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Earlier in the year I was so busy I didn't manage to get around to sowing my brassica seeds soon enough. Then I saw a good offer on a magazine cover for an autumn harvest brassica collection so I sent for it. The seedlings arrived a bit later than expected (the day before I went on holiday) so I quickly shoved most of them in the beds and had to leave some to fend for themselves in a pot of compost. I fully expected the seedlings in the pot to have died from lack of water by the time I returned from holiday but they were all doing fine. I planted out the remaining cabbages, calabrese and kale and ran out of space in my veg plot.
I still had all the cauliflower seedlings left as hadn't planted any of them out - I didn't expect them to do very well because of how fussy they can be. I dug small holes in any available spaces in the front garden in between the flowers (in the lawn area I'd removed the turf from earlier in the year and seeded with insect friendly flowers) so that the cabbage white caterpillars could snack on the cauliflower seedlings' leaves. I kept transferring any caterpillars found on the brassicas I wanted to keep to these sacrificial cauliflowers. I was left with cauliflower stalks that I thought would soon die off.
I've just taken a walk round that bit of garden and was very surprised to see small cauliflower heads on plants between 6 and 8 inches tall. A couple of the heads are almost ready to harvest. They've had no fertiliser, no watering, no love and care at all. I'm now left wondering how they survived and how big the cauliflower heads would have been if I'd actually looked after them properly!
I still had all the cauliflower seedlings left as hadn't planted any of them out - I didn't expect them to do very well because of how fussy they can be. I dug small holes in any available spaces in the front garden in between the flowers (in the lawn area I'd removed the turf from earlier in the year and seeded with insect friendly flowers) so that the cabbage white caterpillars could snack on the cauliflower seedlings' leaves. I kept transferring any caterpillars found on the brassicas I wanted to keep to these sacrificial cauliflowers. I was left with cauliflower stalks that I thought would soon die off.
I've just taken a walk round that bit of garden and was very surprised to see small cauliflower heads on plants between 6 and 8 inches tall. A couple of the heads are almost ready to harvest. They've had no fertiliser, no watering, no love and care at all. I'm now left wondering how they survived and how big the cauliflower heads would have been if I'd actually looked after them properly!
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