PARSLEY “TIP”
You may now find your spring-sown parsley running to seed, some of it in full flower. These flower stems will exhaust the plant. So your best plan is to cut down the plants almost to ground level and give them a little fertiliser and some water. By this means you can have fine parsley all through the winter.
Those Spring Cabbages
Thinking about next year brings us to the need for adequate supplies of winter greens. September is the month for planting out spring cabbages, and every available piece of ground should be devoted to this valuable vitamin-giving vegetable.
When the onions have been removed and the ground has been lightly hoed, dusted with lime and well raked, spring cabbages may be planted in rows 1 ft. 6 in. to 2 ft apart, allowing 1 ft. between each plant. This is somewhat closer than is usually recommended for spring cabbages; but as the cabbages grow in the spring each alternate plant may be cut and used as spring greens, leaving the remaining plants ample room to develop into fine-hearting specimens for cutting in May and early June.
Any surplus seedlings remaining in the seed beds should be thinned out to 2 or 3 in. apart, to form a reserve store that may be planted out on vacant ground next March or April, so providing a succession to those planted out this autumn. These later plants come into bearing when the main crop is finished and provide useful cabbages in early summer.
What about TURNIP TOPS ?
At this time of the year, it is, well worth while to sow a row or two of turnips, not with the idea of producing roots, but to get a supply of green tops for use next spring. The seeds should be sown very thinly in rows 1 ft. apart.
When the seedlings appear, thin fairly lightly in the early stages, as the plants have to undergo the winter and bad weather and pests may make inroads on them. Later on they may be thinned again, as the plants require more room to develop.
The variety Green Top Stone is very suitable for sowing to produce a supply of tasty, green leaves that will be valuable as an extra green crop in the difficult month of April.
Green Top Stone turnips are easily available
Beet “Tip”
Look at a sample root or two in your beet rows. You may find that some are getting old and “ringy.” If you sowed the seeds early in the year, it is quite possible that the beet are ready for lifting and would be much better lifted now and stored in damp sand or soil in an odd corner outdoors. The main crop should still be growing well at the moment, but some earlier roots may go past their best if left in the ground any longer.
