Your Summer Vegie Patch

There are plenty of things to keep you busy in the vegie & herb patch during February. It’s a great time to sow these interesting, tasty brassicas…great varieties to try if you’re keen to change up your meals for autumn.

Bok Choy

Bok Choy has a delicate, sweet flavour, a crisp and crunchy texture and is packed with nutritious goodness.

This traditional variety has juicy, snow-white stems and jade green leaves.

Perfect for gentle steaming, stir frying, or in soups. Sensational sautéed with ginger and garlic.

Red Cabbage

Yates Cabbage Red Mini is a favourite early red cabbage, with tightly wrapped heads, and vibrant plum colour.  

It's crisp and pleasantly peppery in taste, and delicious cooked or chopped raw for salads and slaws.

If closely planted, it will produce petite single-serve red cabbages.

Kohl Rabi

Yates Kohlrabi Green Duke Hybrid tastes like a mild, sweet turnip with a crisp hint of radish.

The bulbous stem and leaves are all edible. The bulb is delicious raw, grated or shaved into slaws or salads. Delightful roasted and caramelised in the oven, steamed, used in a creamy soup, or puréed.

Kohlrabi is a favourite in Indian cuisine, so it naturally pairs with Indian spices.

Try peeling with a potato peeler and adding them to a baking tray of “roasties”. Yum!

Cabbage Collection

Cabbage has so much more kitchen potential than just coleslaw! Fill cabbage leaves with mince to make cabbage rolls, add finely shredded cabbage to mashed potato and use cabbage in Asian potstickers and gyozas. Yum! It’s time to grow your own cabbage so you have this versatile ingredient ready at your back door.

Yates Wong Bok Chinese Cabbage – if you’ve ever enjoyed a delicious Asian crunchy noodle salad then you’ll be familiar with Chinese Cabbage (also called wombok), which forms the crisp leafy base for the salad. Yates Chinese Cabbage Wong Bok Chinese Cabbage is fast growing, taking only 8 – 10 weeks to mature. Seeds can be sown directly into a sunny garden bed.

Yates Cabbage Sugarloaf is a conical shaped, sweet flavoured crisp and tender cabbage that matures quickly. It’s hardy and reliable, so is great for the home gardener.

How to Grow:

• Sow seeds around 6 mm deep in trays of Yates Black Magic Seed Raising Mix and transplant the seedlings out into a sunny spot in the garden when they’re large enough to handle (in around 4 – 6 weeks).

• Before transplanting the seedlings, mix some Yates Thrive Natural Blood Bone with Seaweed into the soil. This will enrich the soil with organic matter and encourage earthworms and beneficial soil microorganisms into the vegie patch.

• Then to promote lots of healthy green leaf growth, once the seedlings are established feed each week with Yates Thrive Vegie Herb Liquid Plant Food Concentrate. It’s rich in nitrogen to encourage lots of delicious cabbage leaves.

Cabbage pest watch: there are 3 main pests that target cabbages.
1. Snails and slugs- Snails and slugs can devour young seedlings and also slime their way in amongst the leaves of the developing cabbage head. To prevent this happening, lightly scatter some Yates Blitzem Snail Slug Pellets around the plants, which will effectively attract and kill snails and slugs.
2. Caterpillars also like to munch through cabbages, particularly the caterpillars of the cabbage white butterfly. Yates Success Ultra Insect Control Concentrate, which is derived from naturally occurring soil bacteria, will control caterpillars on cabbages. Spray the cabbages every week, ensuring leaves are sprayed to the point of run off.

Grow some Rubies

Yates Silverbeet Ruby Chard – the vegie patch doesn’t need to be a sea of green! Yates Silverbeet Ruby Chard produces striking bright red stems together with nutritious leaves that are great for salads and stir fries. Ruby Chard makes a very hardy, attractive and tasty addition to the vegie patch.

How to Grow:

• Seed can be sown directly into a garden bed or medium sized pot or seedlings raised in trays of Yates Black Magic Seed Raising Mix and transplanted when they’re around 5 cm tall.

• Harvest leaves as you need them by pulling (rather than cutting) stems, starting with the outside leaves.

• As your leafy greens grow, water them regularly and each week apply some Yates Thrive Natural Fish Seaweed Concentrate. It’s a complete and balanced fertiliser that contains a combination of natural and fast acting nutrients, plus humates, molasses, trace elements and microbes to encourage lots of leafy green growth and improved soil health.

• Leafy greens pest watch: Control snails and slugs by scattering some Yates Blitzem Snail Slug Pellets over the soil around the plants.