Red Cabbage problems

[Eggygirl]

I'm a newbie to the forum and a relative newbie to growing stuff too and need a bit of help with my red cabbage.....

I tried growing some red cabbage and all I get is leaves, nice big red leaves, but just leaves.....no actual cabbage....what am I doing wrong ?

I planted some last year and the same happened, I just put it down to the wet weather (I live in Doncaster and we were flooded this time last year) and I planted them a bit late. The are planted in a bed and they aren't being attacked by anything but I would love a nice big round cabbage at the centre and they just keep producing leaves....

Any help would be great

Thanks

[Lesley Jay]

Hi there Eggygirl and welcome!!

The two things that I know cabbages need are rock hard soil to plant them in and you need to really firm the young plants in well with your feet. I'm on clay soil so it is always like a brick and last year my veggie garden was under water (although we were fortunate not to be flooded) but the cabbages still hearted up.

Having a look in my book cabbage root fly can cause cabbages not to heart up. Have you had a look at the roots?

[Eggygirl]

Thanks for your help Lesley....does your book tell you what root fly looks like by any chance ? and more importantly can I get rid of it ?

[DunDiggin]

The usual sign of cabbage root fly are sickly looking plants with out an obvious cause. The only way to tell for sure is to pull the plant up and carefully split the stem, if you find bored holes and little white maggots then the plant had cabbage root fly. These can be prevented either by being in the middle of a number of plots away from hedges and other places where the fly overwinter, or by putting collars of cardboard, roofing felt, or similar around the plant - cut out a 6" diameter circle. Make a cut from the edge to the middle, then cut out a 1/2" diamter hole in the middle for the stem and place around the plant, when planting. You don't need to heel in! Pressing in firmly with the hand, and planting the seedlings deep works perfectly well on all bar the lightest soils.
The other likely cause would be club root, but again you need to lift the plants to find out, and it takes several weeks for the roots to swell to make a confirmed diagnosis. The wisdom from most books is there is no cure, but anecdotal evidence from a large number of sources confirm that treatment of the ground with Jeyes Fluid or Armatillox works against it (I can confirm the latter). It can also be combatted by not planting out until the plants are a good 6-7" tall and have a good root ball in a 6" pot, adding lime and crushed egg shells when repotting, and adding a lime, crushed eggshell, fish/blood/bone, and compost mix to the planting hole. If you want to line the agro-chemical company's pockets you can also buy one of the F1 clubroot resistant strains from the Kilaxy family. I don't, so despite my father-in-laws plot having clubroot, both he and I successfully grow a wide variety of open pollinated varieties by a mixture of these methods.

[Mopsy]

If your leaves are healthy, and there's a lot of them but they're just not 'hearting', then the problem is most likely that they're not firm enough in the ground. This can also cause a prblem with brussels sprouts - the sprouts aren't tight little buttlons, but more like loose flowers The answer is to walk over the soil before you plant them. Yes, that does seem contradictory when you spend ages making nice fluffy soil, but it's what they want! And then when you plant them, actually tread the plants in with your heels. I couldn't bring myself to do it the first time I planted cabbages & they ended up more like spring greens

[Eggygirl]

Thank you for your replies, most helpfull.

As the leaves are big and healthy I presume that they are just not planted firmly....thanks Mopsy....it seems a shame to waste the leaves though as I have 6 plants growing well, can I eat em ? soup maybe ?