4. Cabbages and Kale (Brassica family).

This is Year 4 in our 7-year field rotation. We use it for all sorts of cabbages, kale, cauliflower, kalettes, Brussels sprouts, broccoli and swede.

The Brassica family contains some of the most popular, reliable and nutritious vegetables, and they often have the added bonus of being winter hardy too.

Brassicas grow particularly well after a legume-rich green manure, and fit very well before Onions and Leeks as they suppress pests and diseases associated with Alliums.

We undersow our Brassicas with a green manure to increase soil fertility during the growing season, using a range of different green manure plants to soak up excessive nutrients and provide important soil protection over the wet winter period.

Sometimes you will find crops with covers over them this is usually to protect young plants from pigeons (our main pest) or in the case of carrots from carrot fly. The covers move around to different crops depending on the time of the year, they are only on for a short period in summer but may be for much longer on brassicas from Xmas onwards. Sometimes these covers are to protect young plants from extremes of weather.

We manage biodiversity to encourage the natural predation of pests such as caterpillars, which are not a problem at all on our brassicas.