Creating a brassica bed

I was trying to clean my fingernails today and just wondered why I even bother. This is the time of year when you are going to get dirty. It’s either pricking out seedlings and forgetting to wear gloves; grabbing some errant weeds as you pass and find yourself clutching a handful of earth and unwanted plant; or weeding.

Today it was mainly weeding and mulching. A kneeling task, full of fun.

Well, only a madwoman would call forking out weeds in the dirt fun.  But the sun was shining and it is so easy to pull out the plants with all this soft rain we are experiencing.

I had two, no three, areas I wanted to finish weeding and once the mulch is down I can call the annual weed fest complete.

I’m fooling myself of course. But I find if I can get the annual weeds out and off the paths and the beds then mulch thickly, I am spared major sessions later this spring and early summer.

The first place to start was Alice’s path that sits above the pool bank.  I had put this area down to a thick mulch of bark chips a year ago and it did a great job of supressing weeds. Well, that and the heatwave that managed to kill even the most determined weeds on this path.

But add in worm casts and an enthusiastic mole run right along the edge of the bed, I had soil mixing with the chippings.

So working from one end and with a wheelbarrow close by, I had those weeds out in a morning.  And with a few sacks of chippings (a great two hour session last week) it was back to looking gorgeous again.

The rest of the day was spent up at the top potager creating a long brassica bed.

This particular vegetable garden is a touch jungly.  I sowed red clover here a few years back and find it easier to just keep it to clover and just fork out an area where I want my brassicas or spuds to grow.

A few weeks ago I worked out where I wanted this year’s cabbage patch and added cardboard sheets and then the two sessions of mowing material on top to kill the grass, weeds and clover underneath.

Today was time to fork it all over and get some mulch down ready for planting.

The grass was not to be wasted. I spent about an hour scraping it off and then ferrying it over to Jean Daniel’s asparagus bed to put down as a weed suppressant for his patch.  It saves me having to cut the grass between his newly emerging asparagus fronds. I don’t want to accidently chop them off.

He has another year to wait before cutting his asparagus.  If the mole rat doesn’t get to them first. You can see a cheeky mole rat hole just next to the asparagus in my part of the terrace.

And I must say that the best thing about sitting down and weeding this patch was seeing how many spears were actually growing in my asparagus bed right beside me.

I think of the 12 crowns I originally put in here (it’s a twelve metre long bed) I must have four or five left. Maybe six if I’m being an optimist.

So my reward after hammering in tomato stakes to mark the rows, turning over 12 metres of soil and removing all the old chestnut fencing stakes I had placed to edge the bed (they harbour slugs) was to cut spears.

That’s dinner sorted.

I’m actually a no dig gardener. But there were too many perennial weeds in this bed for me to ignore.  So for the first time in years I have bare soil in my vegetable garden.

But not for long. As soon as I can I’ll get some more terreau mulch to put down and cover it up.  Then plant out the sixty or so brassicas I want to put in this area and net the lot.

I couldn’t resist sneaking 33 brassicas in already – cavolo nero kale, Wheeler’s wonder cabbage and calabrese.  It’s reckless without the full netting protection. But I yearned to move the crops out of the potting shed and into the damp soil

I had to sort the netting out before the wind picked up – storms are abrewing.  But I realise that what I want is a green shadecloth for the sides of this long patch.  And I have some on order.  I can’t stand the sight of white glaring enviromesh. It looks like net curtains.

Most years I just use my very fine black netting that will deter cabbage moth butterflies.  The other major pest in this garden (if you ignore Artur who is sitting so close to an emerging asparagus spear in this shot that he will snap it off when he staggers to his ancient feet to come over and demand a lap sit) is the fire bug.

They live and breed by their thousands on my brassica plants. And as they can fly and crawl and generally evade capture until you shake the plant with a bucket beside them and squish the ones that drop into the bowl, then a finer mesh is required.

I’ll use the white enviromesh over the top so the plants get enough light to grow, but sensible green is going around the sides.

So as an experiment I am clearing the soil and making sure there are no firebugs about. The plants go in, and then the mesh all around. Possibly keeping the critters out. I can’t wait to see if it’s a success.  I am tired of eating cabbages that are marked with little pinholes and munched and having to wash and check carefully every time I harvest the leaves.

Don’t you love gardeners? We are such a positive bunch at this time of year. I’m already imagining a perfect crop of kale and greens and calabrese and summer sprouting purple brocolli… and I’m still only sitting on the ground pulling weeds out of the dirt.