As summer finishes we prepare to plant out all your winter crops. Starting about Mid-March we begin planting Cabbage, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Kale and Silver beet plus others ( known as Brassicas) plus Onions and Garlic and Potatoes. hisBlog is aimed at the Brassica family.
We will stagger our plantings out over about a 3 month period. This will provide us with fresh produce for 3 to 5 months. We lightly blanch the excess, cut to size to suit stir-fries, soups etc and then freeze in suitable containers. By freezing the surplus we have year round healthy home grown produce.
We choose to do the majority of our plantings with seedlings we buy locally in their little punnets. Whilst we know how to grow from seed we find the seedlings are more efficient for how we do things here at Tullamore Farm.
We have worked out how much we need to plant to provide us with the Brassicas we need for a 12 month period and this allows us to be self-sufficient in this area.
We no longer grow Brussel Sprouts, primarily because they need longer to maturity than their relatives and this makes them just that much harder from a growing point of view plus the time frames to needing beds in spring for summer crops.
Silverbeet and Kale are generally good for 2 or 3 years but the other Brassicas are only going to be harvestable for the one season. Be aware of how much you plant out because some crops like Cauliflower will provide one good head per plant only, whereas Broccoli and Cabbage should provide a significant head in the first harvest but if cut correctly, will then produce smaller but multiple florets (heads). Broccoli and Cabbage can and will just keep producing giving an ongoing harvest for some months. For this reason we tend to plant out 3 times the amount of Cauliflower that we do of Broccoli and Cabbage.
