Cauli wobbles

Jim Pearson's talk on caulis at the recent Scottish Branch seminar was refreshing in as much he didn't reveal any great secrets to growing good caulis. Jim doesn't have soil analyses done, doesn't spray with any chemicals such as Decis, and doesn't believe in counting back so many days from a show for a sowing date as he believe this makes no odds whatsoever, and makes four sowings per year on 25th April, 5th May, 15th May and 25th May. As Jim has won the National more than anyone else with caulis i'm not going to argue with that. He prepares trenches in the Autumn and lines them with home made compost from his compost bins. Once he runs out of compost he uses kitchen waste, backfills the trenches and by the time Spring comes around everything has rotted down and added fertility and structure to the soil. He also adds a sprinkling of blood, fish and bone a few weeks before planting and a handful of Levington Organic Blend Farmyard Manure. In mid-February he will lime the whole plot and leave for the rain to wash it in.




As i'm not going to grow any white spuds next season I will have spare land enough to get about 4 rows of caulis in, at a 2'x2' spacing. Jim grows 179 caulis and when asked why 179, he replies because he hasn't the room to grow 180! I'm hoping to get my trenches prepared this weekend with a view to allowing the winter frosts (we still haven't had one!) to break everything down in the next few months before planting. One thing I will be doing is cutting some DPC material into 4" squares with a slit to the centre to act as barriers to cabbage root fly. Jim goes one step further, by cutting squares of carpet with another slit which he lays on top of the DPC with the slit at 90 degrees to each other, in effect giving him double the barrier. There is a chunk of leftover carpet in my loft that I have earmarked for this purpose.



There were several other tips which I made a note of and will be divulging next season at the requisite times. I've never managed to stage a good set of caulis and assumed my soil has always been wrong for them, and gave up growing them about 4 years ago, but this is a simplistic view so i'll be giving them another go in 2011. I may need a set of three for my Malvern collection but one thing's for sure.....I won't be anywhere near Jim's winning set from Dundee in 2010.