Cabbages

If you want to be a successful vegetable-gardener, you have to think ahead a long way. A lot of people are just too impatient. They expect to sow one day, plant the next and harvest on the third (well, almost). The Brassica family of vegetables is one which demands a lot of patience and forward planning, since many of them take many months to mature – Brussels Sprouts, Purple Sprouting Broccoli, and some types of Cabbage, to name but a few.

I don’t normally go in for Cabbage much, because I consider it to have a fairly low Value for Space Rating (VSR). One Cabbage that takes months to grow, and probably costs less than £1 to buy in a shop is often consumed in one meal. However, this year I am aiming to grow a wider range of veg for Autumn / Winter harvesting, so I thought I had better try a few Cabbages. My earliest ones sown were these “Predzvest” ones, from seed sent to me by Dominika in the Czech Republic:

I have been struggling to decipher the rather odd English on the website of SEMO, the company that markets the seeds for this cabbage. It is described as a Savoy Cabbage but it doesn’t look like one, either in their picture or “in the flesh”. I think it is going to be a big one though, so I have allowed it plenty of room.

One of the pair is very well-behaved, but the other is determined it is not going to sit up straight. I keep supporting it with soil around the stem, but it still flops. I don’t suppose it is a major issue, but I just feel that it is not good for it to be lying on the soil surface.