Caring for cabbages

Val has a few tips on protecting brassicas from butterflies

- Val Bourne

IT’S always swings and roundabouts when you’re growing vegetables, because some things fail to thrive. This year the beetroot didn’t plump up, due to the extreme early heat, and I lost most of the sweetcorn to a savage late frost because I didn’t wait until the first week of June before planting it out. Lesson learnt! It’s been too windy up here for the runner beans, so we have picked only a few pounds so far.

Other things have done well, though. We have harvested countless lettuces, more than 30 cucumbers, 42lb (19kg) of tomatoes, 22lb (10kg) of courgettes, 16lb (7kg) of peas, 32lb (14kg) of new potatoes and almost 20lb (9kg) of broad beans from the 8x4ft (2.4x1.2m) plots in our garden.

The trouble is that summer produces a glut of some vegetables, and if the Best Beloved makes me Jamie Oliver’s courgette carbonara again I may scream – ungrateful as it is! I prefer my winter pantry of vegetables by far and I rely on parsnips, leeks and brassicas for sustenance. I can pick them throughout winter, a little at a time, or better still, send the Best Beloved out to do the job. Stored onions, winter squashes and borlotti beans are the other staples.