Club root I think

[Elderflower]

I have a thriving bed of Savoy cabbages and the two at one end of the bed have gone all funny - not thriving and looking sort of faded. I pulled one up and showed the fount of wisdom at our allotments and he said it looked like club root if there was no grub in the lumpy root. No grub or hollow bits!
Thing is - the rest of the bed looks fine, in fact the stricken two looked fine until this week!
Will the club root creep along the bed?
Are the rest of the cabbages doomed?
I`ve weeded the bed with my hoe before club root was suspected. Does that mean I`ve spread the curse around my plot as I poddled around hoeing?
Oh dear!
What do you think?

[vivienz]

Hi Elderflower,
I have clubroot scattered about over quite a bit of my plot, which was there when I moved onto it. My current brassica bed (calabrese and cabbages) sounds a bit like yours - some are all clear, others affected. However, as the plants were nice & strong, I have still had a very good crop (more broccoli than I can use quickly), so I would leave them to it.

I know that you're supposed to be scrupulous with 'plot hygiene' if there is anything like this around, but I find it next to impossible as I don't have well defined beds to mark out the areas and once the ground is empty, it can be hard to remember which lurgies are where. I'm putting in my next lot of brassicas over the coming two weeks, and I'm going to try the old trick of putting a chunk of rhubarb in the hole with each plant to see if that helps at all.

Good luck,
Vivien

[Geoff]

The horrible smell is the clearest confirmation of clubroot. Grow strong plants in 3" pots and lime well and you will usually get a crop. Don't cut brassica crops, dig them up and cut off the rootball and dispose of it through a bin or a bonfire.

[Elderflower]

Thanks for the advice folks.
Very useful!

[vivienz]

Hi Geoff,
Does that mean that I'm okay to compost the rest of the plant? I have been chucking the whole lot in the bin, as I assumed the whole thing would contaminate my compost with clubroot, not just the rootball.
Vivien

[Geoff]

I reckon so. I dig them up, cut off the root ball while in that area into a bucket for getting rid off and clean up the harvested part into the compost.

[david71]

do you have to lime the whole area or just put some in the planting hole?

david

[Lurganspade]

I have club root both in my garden and allotment.

When I used to try to spread a 25 kg bag of lime over a large area, I always lost lots of brassicas with swollen roots!
Then a few years ago I stopped spreading the lime over a large area, and only put about half a yogurt carton of lime into and around the actual planting hole where the plants were to go.
Result, I almost never see swollen roots (one only so far this season) on my plants, and I use very little lime as well!
One of my problems is I use lots of stable manure, this is very acid, which is what club root thrives on!
Also Wallflowers can also sucumb to club root disease, so beware of that as well!