Topic: calabrese

[Diana]

Any ideas why I can't grow large heads of calabrese? All I ever get are heads the size of one large floret.

Variety? Watering? Feeding?

Anyone?

[sandersj89]

Watering seems to one of the keys, keep them evening moist as the heads start to form.

I also give mine a good feed at planting out followed by a treatment of a high Nitrogen feed.

Jerry

[Diana]

Thanks Jerry, will try that with the next lot

[Tee Gee]

I think a lot of it has to do with variety.

My soil is quite light/sandy and over the years I have had mixed success.

But over the last few years I have found two varieties that suit me perfectly they are Chevalier & Samson.

Samson is a replacement for Corvette which I think was better than Samson.

What I also like about these two varieties is; one matures two or three weeks after the other, and the both send up an abundance of secondary spears. In this way I can harvest calabrese for a couple of months or more.

One tip; do not let the plant flower! if there are signs of a plant flowering, cut the flower off immediately this will give better continuity of spears.

Or put an other way; once they flower then thats end of story for getting more spears.

Unlike Jerry I don't feed again after planting out, and I only water when they are young plants.

At planting out time I rake in Fish,Blood & Bone and top dress with lime.

As I have mentioned in other  articles I find the lime, which the brassicas need, also deters slugs & snails.

In terms of rotation I plant my brassicas after my potatoes meaning there is not too high a compost content, meaning that my plants are not competing with the decomposing manure for nitrogen.

I hope this helps.

[Diana]

Thank you TG.

I think I'll be trying a different variety next year - I too have light sandy soil ... in between the rocks that is!

[tim]

On the other hand...............!!

Average soil - pH6.5 throughout - BF&B like MrG - own compost every year - can't stop them. We always get a once-over pick of the heads, which is very inconvenient  - luckily it was a busy w/e with all the family here - but my big complaint this year is the harvest time.

Autumn Calabrese it says. Aug-Sep. So? We've finished. Heads at least.

As seen before.

And the packet photo - I thoght that that showed a bunch of headed stems, rather than cauli-type things - which is what I wanted!

[Ricado]

I grow Marathon f1 and centaur F1.  Both very good and even being f1 vars.  First crop of the year is over and the second lot are about half size now.  After harvesting the central head (dont cut off all the sideshoots), the sideshoots will develop for a succession of small heads.  Ive found this is highly dependent on soil moisture.  If they get too dry they pack up and go home as it were (they go to seed), the only thing to do is pull them up and wait for your second crop.