Page 12 - Simply Vegetables Spring 2024

Glazebrook happened to come round and said ‘more likely club root’; and indeed he was right, an autopsy revealed club root, so repeated blanket watering encouraged the club root spores to spread through the ground like blotting paper.
It’s 2022 and the brassicas are due back on Plot four, not wanting a repetition of 2018, I decide to grow this year’s brassicas in the raised bed. The raised bed is around 60 feet long by 10 feet wide (18m by 3m) by 3 feet (90cm) high and was built for growing exhibition roots, and indeed I did have some success with the Gladiator parsnips and long carrots.
For some time I have been experimenting making collars or discs to supplement the proprietary collars to prevent cabbage root fly larvae getting down to the roots; lino worked but was a bit inflexible. One year I ran out of proprietary collars I then had a eureka moment, why not cut up the leftover paper plates from exhibiting; so year on year I tried a few more paper discs and remarkably they worked. This is the results for 2022. Seventeen ten foot (3m) rows, around one hundred and forty plants in total, of which fourteen rows were installed with paper plate discs and four rows with proprietary collars. Both are degradable
but I do find that the proprietary ones are occasionally thrown up by the cultivator the following season. Varieties were cabbages, Brigadier, Rovite, Dutchman, Jan King, others were Romanesco, Purple sprouting broccoli, Braemar Brussel sprouts, Maximus Brussel sprouts and Raleigh cauliflowers. Only two Dutchman cabbage looked sickly, but they picked up and cropped, out of all those plants none died of cabbage root
fly, some died because of the intense heat, particularly in July where we had the two hottest, longest days ever. In general, the varieties we grow in the UK are not bred for those kinds of temperatures.
Brassicas, July 2022
Paper plate discs; here’s how you do it. The plates can be bought from Morrison’s and are £2.25 for a pack of fifty. One plate will make three to four discs depending on size. Draw a three-to-four-inch circle on the paper plate, you should get at least three circles. Cut out the discs with scissors, mark the centre of the disc and make a cut from the edge of the disc into
the centre, then with small,
pointed scissors make four
cuts in the centre in form of
a star, each cut about a 1⁄4
of an inch, push your little
finger through the middle
to splay out the four points.
Gently pass the disc around
the base of the plant and
with both thumb nails press back the four points to ‘seal’ up the stem. I tend to plant my brassicas plants quite deep, pull back most of the soil and firm down, then apply the disc, the disc, ideally requires to be
flat and about an inch below the surface, replace the soil to ground level. Do not
Mice or vole damage to Dutchman cabbage.
firm down again, the extra planting depth should prevent the plants rocking about in the wind, which is probably the reason for failure. One cauli I harvested still had the disc around its stem. Should anyone doubt that I actually have a problem – read on?
I estimate I would lose at least a third to a half of the plants with not using collars or discs. Several years ago, I covered the newly planted brassicas plants with
30gr horticultural fleece; I thought this will sort the little b------ out. Around three weeks later the
fleece was closer to the ground than when I planted the brassicas, pulling the fleece back all the brassicas’ plants, around sixty, were dead. The autopsy revealed the roots had been eaten; this confirms two things, (a) there had been no brassicas on that plot for four years, so the pupae lay in the soil
until I turned them up by the cultivator, (b) Covering the plants up made the hatching pupae captive, providing there are both sexes, then the hatched flies will carry on as normal, that is mate and deposit eggs by the stem of the plant. I did read somewhere that the ground should be prepared at least five days before planting, this I presume would allow any pupae brought to the top to hatch out, mate and then not be able to find a suitable host plant. Where this bit of advice falls down is that no other ground on the plot should be disturbed in that
five days, this, of course applies to your neighbouring plots as well; try telling your fellow plot holders to keep off their plots for five days.
In 2022 I am happy to report no clubroot in the raised bed despite copious amounts of watering and no cabbage root fly, since the plants were netted, no woodpigeons either.
Well in theory that should have been that
One cauli I harvested still had the disc around its stem
12 Simply Vegetables