Monday 27 July 2009

Look Away Now..

It's a time of plenty. The spuds are ready the mange-tout (see below), runner beans, courgettes, beetrot and chard are coming on stream. The family is fed up of lettuce while huge rosettes adorn the plot, surplus to requirement and a bit over the hill.



So why be glum? Well here the rogues gallery:

We returned from holiday to find the broad beans looking like they'd been through a forest fire. A consultation of the books suggested root rot. (Do not grow the same crop in this area for 8 years)



Next to them the onions were also ailing with white rot (9 years sentence)



... and the last straw is that 6 potato plants have developed tell tale brown spots on their leaves in the course of the last week. This is blight and I have chopped the haulms down and removed them in an attempt to stop this spreading to neighbouring plants. The six plants were all Kerr's Pinks which I bought at the potato day. I'm not too chuffed with the supplier!



I know it has been exceptionally wet but my greatest fear was slugs. So to be told that broad beans and onions are out of bounds, in one corner of the plot at least, is a galling!

Monday 20 July 2009

How Green is My Plot?

Two weeks away and there has been a green revolution. Brassicas:



and the view from the end.




Of course a big element of the green is the weeds! I've been weeding 90% of the time on this weekend's visits. On the plus side:

We are eating first potatoes (Ballydoon and Sharpe's Express), lettuces and broad beans. The runner beans are flowering nicely, as are the mange-tout (both in the forground, above).

Note strawberries finished by first week in July.