Growing white cabbage in the open field: care and fertilizer

Growing white cabbage is a laborious process for a beginner, as there are many conditions under which the development of a plant stops and it dies before it even forms into a fruit inflorescence. In order to get a good crop of cabbage, you need to have a spacious sunny area in the garden, not shaded by high-growing crops and having the right level of acidity, which is not always achievable in the country.

The main difficulty in caring for cabbage lies in the intolerance of the heat culture, which in the middle lane in the Moscow region or the Moscow region is kept at 25-35^{throughout the middle of summer.At this temperature, cabbage growth stops and further maturation of the ovary becomes impossible.}

How to grow cabbage? You can make your task easier in the absence of a lot of gardening experience by acquiring modern vegetable breeding varieties that give high yields even with some deviations in care. White cabbage is propagated by seeds tested for germination at home.

Planting and care in the open field, and everything else about growing a capricious vegetable - in detail below.

Preparing the soil for planting

How to get a good harvest with high density and sufficient size of inflorescences? How to grow white cabbage? You should start by preparing a site that should not be in a lowland, so as not to serve as a drain for rainwater, or on a hill where the sun is scorching all day. For more than two years in a row, cabbage has not been planted on the same perimeter.For seedlings, the former potato, tomato or cucumber beds with well-loosened soil, with the remains of rotted leaves treated from insects, are ideal.

According to the level of acidity, neutral soil is suitable for cabbage, or with minimal acidity. Reduce these values with dolomite flour or lime immediately after harvesting the previous crop from this area, that is, in August-October.

The airiness and oxygen saturation of poor, compressed soil increases the introduction of sand and compost into the soil at the rate of a 7-liter mixture capacity per 1 m² of planting area.

Re-fertilize the land in early spring, shortly after the snow melts. A large volume of mass is prepared, the formation of which occurs without maintaining strict proportions, from superphosphate and wood ash. Then, before digging, the mixture is combined with manure and the site is abundantly flavored. If there is no way to get fertilizer in large quantities, you can prepare 1-2 buckets of the mixture and apply fertilizer directly to each hole when planting.

Planting seedlings in open ground

How to grow white cabbage? Mid-season varieties of cabbage can be planted in open ground as early as late April - early May. Late varieties are kept until early June, when the ground is well warmed up. The landing time is chosen in the late afternoon, focusing on the weather forecast for the coming days, promising cloudy weather or drizzling rain.

The plot of prepared land needs to be dug up again, break up large clods and make shallow holes, with half a meter deviations in a row and with a distance of 50-60 cm between rows. Most of the questions why cabbage is not tied can subsequently be attributed to this particular period:

holes spaced too often;
the earth is not loosened well enough;
the central bud of the sprout is immersed in the ground. This also applies to seedling leaves - they should not be buried.

Each hole, before the seedlings are in it, is filled with water, and when the plant is already planted, it is filled with dry soil to the lowest leaves. In stable sunny weather, when it is no longer possible to delay the landing, a shady awning is installed over the bed, or some kind of curtain, which is removed only after 4-6 days.

You can also grow white cabbage in open ground by directly sowing seeds into the soil. To do this, continuous grooves are carried out in the garden 1-1.5 cm deep, they are shed with a weak concentration of manganese and the seed material is introduced into the grooves in a thin stream. A removable greenhouse is necessarily installed above such a garden, and seedling care at first consists only in watering.

Seeds for propagation should be checked before planting. What should be done to assess germination so that the cabbage grows and develops fully and sets on time? First of all, select intact seeds, 5-7 times more than you need to get seedlings.Then the grains are tied in a cotton cloth and moistened abundantly in a saucer.

After 5 days of constant exposure to a humid environment, he althy seeds sprout, which means they successfully multiply. We select them for planting and grow cabbage.

Correct watering

Care for white cabbage in the open field by 70% consists in the correct planning of irrigation, corresponding to the development phases of the cabbage inflorescence. Until a full-fledged root system is formed by the seedlings, watering is done daily, with a consumption of 100-150 ml of water for each well. Do not forget about the correct shading of the area so that the liquid does not evaporate too quickly.

Between the formation of a full rosette of leaves and the formation of a head, in a flowering state of seedlings, care of the plant requires regular watering with maintaining soil moisture of 80%. When the heads of cabbage are tied up and the process of growth of the cabbage head has begun, the frequency of watering is slightly reduced, up to 70%.In mid-June (12-15 days before harvest), all artificial watering stops.

A big mistake during the period when the cabbage is blooming and the head of cabbage is just starting to tie, stop regular watering and organize care with a rare but plentiful flooding of the beds on the rare days of being in the country. In such an irrational distribution of moisture, they see the reason for the rapid growth of the root system, to the detriment of the development of the inflorescence. We must not forget that cabbage loves moisture, as long as it is freely absorbed into the soil. Cabbage grows in stagnant water for a short time and soon rots.

