Cultivation of fodder cabbage (photo) - sowing and care
HOW TO GROW CABBAGE
In those places where fat pastures, you can not really worry about growing fodder crops on your site. If pastures leave much to be desired, then without garden feeding it is difficult to maintain the productivity of animals. What to grow? One of the most productive crops is, of course, fodder cabbage. Delicious, nutritious and, most importantly, fruitful. In the off-season, when animals are transferred from grazing to stall keeping, this tall, richly leafy cabbage will feed the animals to the full.
This cabbage is good not only as a juicy feed, but also for silage, because it contains a lot of sugars. Spring is far away, and during the winter try to stock up on the seeds of this crop.
You can grow it (and better) with seedlings, or you can immediately sow the seeds into the soil. When sprouts appear, the plantings are thinned out so that there is at least 3 cm between them. Seedlings are planted in place when 4-5 true leaves appear and better when frequent night frosts have passed. It is necessary to sow seeds for seedlings 1-1,5 months before planting in the ground, that is (for our area) in late March - early April.
If fodder cabbage is planted immediately in the ground, seeds planted to a depth of 1-1,5 cm must be rolled.
This method requires more seeds. For example, we did not have enough XNUMX-gram bag even for half a hundred square meters.
With any method of growing fodder cabbage, the distance between rows is made at least 60 cm. We planted with row spacing of 70 cm. At first, seedlings grow very slowly, so you have to constantly remove weeds.
What is very valuable: this culture is very cold-resistant - in autumn it withstands frosts down to minus 12 °. We encountered this at the beginning of November of this year, when the night temperature was close to 12°. One morning, when I came to the site, and at night there was a severe frost, all the cabbage leaves were like glass and broke if they were touched. Frustrated, he went home, thinking that the entire crop was gone, because most of the fodder cabbage was still on the vine.
But then the day came, the sun rose, the frost disappeared from the grass, and I decided to go and see what had become of the kale. And he was amazed at the change that had taken place: all the plants were green, not a single leaf drooped. The field looked like it hadn't even been frosty. This frost hurried us with cleaning. But what to do with such an amount of green mass? At first, whole stems with leaves were given to goats, but the bulk of the stems went to waste. Then we decided to chop it on a feed cutter.
After that, there was no more waste left - the goats ate the chopped cabbage completely. This led us to the idea of \u30b\u200bpassing the entire crop through a grinder and pickling it like cabbage. In total, XNUMX buckets turned out. An ordinary XNUMX-liter barrel was lined with plastic wrap, cabbage was placed there, and a heavy load was placed on top. When the cabbage stopped bubbling, they tried to give sour feed to the goats - they ate it with pleasure. But since we had other juicy food that could go bad, we left the cabbage for the future. Frost was not terrible for her.
Are there any difficulties in growing fodder cabbage? This culture is very demanding on moisture, but at the same time it does not tolerate stagnant water. Waterlogging of the soil, and even more so, the proximity of groundwater, have a bad effect on the crop. If they are closer than 80 cm to the soil surface, do not expect a good harvest. Cabbage tolerates spring drought and summer heat well, although growth slows down at this time, but as soon as the rains pass, it grows strongly. That is why the harvest of fodder cabbage is the largest in rainy years.
Almost all soils are suitable for growing this plant, except for very light sandy ones. The most suitable are loamy and sandy with a neutral or close reaction (pH6). Fodder cabbage responds well to liming, but we did not carry it out, but brought in two liter cans of oven ash for each furrow (about 10 m). This crop loves fertilized soil. A good result is the introduction of ventilated lowland peat before planting.
When growing fodder cabbage, it must be borne in mind that at first (up to the 5-6th leaf) it grows very slowly and is easily oppressed by weeds and cruciferous flea. In our farm, weeds practically did not bother cabbage. The quinoa, which quickly overtook her in growth, we weeded out. This weed has a very powerful root system, and removing it, you can not only severely damage the roots of cabbage, but even pull it out along with the quinoa. I grabbed the stem and with a sharp jerk a little to the side, but in no case, not up, pulled it out. You can still moisten the soil around the weed and wait until the moisture wets the ground, after which the quinoa is removed easily and without a clod of earth.
The cruciferous flea brought us particular concern. Usually we fought this pest on white cabbage by dusting seedlings in the early morning (while dew) with sifted oven ash.
Two or three such treatments - and the flea is over. But such a number did not work with fodder cabbage. Dusting did not work, the shoots withered - the leaves were all in holes. At this time, larvae of the Colorado potato beetle appeared on the potatoes. I diluted INTA-VIR and sprayed the potatoes. There was a little solution left, and I sprayed a few furrows of fodder cabbage as a test.
It helped - the flea no longer touched these rows. After that, I worked the entire plantation. And at that time, a massive summer of various butterflies began, but not a single caterpillar appeared on the cabbage. So I immediately got rid of several types of pests.
So, our fodder cabbage is a wall, as high as a fence. Whoever passes by, everyone asks: “What is it that grows so beautiful with you?”
Reference by topic: Kale cabbage (photo) growing, planting and caring for kale!
© Author: E. Sukhorukov Vladimir region.
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