Cabbage is a vegetable crop grown mainly with seedlings. This not only helps to approximate the harvest period, but also makes the cabbage heads denser and well ripened. They can lie for several months in the cellar without any problems.
Varieties of cabbage quite a lot. Seedlings at home are grown quite simply. The main thing is not to delay the planting of cabbage. Experts say that “overexposed” seedlings before the formation of two true leaves can lead to an inferior crop.
Planting cabbage is carried out mainly on smooth arable land. On waterlogged soil with close groundwater and irrigated areas, seedlings are planted on ridges and ridges manually.
Varieties of this vegetable crop come in two categories: early cultivars or with late ripening. Favorable days for planting cabbage, which is harvested earlier than other subspecies, are the first days of May. Seedlings are placed in the ground according to slightly densified schemes, so that between the rows there are up to forty centimeters.
Late cabbage is planted a little later: from mid-May to mid-June.
Some experienced gardeners soak seedlings for several minutes in a one percent solution of karbofos, thereby protecting it from pests.
The first thing to do is to choose the right place for planting seedlings in the open ground. This must certainly be an open place on all sides with fairly loose, fertile and moisture-permeable soil. It is preferable to change the site every year. The best predecessors of this vegetable are legumes, cucumbers, some root crops. Moreover, if cabbage was also growing on the site before, then planting it in the same place is better than three years later.
Planting a cabbage involves digging small holes with the help of a sapper blade . The depth of the pits is made in such a way that the real first leaf on the seedlings in the planted state is located at the very surface of the soil.
Before planting, it is necessary to sort all the seedlings, laying aside the weak and destroying the patient. Planting cabbage should be carried out if possible on a cloudy day, when a small rain falls.
After placing the seedlings in the ground, the plant is sprinkled with earth, compacted. Then the seedlings are watered and mulched with humus or dry soil so that it retains the necessary moisture in the ground and does not allow its evaporation.
For the quickest rooting of seedlings, it is watered very weakly after transplanting for a week, keeping only the top soil layer moist. It is also advisable to shade young plants in the afternoon hours during the week.
Planting cabbage, which was first grown in peat pots, is not very difficult, but it almost always gives good results.
Almost all varieties of this vegetable crop respond well to organics. Therefore, if fertilizers are planted in the spring when planting cabbage, then it is better to use compost or humus for this at the rate of two or three kilograms per square meter.