Okay, so, I’ve been messing around with growing cabbage in my backyard, and let me tell you, it’s been a real learning experience. I started this whole thing thinking, “How hard can it be?” Turns out, there’s a bunch of stuff that can go wrong, especially when it comes to pests and diseases. I decided to document everything with pictures, you know, for science and all. So here’s what went down.
First off, I planted these little cabbage seedlings, and they were doing great. Nice and green, growing like weeds. But then, I started noticing holes in the leaves. Like, a lot of holes. I got down on my hands and knees, and sure enough, I saw these little green worms munching away. Turns out, these are called cabbage worms. They’re these little green caterpillars that just love to eat cabbage leaves. I picked off as many as I could find, but they’re sneaky little buggers.
-
Cabbage Worms – My first clue was the holes, then I saw the little green guys themselves. They blend in pretty well with the leaves, so you gotta look close.
Then, there were these other pests. They were smaller and caused the leaves to look kind of distorted. I later found out they’re some kind of sap-sucking bugs, probably aphids. These things are tiny, but they can do a lot of damage if you don’t catch them early. They made the leaves curl up and look all weird.
-
Aphids (probably) – Tiny, but they make the leaves look all messed up and curled. They suck the sap out of the plants, which is not good.
But it wasn’t just the bugs. Oh no, the plants themselves started looking sick. Some of them got these weird spots on the leaves. At first, I thought it was just dirt or something, but it kept getting worse. I did some digging online and found out it could be something called Alternaria Leaf Spot. It’s a kind of fungus that makes these dark spots on the leaves. You can see in my pictures how the spots started small but then spread all over.
-
Alternaria Leaf Spot – Started as small spots but then covered a bunch of the leaves. It’s a fungus, apparently.
Another problem I ran into was something called white blister. My neighbor, who’s a bit of a gardening pro, told me it’s more common in cooler places. It showed up on my broccoli too, which was a bummer. It looked like white, powdery stuff on the leaves.
-
White Blister – White, powdery stuff on the leaves. Not fun, especially if you’re in a cooler area.
One of the biggest headaches was when I noticed some of the plants just weren’t forming heads. Like, at all. They were just a bunch of leaves. I was watering them regularly, so I was really confused. I learned that cabbage needs consistent moisture, but not too much. I might have been under or over-watering them. It’s a fine line, apparently. I found that some other plants got yellowish leaves. I looked it up, and it seems like it might be blackleg or clubroot, which are also some kind of diseases. I didn’t realize there were so many things that could go wrong with cabbage!
-
No Heads Forming – This was a big one. The plants were growing leaves but no actual cabbage heads. Probably because I messed up the watering.
-
Yellow Leaves – Could be blackleg or clubroot, not really sure which one. But it definitely didn’t look healthy.
The Learning Curve
So yeah, it’s been a wild ride. I took tons of pictures of all these problems, which I’m hoping will help someone else out there. Growing cabbage isn’t as easy as it looks, but I’m not giving up. I’ve learned a lot about different pests and diseases, and I’m already thinking about how to do better next year. Maybe I’ll try some natural pest control methods or be more careful with the watering. We’ll see. Gardening is definitely a journey, not a destination, right?
