Content
How sometimes everyone wants a vegetable garden to turn from something purely functional into a luxurious flower garden and delight the eye not only with its productivity, but also with its unique beauty. This is not so difficult to achieve using the principle of mixed plantings. In this case, vegetables can also be beautifully planted in the form of various floral patterns and combined with excellent and fragrant protectors from all kinds of pests. An interesting solution that will help diversify both the vegetable garden and flower beds is planting so-called ornamental cabbage. It can be planted in flower beds, along paths, forming a border, and even in the garden.
It contains a large amount of selenium, which is an excellent natural immunomodulator. To remove bitterness, its leaves can be frozen before eating.
In foreign countries, which we are so accustomed to looking up to, this cabbage has long been grown and formed into stunningly beautiful flower beds. In Russia, the fashion for ornamental cabbage is also beginning to gain momentum, although it is not yet used very often in private gardens.But it is not as difficult to grow as many other flowers. Its only peculiarity is that it will most likely not be possible to grow good seedlings in apartments without balconies.
The easiest way to grow ornamental cabbage from seeds is if you have a private house with land and a greenhouse. But if you have been permanently living in your dacha since May, then you can easily try to grow it by directly sowing seeds in the ground. But first things first.
What is ornamental cabbage
Under the general name ornamental cabbage, several varieties of leafy garden cabbage have been combined, which originate from fodder leaf forms. The plants are biennials, and in the first year a gorgeous rosette of leaves or even heads of cabbage is formed, and in the second year they bloom and you can collect seeds from them, unless, of course, you are growing hybrid forms. The height of plants can be very diverse, as well as shapes and colors.
There are:
- Varieties that form large, up to 80 cm, colored rosettes on a shortened stem. The leaves themselves can be solid, slightly wavy, corrugated, or heavily dissected. See photo below.
- Varieties that form small heads of cabbage on a thin, fairly high stalk, reaching a height of 70-80 cm. These varieties of ornamental cabbage most resemble small palm trees. The color and shape of the leaves can also be very diverse.
- Varieties, on a long, tall stem, sometimes from one to one and a half meters in height, covered with variously shaped corrugated leaves, reminiscent of some exotic trees, as in the photo below.
Plants reach their maximum decorative effect by autumn.Color shades begin to appear especially brightly after the first frost. And, given that ornamental cabbage plants easily tolerate replanting at almost any age, they can easily decorate in the fall any places in flower beds, flower beds or vegetable gardens where summer plants have already bloomed and bear fruit.
Landing dates
When can you plant ornamental cabbage when growing it from seeds?
The main varieties of ornamental cabbage belong to the mid-season and late-ripening groups. This means that from the emergence of seedlings to the achievement of so-called technological maturity, it usually takes from 140 to 160 days. If we mean ornamental cabbage, then usually its rosettes of leaves open at the end of summer - in August. And from September to October, and in some regions until November, they will delight with their truly luxurious appearance.
Therefore, the earliest time when it makes sense to plant ornamental cabbage seedlings is mid-March.
And the main problems when growing it will be associated with excess heat rather than its lack. Therefore, if you are going to grow cabbage seedlings at home, in a warm or even hot apartment, it is better to abandon this idea immediately and wait until the end of April or the beginning of May. During this time, it is also quite possible to plant ornamental cabbage seedlings.Moreover, if you do not have the opportunity to provide additional lighting to the seedlings, then it is better to postpone sowing cabbage seeds to a later date, when daylight hours increase.
The process of planting cabbage seedlings
When planting cabbage, the question most often arises is how to do it correctly. In order to grow good cabbage seedlings, two main methods are used: with picking and without picking.
Dive landing
This method is used primarily in cases where there is a desire and opportunity to grow a sufficiently large number of ornamental cabbage seedlings. Ornamental cabbage is a very unpretentious plant. The only problem at the seedling stage may be infection by various fungal infections, to which all types of cabbage are weak. To avoid this problem, it is necessary to subject both the soil for sowing and the seeds to special treatment.
Before planting, be sure to soak your homemade cabbage seeds for several hours in a phytosporin solution.
As for the soil for sowing seeds, you can either buy it ready-made in the store or prepare it yourself.
