The cabbage bed

A splash of color in the veg bed, July 2023

I'm even busier than last week!  But at least I've got the cabbage bed cleared and replanted (finally) and all the cabbage either dehydrated or brined for later eating/cooking.  As I may have mentioned, they were meant to be spring cabbages (harvest in spring), and none of them produced much of a head.  But I needed the space so I pulled them all, and of course a little harvest is better than no harvest.  The oldest outer leaves went to the chickens and ducks, and I put the stalks in the compost.

After hoeing and raking off the bed, I put down the pak choi and fennel transplants, and two rows of daikon radish seeds;  as a precaution I draped insect mesh over the whole bed--against both cabbage butterflies and pigeons.  

Speaking of cabbage butterflies, the carnage wasn't so bad this year.  Only one spindly little cabbage got badly munched--the rest only lightly, with just one or two green caterpillars per plant it seemed (at least, that's how many I found at the bottom of the sink after soaking each head).  Usually the first wave consists of many many single green caterpillars;  then come the armies of black and yellow ones.  Except they didn't. I have seen a couple of husks here and there where the parasitic wasps have been busy, so maybe other predators have been working on it too?

I've done a couple of quick sweeps at the allotment; the brassicas there look a little more tattered, but I think it's more flea beetles and slugs than caterpillars.  Still, I'll try and keep on top of it, as those black and yellow caterpillars can completely defoliate plants if not stopped in time.