Sauerkraut

Well, in a few months time anyway.

Today the cabbages and cauliflowers from Gert went in. We thoroughly weeded the bed (bottom left) which means there are probably only a million tiny pieces of whatever evil pervasive root seems to populate out plot. We then heeled the bed down as brassicas prefer well firmed ground. Next we dug holes - we did this a bit closer than the reccomended spacings as we want to harvest them small and young. We also alternated rows of the earlier maturing cabbages with the slightly longer cauliflowers which means alternate rows will come up, leaving more room for the cauliflowers later. Or that is the theory.

Also watching Gardener's World on Friday night finally got us to get round to taking out copper pipe and fixings down to the plot. We had some left over from doing the bathroom and now it is around the cabbage bed to try and keep the slugs off. We need to get some nemotodes too, to try and kill off the ones that are no doubt hiding in there.

We 'puddled in' the cabbages. Once the hole was dug for each plant some compost went in the bottom and then the plants went in. Then the hole was filled up with water and allowed to soak away, and then filled again and allowed to soak away again, before the hole was backfilled and firmed around the plant. I'm assuming this is to send the water down below the cabbage to encourage it to send roots long roots down, but I don't really know.

They now have fleece over them to protect them a little.