Page 11 - Simply Vegetables Spring 2024

Early May Cabbage root fly collar
Tales and Tails, of the noble Sprout
ADRIAN BAGGALEY
For decades I’ve grown brassicas on my four veg plots on the one-acre plot, there were around thirty market gardeners and growers in the same village at one time, all would grow Brussels, so I was taking part in an illustrious tradition you might say, albeit just a hobby – some hobby.
I think of all the brassicas, the ‘noble’ sprout probably made the most impact; or as my dad called them or referred to what he had done that day – Brussel knobbing. This was picking sprouts for the wholesale market in Nottingham, which has now all but gone. The sight of the huge cracks in his hands put me off Market Gardening
for life. I headed off to the Big City when
I left school. He maintained that you couldn’t break off the knobs with gloves on; anyway, woollen gloves would have been saturated in seconds. All this was long before machines cut off the stem at the base and conveniently removed the sprouts for you. The land in the village was just about all brick clay and I could never understand why the area was famous for market gardening. My uncle who worked the plot long before I did used a horse,
and a stubborn one it was too, there was some pretty ripe language on occasions. Clay means hard work, but once planted
it works in your favour because it retains heat and more importantly moisture. (a point emphasised in 2022, when there was a little over 50mm of rain from April to early October some of the trees in the orchard received no irrigation at all and produced
some of the best and prolific fruit ever – the Power of Clay!).
One day after school I reported to him for ‘plant setting,’ a vague term today, in those days it meant Brussel planting. The spade was rocked backwards and forwards with
most of the plants started to grow, like Lazarus coming back from the dead. There were casualties, but that field produced a crop of Brussel sprouts against all the odds, once again the Power of Clay. I would be around thirty then and the gardening bug was only just starting to take hold, I had planted a handful of fruit trees to relive my scrumping exploits as a boy, those trees eventually turned into hundreds.
Not far off fifty years on, I am growing Brussel knobs, I have
problems with clubroot, cabbage root fly and – woodpigeons. On top of all that the garden appears to have become a refuge for a beautiful four-year-old cock pheasant called Charles and his extended harem; all regard brassicas as hors - doeuvre. Most pheasants don’t make it past New
Year around here.
2018 was the first heatwave of this
century and there have been four since. The brassicas are on veg plot number Four. I want some decent stuff, I am going all
out that year in eight shows, (which is just as well because two have since folded).
It’s hot, little or no rain, I water the plants most days with the hosepipe. The plants look great, cabbages, Brigadier, Hispi, and Autoro, caulis, and Peer Gynt sprouts (sadly no more), and then they start to die one
by one. I am convinced it’s the cabbage root fly – but I did install the collars. Peter
a foot on it to get it down deep enough
to drop in the bare rooted plants. My job was to drop the plant in, I found the whole thing excruciating. In those days I had never heard of club root or cabbage root fly, but everyone knew
what woodpigeons did.
The exact year that the
20-acre odd field at the
top of the orchard was
planted with Brussels I
cannot remember (it is
now a golf course) the
field would be planted up
in the evening as this is
the coolest time. We had
moved on and two men sat
on a tractor drawn machine placing plants in two rotating discs that deposited them into a small furrow. The back breaking work had been taken out of it. By then sadly, my uncle was in the same clay he had worked all his life. The day after planting the plants had flopped on the ground; I couldn’t understand for the life of me why they had planted them in the midst of a heat wave, they were, surely as good as dead. Over the weeks the leaves died leaving just a very small growing tip the plants were hanging on for grim death. Then after months of drought it rained and a miracle happened,
Clay means hard work, but once planted it works in your favour
Simply Vegetables 11