More from GIY Ireland GIY Diary - Week 28 One Urban Balcony. One year. £900 of home-grown food. 90,000 people on allotment waiting lists GIY Diary - Week 27 - Growth is tortuously Slow Tip of the Week – Which plants needs watering in dry weather? Things to do this Week – Time to plant out pretty much everything.. Recipe of the Week – Carrot and Beetroot Salad The Golden Gark Profile of Rachel de Thample Budding Ardboe Gardeners Celebrate a Local First with TV’s Monty Don GIY Diary Week 26 a Flock of birds Juggling space in the veg patch - Saturday July 6th Published: Jul 06, 2013 By: GIY Ireland by Michael Kelly This time of the year is always about juggling space in the veg patch as things start to get overcrowded. I came face to face with this issue again this week, when I went to plant out my Brussels sprouts plants (variety Brigitte) and found that there was literally no where to put them in the brassica bed. That bed is full of cabbage, turnip, kohlrabi, kale and a couple of courgette plants which I planted there a few weeks back simply because I had nowhere else to put them. The Brussels sprouts plants certainly needed moving on as they were starting to show signs of being a little stressed out in the module trays. Growing vegetables seedlings in module trays is always about finding a balance between leaving them long enough to get well established, and not leaving them so long that they become ‘pot bound’. If the roots start to pop through the bottom, it’s time to move them on. So, I had a problem on my hands. The plants needed moving on, but there was no where to plant them out. Though I am not sure it’s the done thing, I decided to pot them up in to individual larger pots to hold them for another few weeks – this should be enough time for some of the cabbages to be harvested from the brassica bed to free up some space. Brussels sprouts become big plants and they need spacing about 60cm apart. 4-5 plants should be more than enough to give you a decent crop, but they will occupy quite a deal of space in the veg patch for 6 months or more. I’ve never had much luck with Brussels sprouts to be honest – more often than not the plants get munched at seedling stage by slugs, or later by caterpillars. I heard a comment recently which was attributed to Michael Michaud – he said he doesn’t grow any vegetable that takes longer than a small child to grow. I can empathise with that – I find I don’t have much patience for ‘long-game’ veg like Brussels sprouts, asparagus etc. I’m more of an instant gratification kind of guy quite honestly. Even in years where I do get the sprouts plants to survive the summer and autumn, I tend to neglect them over the winter, ignoring the rather basic maintenance jobs that will ensure a decent crop – earthing up the stems to prevent them blowing over, removing yellowing/dying leaves etc. Maybe this is my year.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 07:50:58 +0000
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