Posts Tagged ‘Cabbage Challenge’

DB: I really need to sort out my Cultivation Station.

VG: Have you planted the cabbages I gave you yet?

DB: No not yet I need to sort out the Cultivation Station.

VG: Have you watered the cabbages yet?

DB: It rained…..

VG: *blank look*

DB: (Changing the subject) Do you know what attacks cabbages at this time of year?

VG: You are asking me? Slugs probably, they attack everything. I even spotted one after my pepper plant this morning, luminous orange it was and I could see it from the patio window.

DB: Hmm….. (wishing she hadn’t asked).

VG: You know what? I don’t understand this annual wall planner for growing vegetables.

DB: How’s that?

VG: Well it says I should be planting cabbages in February, but I got mine from the man down the road who said I could plant them now.

DB: The man down the road?

VG: Yes.

DB: Ok (puzzled). Anyway that means planting seeds and your cabbages are already grown.

VG: Oh right, so when does that mean I can harvest them?

DB: Well the best thing to do is look on the packet.

VG: But they didn’t come in a packet.

DB: I don’t know then.

Note to self: Ask man down the road when I can harvest the cabbages – usually before or at purchase – not after.
Note to readers: The man down the road is actually an employee at a plant nursery.

So we decided we should really get some winter things, plants that is and unsurprisingly there wasn’t really a lot of choice. What does like the cold?

Anyway upon deciding that the local garden centre didn’t really have what we wanted, we wandered off to the local plant nursery down the road. We spent what felt like the next ten minutes reading the backs of all the seed packets out loud to each other, placing extra emphasis upon the ‘when to sow’ guidelines.

VG: Carrots, nope, sow in January
Rich: Ooh what about this, erm no sorry that’s harvest in Autumn not sow.

And it went on….

After a period of time the previous tranquillity of the shop silence was soon broken due to our nattering, and the helpful man behind the counter must have decided that ‘now’ would be a good time to interrupt us and ask if we needed any help. Good job he did really, stopping in mid sentence we stood there with all manner of seed packets in our hands as he informed us we could only grow onions, garlic, broad beans but we were welcome to take a punt on the pre-grown cabbages in the hot house.

Well broad beans were not even to be considered. Really not a big fan of them I must admit, but I was more than happy with the onions and garlic. We decided the cabbage ‘punt’ offer sounded like a challenge we couldn’t refuse as our Cultivation Station has excellent insulation properties, and let’s be fair you can’t really go wrong for eight plants under a £1!

Once we got back home we realised that we were actually short on growing space, certainly for the amount of bulbs/plants we had just picked up. Consequently we decided to have a little growing experiment by planting some in the Cultivation Station and some in the plastic container to see which containers result in the best cabbage.

The remainder of the plants have gone to Daisyboots who I have also tasked to take up the cabbage growing challenge.