The other day I was in the
kitchen garden just checking things over and seeing how things were getting on.
This year I am particular pleased with the brassicas, especially my apparent
success with the swede.
A couple of months ago I had
direct sown some chard, turnips and swede all side by side, the rest of the bed being planted up with
cabbage, parsnips, beetroot and celeriac. The bed was then covered with insect
proof mesh to keep out everything from the cabbage root fly to the pigeons. The
weather initially was a little hit and miss, but eventually some of the seeds which
were sown started to germinate and grow.
Given the dry June that we had it
became necessary to uncover the bed and drench the ground around the plants once
or even twice a week. It was at this time I noticed just how well the swede and
turnips were growing. That is until one particular day, it suddenly dawned on
me that the turnips were putting on a lot of healthy top growth, but not much was
developing in the way of a root. What I had initially had thought was the turnips
were in fact chard, hence the swede that I was so proud of were in fact the
turnips. What happened to the swede? who knows, it seems that the seeds never
actually germinated. It just goes to
show that whenever sowing direct you should always label the rows.
