Top Dressing Brassicas
Chris takes us through properly caring for your brassica plants during the hot summer months, dealing with common pests, tricky weather conditions and applying top feed to keep them well fed before harvesting
This season has been without doubt a difficult one, a wet late start, very cold nights in May and June, huge daily fluctuations in temperatures, poor seed germination, and slugs in almost biblical numbers! But despite all of this my brassicas which were planted on the 12th of July have grown away really quickly and have simply loved the cool weather of the last few weeks, at the moment they are on course to be one of the best crops I have grown, all healthy, pest free and the hot weather of the last few days has allowed all the weed growth to be killed off by hoeing.
I grow fully under fleece for full control of cabbage root fly, cabbage white butterfly caterpillars and the ever-present pigeons, but on a couple of occasions during the summer it’s time to roll back the covers and undertake essential feeding and weeding.
Brassicas always follow legumes in my rotation, however this year and owing to the extreme winter wet and compaction problems caused by it over the winter period I am going to try and grow a green manure crop of Grazing Rye between the legumes and brassicas mainly to help supress weeds and improve the soil structure. As I never plant the main block of brassicas until late June / early July this should allow plenty of time for the rye to be dug in and be decomposed. Grazing Rye dug into the soil in springtime can be really problematic and affect the germination of some seeds most notably peas, so giving a bit of extra time and then planting a crop rather than sowing it I think will resolve this issue.
One of the main benefits of the green manure crop will also be to mop up and hold onto in living tissue soil nutrients, most notably nitrogen and thus preventing it from being washed away. This will benefit the following crop of brassicas as nitrogen derived from decomposing organic matter will be available for the following crop over an extended period.
Brassicas however require nitrogen is large amounts but not in one single dressing. I apply around half of the total Nitrogen into the seedbed at planting and apply 65grams per square metre of Pro Grower Veg & Brassica Blended Quick Release Top Dressing fertiliser as a top dressing when the plants are growing actively to maintain growth when crop demand is at the maximum. Splitting dressings also helps to reduces the amount of Nitrogen leached by rainfall. Depending on growth Brussels Sprouts which have the biggest requirement for Nitrogen may get a third dressing in the autumn to effectively keep the plants growing and producing through out the wintertime, which they will do quite effectively if the weather is mild.
So why of this top dressing? I have used many nitrogen fertilisers over the years but this particular blend contains Boron in addition to Nitrogen and Calcium. Boron can be deficient on Sandy soils such as my soil type, and a deficiency for brassicas will lead to hollow stems, small poorly formed brown slimy curds on cauliflowers and brown rotten centres on swedes. Boron is not needed in large amounts at all but any deficiency in brassicas will ultimately lead to poor crops or complete crop failure.
Since using this I have not experienced any deficiency symptoms whilst before whole crops of swedes and cauliflowers were commonly lost.
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