How to Plant BRASSICAS for 6 MONTHS of Nonstop Harvests!

Brassicas are the quintessential spring and fall vegetables, thriving in cooler temperatures that summer crops can't. Plant them the right way and they will thrive, providing big harvests from fall into winter and spring into summer. But plant them the wrong way and they will stall, with fall crops freezing to death and spring crops bolting in the summer heat before you get a harvest. This video will help you master growing brassicas. Most people can grow them continuously from late summer all the way until the start of the next summer for a whole nine month growing season, but they just don't realize it. If you want year-round brassica harvests, this video changes the game. And stay tuned until the end of the video where I will give you a full list of my favorite brassica varieties to grow. I'll also place links to the seeds down in the video description for your convenience. And step number one is to nail the timing. The best way to do this is to start brassica transplants indoors from seed to get a head start. Brassicas are sensitive to heat and extreme cold, so the goal is to get them to become large transplants the moment the weather breaks in your favor. Gardeners that wait for winters to warm too much often lose their brassicas to spring heat waves, and gardeners that wait for summers to cool down too much often have their plants stall on them when days become short in November. There are tons of different ultra-cold hardy brassicas that we can start indoors from seed and transplant out into our gardens every late summer for fall gardening, and every late winter for spring gardening. Some of my favorites are bok choy, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, kale, kohlrabi, mustard greens, mizuna, and romanesco, just to name a few. Brassicas take about four to six weeks to germinate and to grow into seedlings large enough for transplanting out into your garden. For a late winter planting, take your last frost date and subtract ten to twelve weeks. That is when you should start your seeds indoors. Then transplant your seedlings four to six weeks before your last frost date, but under the protection of an agricultural fabric row cover. For fall gardening, we're going to work backwards. Take your first fall frost date and subtract three and a half to four months to start your seeds indoors. Then you'll transplant them out into your garden ten to twelve weeks before that first frost. The key is to get them in ground early when the temps are still summer-like outside, but protect the young seedlings underneath the coziness of shade cloth. If you're watching this video and you think it's too late to start your brassica transplants from seed, no problem. Just go to a nursery and buy some transplants. They're really easy to find. And here's the awesome part. If you're in zone seven or warmer, maybe even some mild zone sixes, you can transplant brassicas pretty continuously from August all the way to March if you do it under the protection of a row cover. So zone seven and warmer, maybe even some mild zone sixes on that line, you can successively sow wave after wave of brassicas that entire time. That brings me to step two, using plant covers. The mistake so many gardeners make is they wait for the seasons to change before they plant their brassicas. And that sets you up for failure, because by the time the weather conditions finally shift, well, it's too late for your plants in most climates. Brassicas transplanted in the spring, after temperatures moderate, usually bolt in the heat, and brassicas transplanted in the fall, after temperatures finally cool down, usually stall when the day length shrinks, then die in the cold. Successful brassicas are transplanted early under protection. You'll need two covers, a 1.5 ounce per yard agricultural fabric, and 40% shade cloth. Here's how you do it. Successful spring brassicas are transplanted at least four to six weeks before your last frost date under the protection of row covers. While most young brassicas take damage around 25 degrees Fahrenheit unprotected, they can tolerate much colder temperatures when you have a row cover overhead. These plants are more freeze-tolerant than they are frost-tolerant, and the overhead cover prevents frost formation on the foliage. So mature brassicas, well, they can tolerate temperatures all the way down to zero to ten degrees when protected with a row cover, with the hardiest brassicas like collards and kale surviving below zero when covered. So transplant your brassicas early to get a harvest before the heat sets in, and if you get an early spring heat wave, protect them by putting shade cloth overhead to get you through the last few weeks. Fall brassicas take a similar approach, they just kind of reverse the cycle. Successful fall brassicas are transplanted when it's still quite hot outside, but under the protection of shade cloth. This allows you to transplant them a month before it starts cooling off, so you'll get a huge jump start. Then, you'll just remove the shade cloth when fall weather finally sets in for good. When you do it this way, your brassicas will be approaching maturity