Brassicas Plot – Late seals my fate.

Will post a picture as soon as I have one, but it appears that my brassicas plot was just too late. There’s still some time left, but growth rates have slowed in the past 2 weeks with the onset of fall. Just talked to my father and he said there has been almost no growth since last week when I was up at the property. I have turnips, rape, and radish that I planted on August 8, and it’s no more than 4-5 inches high! Oh well.

I thought about planting rye and in retrospect that’s what I should have done.

Rain was not a problem, but I think what did me in was the lack of significant heat in late August to really get things going. Lots of wet, cool weather.

I got it in as soon as I had the ground prepped, but it appears that once again I missed the target zone of mid July and couldn’t get the weather to make up for the lost time. All my plots are new this year and all require a lot of prep and rock picking, so it just dragged out planting too late it looks like.

Nothing I can do about it now, just commiserating, but next year I’ll be planting right after July 4th. This just confirms my 3 years of experience in the northern half of MN. Because of inconsistent late summer / early fall weather, I think having the brassicas in and growing by July 15 is a necessity if you want to have enough time to produce bulbs of decent size.

Grouse

Grouse – I have a few areas that I planted the 2nd week in July and they’ve had plenty of rain too.
I think the soil needs fertilizer which I didn’t do.
My plants are only that high and some of them dried up and died.
I’ll have to buy some fertilizer in bulk next year…and I should test the soil too before I do it.
So…you may not have been too late.

Also, I noticed mine have started to grow in the last few days with the cooler temps. They will continue to grow until December here in Southern MN.
You may get more growth yet too.

Well Grouse, at least you got growth. At our farm we haven’t gotten over 1/4″ rain since mid August. I was able to get my brassica in on July 12th but the lack of rain slowed germination on the brassica and the weeds took over big time. I have one really nice brassica plot that gets more shade, one other one gets direct sun and it has been way too dry. I mowed the weeds off above the brassica last weekend and put urea on that plot this weekend. The third one has so little germination and growth I am calling that one a bust for this year.

Been a very tough year for me and food plots. Had great germ on my beans and corn early, but the deer hammered my beans and the weeds took over. 6 acres of beans are junk I did turn 4 acres of those and put rye in which is looking awesome now, the other 2 plots are beans stems. The corn did very well, but I only had 2 acres of corn planted this year. My fall planted clover and rye are looking incredible, so I do have that going for me.

I guess the moral is you aren’t going to get perfect plots every year. This year was by far my worst, but I am going to pull my self up by the boot straps, figure out how I can do better and get after it again next spring.

Well, I guess all our experiences show the wisdom in having some diversity in your plots. Also, it sounds like the 3 of us just proved once again why clover is such a great plot staple as an annual. There is seldom a time when clover grows poorly once established.

Next year I hope to have a lot more clover and I hope I have my brassicas in and growing by mid July.

In my other big plot, I think I’m going to cover crop with rye even though the rock isn’t picked on that plot and probably won’t be picked next year either.

Oh well, I guess it’s a good thing we’re doing this for fun…

Grouse

grouse
Did you set any cages in the plot that keep the deer from eating a certain area? I’ve had years when I thought my plot wasn’t growing until I put a cage in and found the deer were browsing it to a consistent height. just a thought. I put our brassica plot in a week earlier and it seems to be doing just fine