Having harvested our potatoes on Christmas Eve we had a spare bed in our patch which was earmarked some time ago for our annual brassica crop.
Over the years our cauli's, broccoli and cabbage have been dessimated by white butterflies - or more to the point - the eggs they lay and the resulting hungry caterpillars.
So for the past five years we have planted our brassica around this time, encasing them in the ingenious tunnels that SH designed and built to keep the butterflies out.
We harvest after a couple of months and, as well as enjoying them fresh, I freeze them in a cheese sauce in tinfoil containers. We still have 10 containers left from last years crop which will see us through until these are ready.
SH got a new attachment for his line trimmer for Christmas. It is a mini cultivator which has done a superb job of turning over the soil in this garden to a fine tilth (love that word) and today we planted up the first tunnel.
After much discussion (over a crisp, cool pinot gris) we decided to plant the first tunnel up with cauliflower as they take longer to mature than broccoli which seeds I have just sown and should be ready to plant in the second tunnel in around three weeks. Hopefully this means the crops will coincide and I can freeze containers of a cauli/broccoli mix in cheese sauce which is our favourite.
Also in this tunnel I have planted a mixed punnet of cauli/broccoli/ cabbage so we will have some fresh vegies ready to enjoy. I don't like to plant more than a couple of cabbages as we never get through them.
I hope your summer garden is growing well, I hope you're enjoying a well-earned break and I hope 2023 is everything you want it to be. Happy New Year.
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