Jun 4th, 2023 Sunday Sunny
Ever since we started gardening four years ago, we have been dreaming of cultivating our own Napa cabbages.
This idea stemmed from my complaint about Napa cabbages that we bought in Asian stores here. For some reason, a few years ago, I noticed that black dots appeared on the leaves and the stems of the cabbages, even shortly after I brought them home. Sometimes this also affected the taste – instead of being juicy and slightly sweet, these Napa cabbages left a bitterness in my mouth. We both love Napa cabbages and we use them a lot in various dishes, so we were disappointed that it was not so straightforward to get tasty Napa cabbages, a vegetable so prevalent in my home region that I never thought much of.
“Let’s grow our own then!” suggested my husband.
So we started trying. We purchased seeds from a reputable seed company, and the seeds germinated nicely. Within a few weeks, we had twenty healthy-looking baby Napa cabbages with palm-sized leaves ready to move into the garden!
“I think we will have a lot of cabbages this year! Wouldn’t it be nice to make kimchi with our homegrown cabbages?” my husband exclaimed with excitement.
That turned out to be a jinx. The seedlings that just settled in the garden were quickly devoured by bugs, many of them native to this area. I bet they find the cabbage leaves as tempting as we do 😛 In the end, we barely harvested a single cabbage head.
The second year, we learned from the previous year, and we were extra aggressive on pest control (using organic baits around the plants). Yet, the results were unsatisfactory – the cabbages did a little better with less disturbance, but they did not become a “head”, the typical look of Napa cabbage. Our Napa cabbages looked more like lotus flowers with leaves extending outwards, not wrapping up tightly. We gave a big sigh and ordered a different variety for another attempt.
Last year, everything started in a promising way – the transplanting was successful, the seedlings seemed reasonably established, and not many pest issues. Unfortunately, in May a heat wave hit us. The weather went from near winter to summer-like in a week, causing all the cold-loving cultivars (e.g. lettuce, celtuce, kolrabi) to be confused and start bolting early. We did our best to pinch off the flowers, but there was no fighting with the force of nature.
This year, I lowered my expectation. The repeated failures discouraged me. I know it does not hurt to try, yet unlike my husband, I tend to view gardening as a way of producing food instead of a scientific experiment. It is hard not to be sad to see no fruit coming out of our continuous effort. Still, we started the seeds indoors, hardened the delicate tiny cabbages properly, then relocated them in our garden.
Maybe it was the relatively cool spring weather. Maybe it was the new hugel bed that my husband took pains to assemble. Maybe it was a combination of luck. When I finally got to check on the garden a few days ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much they have matured, and this spring variety seems ready to be picked!
That is nature’s lesson for me. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and let nature do the rest. Above all, persist in something you really want to do, and eventually it may work out.
Perhaps the dream of making kimchi with homegrown cabbages is finally coming true 🙂