Cabbage crops

1cabbage nettedNow don’t laugh. But I have to protect my cabbage from the egg laying butterfly somehow. It’s just a shame that my mosquito net is such a lurid shade of turquoise.

I do find it fitting as this was the colour of the walls in some of the bedrooms when we moved into the farmhouse eight years ago.

But really. A delicate shade of olive green would be more appropriate.

Last year I had this crop in the potting shed for a few months over the summer. But this year, and it’s only June, it’s hot.

Way too hot to keep these plants happy indoors. So next week I’ll be planting them out in the potager and I can fuss less about the watering.

I do have the automatic watering system all set up in the potager. I know it works as the sound of the timer and the water rushing though the tap in the basement directly below our bedroom wakes me up at 6am each day. 1cabbagecop

I keep telling myself I ought to set it from 7am to 9am instead, but it’s a cheery sound. It means I don’t have to dismantle it to replace the batteries. Yet.

The cabbage crops which are doing well as the ones at the top vegetable garden.  Never have I been more grateful for underground springs.

It’s tricky to haul the hose all the way from the courtyard up to this vegetable garden to water. So I have only been doing it once a week. Even in this absurd heat.

This potager is where it is as there used to be a steady water supply. It lasted up until the 1930s apparently. But then dried up. I know where it is as there’s the only willow tree on the mountain right beside it.

1cabbagecrop2And we all know that willows like wet roots.

But the state of these brassicas planted in the potager just in front of the old spring tells me that it is active again.

Fabulous growth. And no thanks to my neglect.

I added a few more plants today, and had to climb in under the moth netting to reach the ground.

Great stuff this netting. Except once I was in under the net I realised I had company. A cabbage moth was trying to fly its way out.

Rats. That means the eggs have been laid someone under here. So I had a cursory glance and found one fat caterpillar from a previous visit, but no eggs. I’ll need to be vigilant. And work out where the pesky little butterfly flew in.