Brassicas in; Chard out

This year I am experimenting with some different crops - like shallots and garlic, and the Three Sisters plants. This has of course meant less space for some of the other things. I have only been able to allocate to the Brassica family half of one of my raised beds. Yesterday, in between the heavy showers of rain, I found an opportunity to plant it up with these:

 Three Brussels Sprouts ("Brilliant") [centre], four Red cabbage ("Primero") and four summer green cabbage ("Golden Acre"). The individual seedlings were planted nice and deep, and the soil pressed in very firmly around them. If the weather had not been so wet I would have watered them in too. I have given each plant a "Brassica collar" to protect it against the Cabbage Root Fly.

These things provide a physical barrier so that the female flies cannot lay their eggs in the soil close to the seedlings. Afterwards I covered the whole bed with a net to keep the foxes off it, and sprinkled on a few slug-pellets. So a triple layer of defences then!

I also have a few Kohlrabi ("Modrava") and Summer Broccoli ("Matsuri") seedlings coming on. Where on earth I am going to put them remains unclear. Fortunately the Broccoli is a miniature version, so presumably won't take up too much space. I might be able to squeeze in the odd one or two plants here and there - or perhaps grow them in large pots.

In a week or two I will be sowing seed for next year's Sprouting Broccoli, and for Cavolo Nero, but I am deliberately leaving this until a bit later this year, in the hope that I may miss the worst of the Cabbage Root Fly season.  These crops will initially be grown in pots, and transplanted later, when the Broad Beans and Peas have finished.

I am currently trying to use up the Swiss Chard and Perpetual Spinach - both still going strong from last year - because I need space for the Three Sisters bed. So whereas normally I would only pick a few leaves from each plant, today I took out a couple of whole plants:

These plants are not huge - not much bigger than Pak Choi actually - but I still have another four in the ground, as well as about the same amount of Perpetual Spinach.

Opportunities to use them are comparitively rare since Jane doesn't like either of them, and it seems silly to cook separate meals when there are only the two of us to cater for. I tend to use it most often for a lunchtime snack at the weekends, served perhaps like this...

In my post tomorrow I will show you how I cooked some of it this weekend.