- To do this, take ½ part of ordinary garden soil (not from the beds where vegetables grew before). It is best to take the soil from under fruit trees.
- Add ½ part of completely decomposed humus.
- For 10 kg of such a mixture, add 100 g of vermiculite or sand and 1 tablespoon of wood ash.
For complete disinfection, the soil for planting ornamental cabbage must first be thoroughly steamed in the oven in order to destroy all sources of infections. After complete cooling, the soil is spilled with a solution of phytosporin until it is damp and wet and left for several hours. Only after this can you start directly sowing the seeds.
The technique for sowing ornamental cabbage seeds is as follows:
- Boxes prepared in advance are filled with wet, treated soil so that the layer thickness is at least 5 cm.
- The earth is lightly compacted and grooves about 0.5-1 cm deep are made in it with a suitable object.
- The distance between the grooves is left at 3 cm.
- Prepared ornamental cabbage seeds are placed using a match or a toothpick along the grooves so that the distance between them is at least 1 cm.
- The grooves are filled with the same soil on top and lightly compacted so that there are no air pockets left in the soil.
- The top of the planting is once again watered a little, so that as a result the soil remains well moistened, but not wet.
- The box is covered with film and tied with an elastic band around the perimeter to create a small greenhouse effect.
- The box is placed in a warm place with a temperature from +18°C to +24°C.
- Light is not necessary at this stage of seed germination.
Already 3-5 days after sowing the seeds, the first cabbage shoots may appear.
They say that it is better to see once than to read many times, so with the process of planting cabbage seedlings, the video below will help to clearly illustrate all the intricacies of this process:
It would be ideal if you can find a place for seedlings with a temperature of about +8°C-+10°C, but in any case the temperature should not exceed +14°C-+16°C. Cabbage seedlings also need a lot of light. But there is no particular need to water it at this stage. If you did everything correctly when planting, then the soil should be sufficiently moistened for the seedlings until the moment when they need to be planted. As a last resort, cabbage can sometimes be sprayed with a spray bottle, but not watered. This technique will ensure additional safety of plants at this stage from fungal diseases, especially from blackleg.
After 8-12 days, when the first true leaf begins to form, the seedlings need to be pruned.
To do this, prepare the required number of cups or pots, with a minimum volume of about ¼ liter. They are filled with soil similar in composition to that in which the seeds were sown and again spilled with a solution of phytosporin.
In all containers, a depression is made using a stick or pencil, about 2-3 cm in size, since the root of the seedlings is quite long. Each sprout of cabbage is carefully dug out using a plastic disposable spoon and placed in the prepared hole. Make sure that the root does not bend to the side when planting. The sprout can be deepened into the ground almost up to the cotyledon leaves. Then the soil around the sprout is carefully compacted. All plants are transplanted in the same way. Ornamental cabbage plants are planted in the ground starting from the end of April and in May.
Landing without picking
This process, in essence, is not much different from sowing seeds described above, except for one nuance. When sowing, two or three cabbage seeds are usually placed in each pot. A few days after germination, only one of the strongest sprouts is left in the pot. The rest are carefully cut off at ground level with nail scissors. If there are few seeds and you feel sorry for them, you can try planting the sprouts directly in separate containers. There is a possibility that some of them will take root.
Sowing cabbage in the ground
As mentioned above, the best way to grow good seedlings of ornamental cabbage is to sow the seeds directly into the ground. This can be done in the middle zone starting from the end of April. To do this, first prepare a bed with loose and fertile soil. It is covered with thick non-woven material on the arches. Immediately before sowing, the soil is spilled with hot water and cabbage seeds are sown in the prepared furrows using the same technology. Lightly sprinkle with light fertile soil, compact and cover with non-woven material. Under these conditions, seed germination is highly dependent on the ambient temperature and can take up to 2-3 weeks.
The bottles can be removed after the seeds germinate. In such conditions, seedlings can withstand short-term frosts down to -4°C. But it will grow strong, healthy, stocky and capable of even soon catching up with indoor seedlings.
It is better to start watering it when the first leaf opens and when watering, alternate the phytosporin solution with a solution of any complex fertilizer.
Thus, having mastered growing ornamental cabbage from seeds, you can easily decorate not only flower beds, but also any place on your site with luxurious rosettes of multi-colored flowers.
