Growing eco-friendly cabbages

CABBAGE IS an important commercial vegetable grown under an intensive protective shield of pesticides, often indiscriminately applied thus posing the threat of harmful residues.

With a view to grow cabbage without the harmful residues of pesticides, an attempt was made at the farm land of Kittur Rani Channamma College of Horticulture, Arabhavi-591310 (Belgaum, Karnataka).

A four acre piece of irrigated land was planted to a rolling variety of cabbage `Golden Acre', the seedlings of which were grown on raised seed beds covered with a layer of fine farm yard manure.

This helped in preventing diseases like dampingoff and rootrot. The main field was brought to fine tilth by incorporating the residues and enriching with enough farm yard manure before taking up the planting, so as to exploit the potential yield of cabbage.

A fortnight before transplanting the cabbage seedlings, mustard seeds were sown to a row after every twenty rows of cabbage.

Another line of mustard was sown adjacent to the earlier line after a fortnight of planting cabbage.A paired row of mustard with an age difference of one month was maintained at every twenty rows of cabbage. At the same time bird perches were erected at 10 per acre just 2 feet above the height of the crop.

The cabbage crop was kept under observation for growth parameters as well as for the appearance of diseases and pests. At about 30 days of transplanting, there were incidences of aphids and rarely the defoliating caterpillars. A spray of need based insecticide was taken.

Next course of action was left to the nature. Birds started picking up the caterpillars from the cabbage.

Some caterpillars were collected by hand and were reared in cages under laboratory conditions. It showed a high amount of parasitisation.

The glistening fairly big heads of cabbage were harvested.

The potential yield of cabbage i.e. 25 tons per hectare was achieved without dumping pesticideson it.

Y. K. Kotikal & M. P. Patil

K.R.C. College of Horticulture

Arabhavi 591 310.

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