When choosing a place to grow cabbage in your area, take into account the demands of cabbage for light and moisture: be sure to consider the availability of water for irrigation and the absence of shading.
Since cabbage is grown through seedlings, prepare a place for planting it in the fall.
Cabbage cultivation: selection of varieties, seed quality and sowing dates
Despite the abundance in the seed market, compiling your collection of varieties and hybrids is not easy. Necessary conditions for the selection, which should be guided by:
• taste - perhaps the main selection criterion. Especially valuable are varieties with juicy crispy leaves forming dense white heads of cabbage. Such cabbage is good both in pickling and in fresh form. Not only varietal qualities affect taste, proper care is important, timely feeding and watering;
• ripening period. Using early, middle and late varieties for planting, they increase the period of consumption of their own cabbage. Observing the necessary storage conditions, you can eat your cabbage from June until the next year's harvest;
• keeping up. A factor that sometimes affects taste. Varieties intended for long-term storage are usually less juicy, with thick, coarse leaves.
By maturity, cabbage is conditionally divided into three groups:
• early, with a growing season of 75-90 days: Transfer F1, Solo F1, Nozomi F1, Cossack F1, Mirror F1, Tafma F1, June;
• average, with a growing season of 110-170 days: Krautman F1, Rodolfo F1, Glory, Gift;
• late, with a maturity of 150-240 days: Blizzard, Wintering, Sugarloaf F1, Megaton F1, Tobia F1, Belorusskaya, Valentina.
Growing cabbage seedlings
Do not wait for high-quality seedlings when growing it in a city apartment. With a lack of light and an excess of heat, the plants turn out to be weak, thin, excessively elongated. Not even the content of them helps on a cold windowsill.
Better seedlings in a city apartment on an unheated loggia. It is easier to create the necessary conditions here: a temperature of 10-15 ° C and a large amount of light. The disadvantage of this method is the lack of space, but it is worth growing several seedlings for the earliest harvest. Planting seeds in this case is carried out in mid-March.
The best quality seedlings of cabbage obtained when growing it right in the ground. Cold nursery is a regular bed with properly prepared soil. After being released from snow, it is protected from the cold by covering material on arcs. The soil should be loose, seasoned with humus and deoxidizing agent in the fall (ash, lime, chalk). It is not advisable to use the place where cruciferous plants grew in the past season - radish, radish, daikon, cabbage.
For planting, make grooves with a depth of 4-5 cm, spill them with warm water and place the seeds at a distance of 3 cm from each other. Furrows are sprinkled with 1 cm sifted compost.
It is convenient to grow cabbage seedlings in a cold greenhouse using cassettes. Each plant, occupying a personal cell, will have a quality intact root system. Cartridges should be installed in a greenhouse with a recess.
Seedling cabbage from the cartridge
To accelerate the germination of seeds, the soil should be covered with a film that is removed after emergence. Before warm weather is established, it is additionally worth covering the seedlings with a covering non-woven fabric. Along with white can be sowed and other varieties of cabbage. Seedlings of Brussels, Savoy, broccoli, kohlrabi, cauliflower also develops well in a cold greenhouse. To avoid confusion, each variety and species is given a separate groove, which is marked and applied to the plan.
Usually cabbage seedlings do not need top dressing, there is enough nutrition from garden soil, but at low temperatures it is desirable to use a warm solution of ammonium nitrate, since it is difficult for roots to extract nitrogen from cold soil. Care of seedlings is to protect from freezing temperatures, infrequent gentle watering, weed removal, and loosening.
With the appearance of 1-2 real leaves, seedlings can be thinned out, deformed plants that have sprouted with a great delay can be removed. High-quality seedlings are considered, which formed 4-5 true leaves, aged 35-45 days for medium and late varieties, 50-60 days for early.
Soil preparation. Formation of ridges. Transplanting
The most suitable for planting cabbage in the beds will be a dull cloudy day, ideally with shallow drizzle. If in the near future the forecast promises sun and heat, and it is impossible to postpone the planting of cabbage, do it in the evening. Over night, seedlings will have time to adapt to new conditions.
Cabbage feels great on any kind of soil: loams, sandy loam, peat bogs, forest podzols, except for heavy dense loams and sand. Necessary conditions - an open sunny place, a sufficient amount of moisture of nutrients. Based on this, choose a site for planting.
Planning for future cabbage beds should be done in the fall. The necessary conditions for creating the right soil - liming, applying a sufficient amount of organic matter and mineral fertilizers. For autumn digging, lime or dolomite flour is used at the rate of 300 gr. per square meter, fresh manure. If the manure is rotten, it is better to carry it out in the spring. At the same time, ash, complex fertilizers (nitrofoska, azofoska) are added. These top dressings are best added to the formed wells: a glass of ash and 20-30 g. mineral fertilizer.
Depending on the structure and moisture capacity of the soil, planting holes are formed on raised ridges or on a flat surface.
• planting early varieties and hybrids of cabbage is made according to the scheme: between plants 40 cm, between rows 50 cm;
• the necessary conditions for growing mid-season and late cabbage: the distance between plants and row spacing is at least 70 cm;
• for the convenience of irrigation, top dressing and other care of plants, planting is carried out in two rows with 70-90 cm aisles between them.
