Harvesting cabbage

Harvesting cabbage is a time-consuming process, divided into several stages. If you follow the rules and adhere to the deadlines, the vegetable will preserve vitamins and nutrients throughout the winter.

Content
  1. How to properly collect and store the cabbage
  2. The best time to harvest
  3. Devices and mechanisms
  4. Instructions for harvesting cabbage
  5. What do after cleaning
  6. Conclusion

Уборка капусты

Harvesting cabbage

How to properly collect and store cabbage

To ensure that the harvested crop retains quality throughout the winter, they are harvested at the optimum time and provide the cabbage drivers with proper These are storage conditions.

Secrets of long-term storage of cabbage:

  • Before harvesting, the plants are not watered for 2 weeks, otherwise the vegetable storability worsens. There is a danger that the forks crack even on the beds.
  • Only ripened cabbage needs to be harvested, otherwise the forks dry out before the set time, and the vegetable itself becomes tasteless and bitter. The approximate collection period is determined based on the recommendations for each variety or hybrid. Unripe vegetable is suitable only for livestock feed.
  • A month before harvesting, cabbage is sprinkled with wood ash. This substance helps scare away slugs looking for food and a place to hibernate. Top dressing should be the last of the season.
  • A place for storing heads should be selected in advance. Its area should be sufficient so that the heads do not lie on top of each other. Also the room should be dark and cool. A prerequisite is ventilation, otherwise the plugs will deteriorate. Forks lay insulated pits or store in the cellar.

The best time to harvest

There is no single time for harvesting cabbage. It all depends on the variety and the degree of maturity of the vegetable. Harvesting cabbage of early varieties occurs as the heads of cabbage ripen. Usually this time falls in mid-July. Mid-late-season vegetables are harvested during August and September.

Harvesting dates for late species vary, depending on the region:

  • in the northern regions – after September 15;
  • in the southern and western part of Siberia – at the beginning of October;
  • in the middle lane – from October 15.

In areas with a longer and warmer autumn, even head out in late October or early November. If frost occurs early, vegetables are harvested before they thaw naturally.

The best conditions for harvesting are warm and dry days. This is due to the fact that the vegetable needs to be dried before harvesting for storage. It is better to remove cabbage from the garden after lowering the average daily temperature to around 7 ° C.Harvesting of late varieties with the onset of the first frost is also allowed, but in this case there is a risk that cabbage will be stored less.

There is an opinion that the best time to harvest the vegetable is the period of the waning moon, i.e. from 16 to 26 lunar day. The best hours and days for harvesting are determined using the horticultural lunar calendar. Suitable for cleaning will be days under the sign of Capricorn, Libra or Sagittarius. Work is avoided on days when the Moon is in Pisces or Aries.

Devices and mechanisms

It is better to remove the ripened cabbage manually. Typically, cabbages are pulled out together with stitches. As soon as the leaves on the heads are wilted, the heads are cut.

The main equipment for picking cabbage by hand:

  • for digging bushes – a pitchfork or a shovel;
  • for cutting the heads – a knife or a small kitchen ax;
  • boxes and bags for harvesting and moving it to storage places.

It is also desirable to have a garden wheelbarrow or any other cart: cabbage forks heavy and need careful transportation.

Капуста нуждается в аккуратном транспортировании

Cabbage needs careful transportation

When collecting It is advisable to use a single-row combine and semi-automatic conveyors with a loader function in mechanized way on large beds. The productivity of harvesting cabbage in this way reaches 0.3 ha / h.

For gentle collection of cabbage, comparable to the manual method, automatic lines with electronic process control are used. The list of works of such devices includes digging plants, pruning leaves, stalks and packing heads.

Instructions for harvesting cabbage

The procedure for the classic harvesting of cabbage manually:

  • Dig a bush with a pitchfork or a shovel.
  • Grab the head of the cabbage with your hands and, slightly rocking it from side to side or scrolling in different directions, pull it out of the ground along with the roots.
  • Shake off excess land.
  • Carefully lay the cabbage on dry ground. It is advisable not to put the head where the sun’s rays fall, because subsequently condensation and mold will form inside the head.
  • Dry the crop, and then separate the leaves not wrapped in forks.
  • Hang the cabbage in a cool room for stumps.

So the crop is stored throughout the winter. If you plan to clean the vegetable in the basement, this method will not work: the stalk will rot from the inside. Following this, the cabbage will go bad. In this case, gardeners separate the forks from the roots and leave stalks, the length of which varies from 5 to 8 cm, depending on the size of the vegetable.

If the cabbage is not stored on time due to frost or heavy rain, the cabbage do not pull out. It is permissible to cut them down with an ax and clean them on the spot to a marketable condition.

Several forks are left on the bed until frost. It is from these varietal heads of cabbage that the best seeds are subsequently obtained. Hybrid plants are unsuitable for such purposes.

What to do after harvesting

Following cabbage, the remains of the plant are collected: leaves and stalks with roots. If they are left in the beds, then during the winter these parts of the seedlings will become woody, the soil under them will be dragged out and become unsuitable for spring sowing of seeds or transplanting seedlings. Parts of plants are also an excellent refuge for parasites or pests and become foci of infection transmitted by cruciferous.

The stumps are harvested as follows:

  • undermine the remains with a pitchfork or a shovel;
  • they pull it out with their hands and store it in heaps;
  • separate the leaves and rhizomes; the former are sent to feed livestock and poultry, and the latter are chopped into small pieces and mixed with foliage, manure and sawdust.

After removing the plants, they dig the plot onto a bayonet shovel and leave it like winter plowing: large boulders.

How to harvest and preserve cabbage
Autumn cabbage harvest
Cabbage is crunching, work is underway: the last crop of MIR24 is being harvested in Russia

Conclusion

If you remove the ripened cabbage from the beds according to all the rules, TPC will be easily stored for 9 months.

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Anna Evans

Author ✓ Farmer

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