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How sometimes everyone wants the garden from something purely functional to turn into a luxurious flower garden and delight the eye not only with its productivity, but also with its unique beauty. This is not difficult to achieve using the mixed planting principle. In this case, vegetables can also be beautifully planted in the form of various flower patterns and combined with beautiful and fragrant defenders against all kinds of pests. An interesting solution that will help diversify both the vegetable garden and the flower beds is the planting of the so-called ornamental cabbage. It can be planted both in flower beds and along paths, forming a border from it, 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, to which we are so accustomed to be equal, this cabbage has long been grown and form stunningly beautiful flower beds from it. In Russia, the fashion for ornamental cabbage is also beginning to gain momentum, although it is not used very often in private gardens. But it is not as difficult to grow as many other flowers. Its only feature is that it will most likely not be possible to grow good seedlings in apartments without balconies.
The easiest way is to grow ornamental cabbage from seeds if you have a private house with land and a greenhouse. But if you have been permanently living in the country since May, then it is quite possible to try to grow it by direct sowing of seeds into the ground. But first things first.
What is ornamental cabbage
Under the general name ornamental cabbage, several varieties of kale are combined, which originate from forage leafy forms. Plants are biennial, while in the first year a gorgeous rosette of leaves or even heads of cabbage forms, and in the second year they bloom and you can collect seeds from them, unless, of course, you grow hybrid forms. Plant heights can be very varied, as well as shapes and colors.
Distinguish:
- Varieties that form large, up to 80 cm, colored rosettes on a shortened stem. The leaves themselves can be solid, and slightly wavy, and corrugated, and strongly dissected. See the photo below.
- Varieties that form small heads of cabbage on a thin, rather high leg, reaching a height of 70-80 cm. These varieties of ornamental cabbage most of all resemble small palm trees. The color and shape of the leaves can also be very varied.
- Varieties, on a long high stem, sometimes from one to one and a half meters in height, covered with corrugated leaves of various shapes, resembling some exotic trees, as in the photo below.
Plants reach the maximum decorative effect by autumn. Color shades begin to appear especially brightly after the first frost. And, given that ornamental cabbage plants easily tolerate transplantation at almost any age, they can easily decorate in autumn any places in flower beds, flower beds or vegetable gardens, where summer plants have already bloomed and bore fruit.
Landing dates
When can you plant ornamental cabbage when growing it from seeds?
The main varieties of ornamental cabbage belong to the mid-maturing and late-maturing groups. This means that it usually takes from 140 to 160 days from germination to reaching the so-called technological maturity. If we mean ornamental cabbage, then usually its leaf rosettes open at the end of summer - in August. And from September to October, and in some regions to November, they will delight with their truly luxurious appearance.
Therefore, the earliest dates when it makes sense to plant ornamental cabbage for seedlings is mid-March.
And the main problems in growing it will be associated with an excess of heat rather than a lack of it. Therefore, if you are going to grow cabbage seedlings at home, in a warm or even hot apartment, it is better to immediately abandon this idea and wait until the end of April or the beginning of May. In these terms, it is also quite possible to plant ornamental cabbage for seedlings. Moreover, if you do not have the opportunity to provide the seedlings with additional lighting, then it is better to postpone sowing cabbage seeds until later, when daylight hours increase.
The process of planting cabbage for seedlings
When planting cabbage, the question most often arises - how to do it correctly. In order to grow good cabbage seedlings, two main methods are used: with a pick and without a pick.
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 can be the defeat of 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, your homemade cabbage seeds must be soaked for several hours in a phytosporin solution.
As for the soil for sowing seeds, you can buy it either ready-made in the store, or prepare it yourself.
- For this, ½ part of the usual garden land is taken (but not from the beds where vegetables were previously grown). It is best to take the land from under the fruit trees.
- ½ part of completely decomposed humus is added.
- For 10 kg of a similar 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 steamed well in the oven in order to destroy all sources of infection. After complete cooling, the soil is poured with a phytosporin solution to a wet-wet state and left for several hours. Only then can you start directly sowing seeds.
The technique of sowing ornamental cabbage seeds is as follows:
- The boxes prepared in advance are filled with moist treated soil, so that the layer thickness is at least 5 cm.
- The ground 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 3 cm.
- Prepared seeds of ornamental cabbage are laid out with a match or toothpick along the grooves so that the distance between them is at least 1 cm.
- From above, the grooves are covered with the same soil and lightly compacted, so that no air pockets remain in the soil.
- From above, the plantings are watered a little again, so that as a result the soil remains well moistened, but not wet.
- The box is covered with foil 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 of + 18 ° C to + 24 ° C.
- Light is not required at this stage of seed germination.
Already 3-5 days after sowing the seeds, the first shoots of cabbage may appear.
They say that it is better to see once than read many times, so, and with the process of planting cabbage for seedlings, the video below will help to visually illustrate all the subtleties of this process:
It will be ideal if you can find a place for seedlings with a temperature of about + 8 ° С- + 10 ° С, but in any case, the temperature should not exceed + 14 ° С- + 16 ° С. Cabbage seedlings also need a lot of light. But there is no special need to water it at this stage. If you did everything correctly when planting, then the soil should be moistened by the seedlings until the moment when it will need to be cut down. As a last resort, cabbage can sometimes be sprayed with a spray bottle, but not watered. This technique will provide 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 must be cut open.
For this, the required number of cups or pots is prepared, with a minimum volume of about ¼ liters. They are filled with soil similar in composition to that into which the seeds were sown and again spilled with a phytosporin solution.
In all containers, a recess is made with 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 scooped up with 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 cotyledonous leaves. Then the soil around the sprout is gently 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 a dive
This process, in fact, is not much different from sowing seeds described above, except for one nuance. When sowing, two to three cabbage seeds are usually placed in each pot. A few days after germination, only one strongest sprout is left in the pot. The rest are carefully cut with nail scissors at ground level. If there are not many seeds and you feel sorry for them, you can try to plant the sprouts immediately in separate containers. There is a chance that some of them will take root.
Sowing cabbage in the ground
As mentioned above, the best way to grow good ornamental cabbage seedlings is to sow the seeds directly into the soil. This can be done in the middle lane starting from the end of April. For this, a bed with loose and fertile soil is preliminarily prepared. It is covered with a thick non-woven fabric on arcs. Immediately before sowing, the soil is spilled with hot water and cabbage seeds are sown into the prepared grooves using the same technology. Lightly sprinkled with light fertile earth, compacted and covered with a non-woven material on top. 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 have germinated. Seedlings in such conditions are able to withstand short-term frosts down to -4 ° С. But it will grow strong, healthy, stocky and capable of even catching up with indoor seedlings soon.
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 the cultivation of 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.