before your first fall frost. If your plants aren't ready for harvest yet, and your first frost is imminent, or it's just going to be early this year, cover them with agricultural fabric to protect them and keep the frost off. Agricultural fabric lets in light and rainfall, so you can keep the plants covered and growing all year, you don't have to remove it. Using agricultural fabric, I grow brassicas all winter long here on the southeastern coast of North Carolina. Last year, we got hammered with a major snowstorm, a dozen nights in the teens, and an all-time low of 9.8 degrees, and all my brassicas were just fine under protection. I was harvesting them all the way through May. But believe it or not, the temperature problem is even deeper than that. Brassicas really don't like significant fluctuations in temperature. They're native to coastal areas of the United Kingdom and France, where it's basically 45 to 60 degrees year-round. It's always that nice chill in the air. So they're not used to the crazy fronts that we have here in North America, where suddenly it's below freezing and then it's 70 degrees the next day. So you can't really grow them out in the open successfully unless you have perfect weather and everything goes according to plan. If you have any of those fronts, well, it just throws everything haywire. So that's why you see here, over my entire garden, I have shade cloth. I have one of these greenhouse tarps. I try to moderate the temperature and the sun conditions where I can, and I try to moderate the rainfall because I don't want a lot of harshness in my climate, which it is growing out in the open in the sun. So protection is everything when it comes to brassicas, and honestly, most of the stuff we grow in our garden. There's no reason why we have to be stuck with the weather that we're given. We can change it. To protect your plants, I recommend installing PVC hoops all over your raised garden beds, just like I have right here. Alternatively, if you don't have wood raised garden beds and you have ones that are made out of metal or you garden directly in the earth, you can build a cheap, free standing hoop house. I'll link to two videos in the video description that will show you how to build each of these designs in only about 20 minutes using basic tools. I'll share more on the different types of covers that I use later in the video. Step number three is garden soil preparation. Before transplanting, I strongly recommend you amend your garden soil with one to two inches of compost. It can be a manure based compost, mushroom compost, locally made compost from a mulch yard, homemade compost. It doesn't matter. Just get a good quality compost and spread it evenly on top of your soil. The goal is to refeed and re-nutrify your soil and recharge the microbiome with healthy bacteria cultures. In a perfect world, you would do this three to four weeks before you plant in the beds to give the compost time to slowly decompose and leach nutrients into the soil. So if you can do this well in advance of planting, that is best. If you can't wait that long, you can add the compost, then pull a tarp over it. The tarp will help build warmth during the day and increase the decomposition rate while also snuffing out any weeds that may try to germinate on the surface. If you have no time at all and you have to plant right away, you still want to add the compost regardless. But generally, the more time you can space to allow the compost to break down and your soil to reset and rest and re-nutrify, the better. If you're enjoying this video from a real human, would you please consider subscribing to the channel, hitting the like button, and leaving a comment. YouTube has been promoting shorts a lot more heavily this year, and with all the AI slop hitting the platform, it's been really difficult for long format creators like me to find new audiences, and interacting with the videos by liking, subscribing, and commenting goes miles to help spread it across the platform. If you could do those things and support my channel, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Step number four is plant spacing. As a general rule, I give all of my brassicas about one square foot to growing. Before planting them, I like to lay out and arrange my transplants ahead of time to ensure ideal spacing. Then, I can go around and dig holes in an assembly line-like fashion which speeds up the planting process. Once all the holes are dug, I plop the transplants into the planting holes to ensure the top of the root ball is flush with the soil line. You're a very handsome boy, Dale. You're a very handsome boy. You're looking extra good today. You got your bath, so you're looking dapper as ever. And my first wave of brassica seedlings are pre-installed but not yet backfilled because we need to amend the planting holes. More on that later. But I have all kinds of amazing things in here from broccoli to cauliflower to Romanesco to collards, kale, red cabbage, green cabbage. And I was a couple of seedlings short, so I actually put some romaine lettuce right there and right over there. And they will make fine companions to the brassicas. They'll be harvested a little bit