Bed with cabbage
Care for cabbage. How much water is needed for irrigation, what kind of dressing to give
A necessary condition for obtaining a rich harvest is to maintain soil moisture throughout the period of cabbage vegetation. In this case, waterlogging of the soil, soaking of the roots should not be allowed. It is necessary to create conditions for the preservation of moisture: mulch, loosen, and soil the soil around the plants.
In hot time, an adult cabbage plant evaporates leaves up to 10 liters of water per day and is in dire need of watering. Young plantings in the first half of summer should receive 2-5 liters of water, and adults, during the formation of heads of cabbage, 15-20 liters for one irrigation. It is believed that for the formation of the head, weighing 2 kg, cabbage needs a 200-liter barrel of water for the season.
For the formation of large strong heads with high taste qualities, cabbage needs care and top dressing not only when planting seedlings, but also throughout the summer. Feeding in August is especially important. It was at this time that mid- and late-ripening varieties and hybrids began to curl heads.
With nitrogen starvation and planting in insufficiently deoxidized soil, cabbage leaves become smaller, coarser, acquire a reddish-purple hue, and the head of cabbage is poorly formed.
Nitrogen starvation
Usually, 3-4 dressings per season are carried out, late varieties can be fed an additional 1-2 times. Caution and adherence to the measure are required - an excess of nitrogen leads to the accumulation of nitrates and cracking heads.
Nutrient Blend Options:
• liquid mullein is diluted in a concentration of 0.5 kg per 10 l of water, spend 0.5 l of solution for watering one plant;
• mixture of 30 gr. full mineral fertilizer (azofoska, nitrophoska), 10-15 gr. mix micronutrient fertilizers and 1 cup of ash in 10 liters of water, consumption 1-1.5 liters per plant. At the end of summer, replace nitrogen-containing fertilizer with double superphosphate.
A good top dressing is a crumbly rotted horse or cow manure in the form of a layer of mulch. When watering, nutrients from this substrate will be delivered to the roots.
Growing cabbage: protection against diseases and pests
The most common and dangerous disease of cabbage is keel. This fungal disease affects all plants of the cruciferous family, including weeds. Young cabbage plants are especially susceptible to spore damage. The disease is detected after 3-4 weeks, when growths and thickenings form on the roots. Sick plants quickly lag behind in growth, tie up ugly small heads of cabbage. The first signs of a keel are wilting of the lower leaves.
The spores of the fungus remain in the soil viable for 5-6 years. The development and activation of the disease contributes to the acid reaction of the soil, increased humidity and heat.
The main protection against keel is regular liming of the soil, the return of cruciferous plants to the infected place no earlier than 5 years later. Planting nightshade crops (potatoes, tomato, eggplant, pepper) inhibits the development of keel spores. When infected plants are removed, they should be burned.
In the second half of summer, in hot dry weather it can develop fusarium wilting cabbage. The fungus causative agent of fusarium clogs the conductive vessels, and the leaves begin to turn yellow.
If the summer is cold and rainy, a variety of rot of bacterial and fungal origin begins to affect cabbage. Infection occurs through mechanical damage caused by insects and their larvae to the leaves. The causative agents of rot, penetrating the head of cabbage, continue to develop in the repository and can destroy the entire crop.
Serious damage to plants causes a lot of pests: cabbage and turnip whites, cabbage moth, scoops, canola flower beetle, aphids, slugs. Adult insects and their larvae, night and day cabbage hunters intensively gnaw leaves and make deep holes in heads of cabbage. Affected plants lag behind in growth, through infections they become infected, become contaminated with excrement of pests, and lose their presentation.
Pests gnawed leaves
Pest control and care for affected plantings:
• observance of crop rotation;
• refusal to plant cruciferous green manure for soil improvement (mustard, rape);
• thorough harvesting of plant debris and removal of cruciferous weeds;
• daily inspection and manual collection of egg and caterpillar clutches during the departure of butterflies;
• attraction of entomophages. They willingly settle on umbrella plants planted next to the cabbage bed (parsley, celery, carrots, dill);
• if the number of pests is large and the above measures fail, chemical protection methods should be applied.
Cabbage grown: harvesting
If chemical treatments were carried out, cabbage can be used in food no earlier than after 3 weeks. Early and medium grades are cut as they mature and are used fresh. You can not be late with their removal, otherwise overripe heads of cabbage will crack.
With the harvesting of late varieties and hybrids of cabbage, intended for pickling and long-term storage, you should not rush. In September, the weather creates suitable conditions necessary for the accumulation of sugars and vitamins, the rapid filling of heads of cabbage. Therefore, it is recommended to leave longer on the bed the most correct, harmoniously formed plants and continue care, and, if necessary, watering. Late varieties are not afraid of a light frost; in September they can double their mass.
For better storage should be when cleaning protect cabbage heads from injuries, leave covering leaves; do not store damaged and frosty heads of cabbage in the storehouse.
