Transplanting Broccoli and Cabbage

The last frost is still a few weeks away, but my cold hardy broccoli and cabbage were more than ready to stretch their legs in something bigger than a three inch pot.  They were starting to gain in size and the roots had begun to grow out of the bottom of the pots, so I knew they were ready to go out into the real world.  They have been hardened off over the past several weeks.  At first it was only for a few hours on nice days at the end of March, but as they grew stronger I started leaving them out for the whole day. The overnight temps have also begun to creep up over the past couple of weeks, so I started to leave them outside through the night, even if the temps might dip near freezing.  Brassicas can tolerate some fairly cool temps, in fact they seem to thrive in cooler weather.

This past week I had time to clean up the garden bed that would become home for these plants and I set up the drip irrigation lines for the bed as well.  I laid out the seedlings on the bed to find the right spacing, then dug them in with my little trowel.  I felt like the middle of the bed still had some usable garden space, so I planted a row of parsnips down the middle of the rows of broccoli and cabbage.  This year I am growing six broccoli, three green cabbages and three red cabbages.  The red cabbages were still fairly small seedlings when they were transplanted outside.  They were off to a late start because the first round of red cabbage seeds that I planted never germinated.  Hopefully they will catch up to the bigger seedlings before too long.