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Relaxed Farming Food: Cabbage
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| Cabbages are
really easy to grow but need a lot of care - slugs, caterpillars and other unwelcome guests adore the tender young leaves, and it is every gardener's headache trying to keep the plants free from damage. The 'Marcello' cabbage below took around
nine weeks to reach harvest time and provided food for both the goats and us. The outer leaves were striped from the plant in the polytunnel and popped into a couple of buckets ready to give to the goats - a very welcome treat which was quickly gobbled down!! The 'heart' or centre of the cabbage was taken up to the kitchen and washed - we used half of the cabbage for lunch shredded and added to a salad, the other half went into a stir fry for our evening meal. Much of the produce from the polytunnel is used the day it is picked, making sure we are getting the most flavour, best texture and maximum nutritional value... Weighing in at 2.2kg, the Marcello cabbage below was harvested on 5th June 2014.
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We sow the cabbage seeds quite thickly in a row in a polytunnel bed at the start of April. When the seedlings are about six weeks old we transplant them (see photo below), leaving a lot of room around each one to allow for growth, and to leave space to remove the weeds with our hoe. We thoroughly water them in and make sure that the slugs do not have a midnight feast!!
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