Broccoli? Or not broccoli?
A couple of weeks ago I received some mail order vegetable plants – the very last of the season being sent out by a British plant company called Delfland Nurseries, based in Cambridgeshire. (www.organicplants.co.uk)
My order was for spring cabbage 'Duncan', calabrese 'pacifica,'and garlic 'messidrome', all certified to organic standard by the Soil Association.
The order, which saw around 15 healthy young plants arrive, plus the garlic bulbs, cost 8.80, which I considered pretty good value when I'd forgotten to buy, plant and grow on any seeds myself.
This week, after being potted on in my utility room since the beginning of October, they made it onto the allotment.
First in was the garlic, which strictly speaking should have gone in the ground in October but as it hasn't been frosty the ground was nice and warm and crumbly for planting.
Trying desperately to remember the crop rotation thingy, I put both the garlic and my brassicas in the space where my potatoes had been earlier this year.
Apart from having to deep weed out the creeping grass, the soil seemed pretty good, probably more down to the care of the previous tenant than anything I'd done since taking over in February.
Garlic is one of the few crops you can plant using supermarket versions.
You can't use shooting potatoes from your veg rack but garlic is fine.
However, I'm trying to do things properly so I planted out my precious garlic cloves six inches apart, about three inches deep and a foot between rows (after asking a fellow allotmenteer for advice).
You should incorporate some sand for drainage, as it's the wet that rots them over winter. Hopefully, my soil won't waterlog.
Then in went my little cabbages and broccoli.
Now, I've said broccoli but, apparently, that green stuff in the supermarkets and greengrocers? One of the few vegetables kids don't object to eating? Er, it's not actually broccoli.
The words 'broccoli' and 'calabrese' are different varieties of the same vegetable.
In general terms, calabrese produces green heads whereas broccoli produces purple or white heads. The most common in the UK is 'calabrese' which, annoyingly, is sold in the supermarkets as 'broccoli'.
So that pedantic greengrocer who always corrects you? He's right.
Anyway, my calabrese 'pacifica' doesn't like root disturbance, so the fact I was gouging them in and out of their pots probably doesn't bode well.
However, we can only wait hopefully until June to see if any survive my ham-fistedness.
In the meantime, they've been covered with netting to keep off the pigeons and I've scattered Growing Success organic slug killer to keep off the little so-and-sos who are the only things on the allotment who WON'T die. . .
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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