to a gourmet vegetable as a cabbage can be.
SEEING THE LIGHT
There’s something special about the light in June. Perfect cloudless blue-sky days are an obvious example, but when sun-rays break through the cloudy blanket after a showery outburst the crystal-clearness can be truly breathtaking. Perhaps it’s the essential moisture that enhances such vivid lushness. Birds certainly sing in those first few minutes of sunshine from rooftops and billowing hedges with reinvigorated gusto.
The happy gardener, that is he (or she) who has braved the rain and in appropriate clothing carried on regardless, is rewarded with being in amongst it at just the moment when already amazing colours become brilliant.
The warm kiss of sun on his back is what prompts Dirty Nails, head down amongst his crops and weeding, to stop, look around, stand up from crouching, place his hands on hips and stretch his back whilst absorbing the life-enhancing spectacle of plants in their prime, growing.
Such moments may be fleeting or might last all afternoon, but they are one of those freely available perks of the job which get him up and at ’em first thing every morning.
Copyright, Joe Hashman June 2010
Tags: cabbage, cabbage root fly, rain