Christmas veg woes

Well it's a week to go until the "Big Day" and hasn't the time flown by? I haven't had a chance to blog all week as I've been busy with Christmas preparations.

Managed to get on site last weekend. Still very soggy up there and we weren't able to do too much apart from a little weeding. Came away with some more snowball turnips (they're doing great guns) and swede and a nice red cabbage from My Folks.

We had been hoping that the sprouts would be doing better than they had been up to now. The sprouts My Folks are growing look super and will definitely be ready for serving up with Christmas dinner. Ours, on the other hand, were looking very stunted and almost dwarf-like. On closer inspection I noticed some of the leaves had a white mould-like substance on them. After consulting my disease book I concluded some of the plants had succumbed to White Spot. There was nothing for it but to strip off the infected leaves and chuck them on the burning pile. We had to pull up a couple of plants as they were too far gone. According to the book, mild damp conditions and too close planting can cause the disease to occur. Certainly we've had the weather conditions for it. As a further precaution we've staked out the remaining plants to ensure they don't grow over each other and stripped off some of the lower leaves to keep them away from the soil. I don't know if this remedial action will help or not, but its a pretty safe bet to say that we won't be having our own sprouts with Christmas dinner this year.

On a happier note, I'll leave you with a picture of a little bit of natural decoration I found for our shed

first harvest from Site 2!

Well this is our first item harvested from Site 2 - a lovely cauliflower. We cut it yesterday and it was served up with our Sunday roast last night. Very nice it was too.



Sadly our Broad Beans have gone. We noticed recently that some of the plants had strange brown spots on the leaves. After consulting the diseases book, we concluded they had been struck down with chocolate spot. So all the plants came had to be pulled up and burned. We haven't had much luck with broads this year - we lost our crop at Site 1 due to black fly earlier in the year. Still we'll try again and see if it's a case of 3rd time lucky.

late September sunshine

Things have been a bit quiet on the allotment front this last couple of weeks. Went up today and was pleasantly surprised at how well the Snowball turnips are progressing. We thinned them out and, rather than chuck them on the compost, we've transplanted the thinnings into the remaining space in bed 4. It was only after they had all been watered in that Cloddigger wondered whether or not he actually like turnips. Well, he's going to have plenty of chances to decide if they all grow!


'Snowball' turnips - today's thinnings transplanted to the right of the main turnip row



Some of our brassicas have been suffering from wooly aphids so have been sprayed. Hopefully this has dealt with the problem and the plants will recover enough to grow to maturity.

Another pesky problem is our resident mole(s). It/they appear particularly fond of the brassicas bed so we've been looking into humane methods of repelling them. The best bet looks to be solar powered sonic stakes. These clever devices are placed into the ground and emit sonic waves which irritate the moles thus encourgaing them to move on elsewhere. I couldn't find anywhere locally which sells them so I'll be ordering online. I'll let you know how successful these devices are once we've given them a go for a couple of weeks.

Pests aside, other crops appear to be doing well. The potatoes are going great guns and the first tender shoots of beetroot & garlic have made an appearance. The petite pois are now big enough not to be tempting to birds, so I removed their protective wire cloches and have fitted pea netting to their wig wam.

September continues to delight us with its warm, balmy days so it is an absolute pleasure to spend lots of time at the lottie. The nights are starting to draw in now and I'm sure it won't be long before we're having to think about putting out the protective fleeces and cloches.

The lottie today enoying late September sunshine

not so good old Blight(y)

Disaster has struck. All our tomato plants on Site 1 have been wiped out with the dreaded 'B' - Blight. We had an email from Deb last night to say her tomatoes were diseased and thought that ours might be too. Cloddigger hot footed it up there today after work to find that all our tomato plants had been infected. Nothing for it but to pull them up and remove the plants for burning. We couldn't believe how quickly it had taken hold as there were no evident signs of blight on Saturday.

Looking at a neighbouring plot, Cloddigger could see that their potatoes have been infected. Luckily our last batch of salad potatoes had been spared so these have now all been lifted. We're not taking any chances though, the potato plants will also be burned.

I guess it was pretty inevitable that we would feel some effects as the weather conditions have been perfect for encouraging the disease. I think we will be cautious about planting up tomatoes at Site 2 and just stick with growing them in the greenhouse at home where there is more control over the climatic conditions.