From looking around the other plots at our allotments, we aren’t the only ones who suffered badly from club root last summer. It seems that the allotments are awash with the disease, and so we will be taking steps to get a few decent cabbages this season.
We have bought F1 "Kilaxy" cabbage seeds from Dobies, it is a club root resistant cabbage that was developed in Holland. The seeds have come up in our cold frame and I’ve just trans-planted them into bigger pots to grow on. They seem to be growing well and looking rather robust.
Instead of planting seeds straight into the beds where they will be growing on the allotment plot, we are going to grow our cold frame cabbages to a reasonable size before planting them out, and we have ordered plugs of calabrese and cauliflower. I’ve heard that starting plants out in pots and allowing them to grow big and strong before planting into potentially infected soil will go some way to resisting the disease.
I’m also going to try liming, and of course we will be rotating to another bed for brassicas this season.