earlier, but that's okay. We'll just fill those spots with other things as they become available. Now, let's get on to fertilizing, which is a critical step. Step number five is amending our transplants with a granular organic fertilizer blend. Granular organic fertilizers are raw ingredients that must be decomposed by the soil's microbiome to feed our plants. We want to amend each planting hole with this fertilizer. I make my own organic fertilizer blend by combining three to four parts all-purpose organic fertilizer, one to two parts bone meal, one part azomite, and one part crab and lobster shell meal into a bucket, then mixing it. This blend works wonders for me and is especially effective if your soil has nematode issues. But if it's too many ingredients for you, at a minimum, I'd recommend mixing two parts of an organic all-purpose fertilizer to one part bone meal. Once it's blended, add one to two tablespoons of the fertilizer into the planting hole. Try and dust the roots of your transplants with it. Because organic fertilizers are raw materials, it will not burn your plant's roots. These fertilizers will slowly decompose over time and trickle feed your plants with all the nutrients they need to grow. I recommend top dressing each plant with one to two tablespoons of this blend once every two weeks. And if you're wondering what a top dressing is, that's when you take a small amount of fertilizer and you sprinkle it in a ring around the root area of a plant. This is what our seedlings should look like after the fertilizers have been added to the transplanting holes. Now that the fertilizers have been added, we are going to take our hands and we are going to backfill the transplanting holes with firm pressure. The goal is to press out any voids in the soil, but we don't want to be so firm that we choke out the roots. Remember, the roots need to breathe. The soil ball should end up flush with the top of your garden soil. For crops like cabbage and broccoli, where you harvest the entire plant at once, you can fertilize up to a month before harvest. For continuously growing plants like kale, apply as long as you want them to keep growing. Step number six is watering. After we transplant our seedlings, we want to water in all of the plants. And this does three things. First, it gives the plants water. Second, it compresses the soil to ensure that there are no air pockets in the transplant holes. And third, it starts the decomposition of the organic fertilizers. The granular organics won't decompose very well if they are dry, so moistening them is critical. Step number seven is amending with water-soluble fertilizers. While we did add organic granular fertilizers to all of our planting holes, keep in mind those fertilizers take weeks to break down. They are not fertilizers in their raw form. They are raw ingredients, precursors. They have to be broken down by the soil microbiology to feed our plants. We want to feed our plants now, and water-soluble fertilizers have already been processed, either by factories or by organic means, and pre-broken down, so they will immediately feed our plants when we apply them. Now, I've found water-soluble fertilizers to be highly beneficial with brassicas because many of us rely on the shoulder seasons to grow them. So, pushing them hard to hit that narrow window is really helpful. Because we primarily harvest brassicas for the leaves and the terminal buds, they do well with both higher nitrogen fertilizers as well as balanced fertilizer blends. There is enough phosphorus and potassium in the granular organics that we added to our transplanting holes for them to build healthy roots. So, if you want to stay 100% organic, all you really need to do is add two tablespoons per gallon of fish fertilizer into a watering can and feed them every two weeks. That's it. But if you want to push them along a little bit harder for faster growth, you can also add a tablespoon of something like Jaxx 20-20-20 in with the fish fertilizer, which is a synthesized fertilizer. This is J.R. Peters. It's the same company J.R. Peters makes Jaxx. Now, technically, that's not organic, but it's also not harmful. It's up to you. You'll be able to water six to eight plants per gallon. So, a 1.5-gallon watering can, like you see right here, is usually enough to fertilize eight to twelve plants. You'll apply the fertilizers every two weeks for best results after you apply the granular organics to help the granular organic fertilizers break down. Step number eight is to install drip irrigation. This is an optional step, but boy, does it make life easier. All of my beds are outfitted with drip lines, and it makes irrigation a breeze. At the time of filming this video, we are transitioning into fall. So, if you're looking for a fun, easy outdoor project to enjoy the beautiful fall weather, install drip irrigation in your garden beds. I'll place a link both above and down in the video description to a playlist where I show you how to install drip irrigation in every orientation imaginable. It's easy, inexpensive, and you will be so glad you did it next year when it starts getting really hot outside, and instead of spending an hour or more