Loosening and hilling

Agricultural technology for growing white cabbage attaches great importance to the hilling of plants and the timely loosening of the aisle. The first loosening is carried out two weeks after planting the seedlings, further - as needed, so that a rough crust does not form between the plants.

The first hilling is done approximately in the same period or earlier. This is done to protect the thin stems of tall seedlings.

How to hill seedlings correctly? In warm weather without wind and precipitation, the soil is slightly loosened and crushed by hand at a distance of 20 cm from each individual sprout. Then, with small rakes or, too, with hands, the crushed earth is collected around the leg of the seedling, forming a hill to the lowest leaves. You can help the plant to more easily transfer the strengthening by hilling, two days before the procedure, making some gentle top dressing.

How to feed the sprouts? Experienced gardeners recommend organic fertilizers of greatly reduced concentration so that caring for the white head does not result in burns of the roots and lower leaves of the seedling.

Spudding cabbage for the second time is recommended 3 weeks after the first. The re-hilled bush strengthens in the root system and does not suffer from excess moisture.

How many treatments are needed in total? During the development period of a vegetable, it needs to be spudded three times - the tritium time will be 45-47 days from the moment of planting, when the grown cabbage is poured with juice.

Feeding base

How to grow white cabbage without using nitrates and growth accelerators? In parallel with the first loosening and hilling, seedlings are fertilized with organic fertilizer. Use chicken manure diluted with water at a concentration of 1 dry matter, 15 glasses of water. The liquid is poured into a small watering can with the diffuser removed and carefully, lifting the leaves, the fertilizer is injected into each well. It is advisable to do this immediately after watering, so that the solution "disperses" in the upper soil layer, and does not soak into the depths.

After 14 days, the seedlings are fed with 10% infusion of mullein, which was diluted and set to infuse 10 days before use. They also water the sprouts when the fruits are already beginning to set.

For supporters of mineral fertilizers, the cabbage feeding scheme is different. On the 14th day from landing in the ground, a solution is made from the following components:

10 g urea;
20 g superphosphate;
15 g potassium chloride.

This dry mixture is dissolved in a bucket of water and poured into a groove specially dug exactly between the rows, which is then filled up. 21 days after the first procedure, when the heads of cabbage are already tied, a similar portion is prepared from the above elements and the whole process is reproduced exactly.

20-30 days before cutting heads, nitrogen fertilization is stopped in the soil and watering is limited or completely stopped.

Foliar top dressing is used for late seedlings, if the sprouts turned out to be weak, stopped growing or turned yellow. The solution is made based on four liters of water (or half a bucket) and taken for it:

1 kg potassium chloride;
70 g double superphosphate;
10 g molybdenum.

Foliar fertilizer infused for 24 hours and then used for irrigation from a household sprayer.

Cabbage diseases

What else is growing and caring for white cabbage? Of course, in protecting the plant from various diseases and in urgent measures taken when they are detected. In central Russia, the following pathological conditions of this vegetable are most common:

Kila is a fungus that develops in the root system with excess moisture. It is characterized by outgrowths and swelling of individual rhizomes. There are still no remedies for clubroot, so you just need to find a diseased plant and remove it from the garden, and treat the soil with formalin;
White rot is expressed by a weeping white coating that occurs due to a lack of phosphorus and potassium fertilizers. To prevent the disease, it is enough to follow the feeding scheme;
Fusariosis - is detected by a brown annular pattern on a cut of a leafy petiole of cabbage. Fusarium cannot be cured - the plant is dug up, and the planting site is sprayed with furatsilin.

How to deal with the lower cabbage leaves

Whether to cut or leave the lower leaves of cabbage is not specified in gardening manuals, so each owner proceeds from the decision that is beneficial to him in terms of the result. For those who want to grow a large cabbage head, the argument in favor of removing the "extra" leaves is to draw a large amount of juice in them that can go directly to the head.

The list of advantages, when deciding whether to cut off the leaves, also includes the theory of better air exchange between plants and the fact that caring for - loosening and hilling rows - is much easier for cabbage.

Cons of the indicated task - whether to cut off the large lower leaves:

in slowing down the rate of cabbage ripening. Conditionally - 1 removed leaf adds a day to the ripening period;
in reducing the usefulness of the formed head, since vitamin C, which is produced in the bottom leaf, does not have time to go into the vegetable;
in the loss of juice by the plant and the attraction of pests to this juice - aphids and cabbage moths. The latter is a scourge for cabbage in Belarus and gradually takes the same position in Russia.

Conclusion - it is most rational to get rid of the lower leaves when the care is carried out in the last 2-3 weeks before harvesting. It is best to remove yellowed and withered leaves, and whether to cut off green and strong leaves is up to the owner.