I’m a bit disappointed as I write this post. My coveted Brussels sprouts and cabbage have not blossomed as I’d hoped. As I’d worked so hard to ensure.
I don’t know what happened. I watered, fertilized and weeded. Consistently. Carefully. Lovingly. I even applied snail bait for those horrid beasts that attack from underground. Could also be nematodes, though I’m not sure how to rid my garden of those creatures. I’ve tilled, rotated, solarized…
But alas, it has been to no avail. This cabbage was planted months ago. Months!
It’s not like I’ve never had success before. I have. Just look at these beauties. Gorgeous! I’ve grown both red…
And green. Snug as a bug in a rug.
But these days? Something is amiss. If you have any ideas, I’m all ears. Translated: HELP!
Don’t feel bad, it’s mostly the unseasonably warm “winter.” Brussel Sprouts need REAL winter, the little “baby heads” always look “open” like that in too warm years. I’m farther north than you (the northern part of Zone 9A, 34448), and I gave up on Brussel Sprouts after a 3 year run of winters too warm for them.
I think your cabbage problem may be partly cultivar choice, and partly warm weather and nematode damage. Hang in there, give them a little extra food, and surround the base with some pine straw; they still may head for you. After you harvest your cabbage, just for fun, pull up the roots and check for nematodes. This perpetual warm weather, I’ve found in my garden, allows the nematodes to thrive nearly year-round, and even populate some of our more susceptible cool season crops, especially if the soil gets a little dry.
Next year – well later this year – when you prepare your cabbage bed, add some neem seed meal, kelp, and shredded leaves to your usual mix, so there’s some hedge against nematode weather :).
Like you, I’ve noticed more challenge growing brassicas that used to seem effortless. I now have to “shop” brassica cultivars almost like I shop tomato and pepper varieties – keeping in mind the soil pathogens that have likely built up over the years, in spite of rotations, and keeping in mind the increasingly warmer winters (shorter brassica season) we’re having.
I now look for “BR” (black rot), and Cabbage Yellows resistant cultivars; as with tomatoes, the more resistance letters hanging off their names the better. Sometimes the varieties are heirlooms, sometimes hybrids. I really don’t care, I just need them to survive to harvest in my organic conditions.
Over the past three “warm winter” years, the cabbage varieties that have done best here are: Early Jersey (first harvests), and Blue Vantage (harvests starting mid February). Cheers did o.k., and the early red cabbages did o.k., they seemed healthy, and made heads by now, but they were smaller than the others, and the reds tended to split in the field more than the others.
These guys seem to do just fine in our “present conditions,” as long as I really super-load their planting site with lots of black cow, mowed leaves, peat, neem seed meal, & a handful of acid-loving or “fruit tree” special organic fertilizer (something with a little sulfur to buffer my crappy 7.2 pH, and a little kelp or bat guano for the minerals hard to find elsewhere).
I’ve noticed I also have to plant ALL my brassicas in the Fall, preferably by October. I start them inside the house, a few at a time, as early as September, and start a few new seeds inside every 2 weeks. I pop them outside as soon as nights are a bit cool, and start with deciduous shady sites first, then open sun areas last.
I’ve also gone to mostly sprouting broccoli (like Piracicaba, Apollo, and similar “baby broc” types) where the “cuts” from taking flowerettes each night are relatively small, and easy to heal for the plant. I’m SO OVER losing my larger heading, fat-stemmed broccoli to the “rot” that inevitably infects those large wounds that the poor plant has no chance to heal if the weather is warm, moist, and full of pathogens. I make the large head broccoli cuts with a sterilized knife, and as close to vertical as possible (to shed water), and in cool dry weather sometimes the wound heals, but the last warm years – NOPE.
So no more fat neck large heading broccoli for me; it’s too much heart ache watching the plants fail to heal from that gaping wound.
It’s not you, it’s the weather…and you’re not alone. Brassica is getting a little more challenging here in wacky-weather, warmer than usual, Zone 9.
Thanks for sharing your disappointments, as well as your successes with us. When I read garden blogs with only glowing remarks and steady bragging on their apparent horticultural superiority, I “unsubscibe.” Thanks for not being one of THOSE. 🙂
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!