burning in the hot sun, all you have to do is set up a faucet timer or turn on the spigot. Step number nine is to dust each plant with diatomaceous earth. With summer winding down, the rainfall is slowing, but currently insect pest pressure is about at its peak. There are a lot of potential pests that could chew or cut down my plants right now, so I'm going to dust all of them with diatomaceous earth. This will keep off the pill bugs, cutworms, caterpillars, mealybugs, and other creepy crawlies. The only downside is you will need to reapply every time it rains, but like I said, it's raining a lot less often this time of year. Be sure to wear gloves when you apply diatomaceous earth because it has a drying effect on your skin. I'll place a little bit more diatomaceous earth on these plants tomorrow once the soil dries to protect them against those crawling insects. It's very affordable. I'll place a link down in the video description if you want some. And step number 10 is to install plant covers. Choose your cover based on the season. It's currently September while I'm filming this, and it's still very hot here on the southeastern coast of North Carolina. I have a shade cloth installed overhead, but I'm still going to add a supplemental shade cloth over these PVC hoops. Build the hoops just like I showed you in the videos linked in the description, and use these PVC snap clamps right here to clamp them on. I'll take down the shade cloth overhead in probably about two weeks, but this supplemental shade cloth right here will probably stay on until mid-October. If your weather has cooled and you don't need a shade cloth, but it's still pretty buggy out, you can alternatively install insect netting over your plants. Insect netting will keep the insect pests off your plants without impacting photosynthesis. Then when it starts getting cold, we can transition the insect netting to agricultural fabric, which will keep the brassicas growing all the way through winter in most climates. If you have a very extreme climate, the agricultural fabric will still, at the very least, extend your harvest by four to six weeks, if not longer. Shade cloth is actually pretty effective in and of itself at keeping a lot of insect pests out, at least the larger ones, so this will also give me some insect protection as well. And as promised, here is a list of my favorite seed varieties for some of my favorite brassicas to grow. I placed links to some of my favorite seeds down in the video description if you'd like to purchase them. So, by planting earlier than you think, using plant covers for protection, and maintaining a strong fertilizer routine, you will unlock those successful harvests you have always dreamed of. The reason why brassicas fail is we wait too long to plant them, stick them out in the open, susceptible to weather fluctuations, then we don't feed them enough. They are heavier feeders than we think, and they can be planted outside earlier than you think as long as you protect them. Truly, there is no reason why any of your plants should ever grow unprotected. By using these techniques, growing brassicas all winter long in Zone 6 is possible, and colder zones should be able to dramatically extend their harvests far beyond they ever thought possible. So, plant covers can be used to our advantage 365 days a year, and they are so inexpensive. We don't have to be stuck with the weather we are given. Create your own microclimates, and you will be shocked how much better your plants grow, and how much longer you can extend those harvests. So, everybody, I hope you found this video helpful, entertaining, and enjoyable. If you did, please make sure to hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring the notification bell so you're notified when I release more videos like these. I placed direct links to all of the products that I featured in this video that helped me grow brassicas down in the video description, as well as my favorite brassica seeds. For everything else I use in real life in my yard and garden, that is all linked in my Amazon storefront in the video description. And while you're down there, check out my website, themillennialgardener.com, for all things gardening and custom home design merch if you want to support my channel. Thank you all so much for watching, and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Well, once again, there must be a glitch in the Matrix, because Dale and I just passed a guy walking a cat. The cat was in a harness on a leash, and it walked by bushes and started sniffing the bushes, and its tail was going back and forth. I don't know what world we're in. I think I must be dreaming or something. I don't know. This must not be real life. But I'll tell you what's consistent with real life, is Dale enjoying his walk. We are having such a nice night. It has not been all that hot, but we're about to get whacked by what looks like one last heat wave for the year of upper 90s. So let's enjoy this beautiful overcast, kind of overcast, but gorgeous weather. And Dale is just sniffing on everything and peeing on everything, just like the good boy he is. There's something good on that pole. Read those pee mouths, Dale.