The Rocket early potatoes have not disappointed; I've been digging lovely sized spuds since the very beginning of the month. Good ol' Rocket, they've come up trumps once again. This shows that my easy plant method is quite suitable for potatoes. Saying that, the Picasso main crop I'm trying for the first time this year, look a little 'weak'. There's still plenty of time for the spuds to develop and, after all, it's what is going on underground that's important. Fingers crossed.
The final bed this year has been dug over and the Winter squashes planted out, Butternut Hunter F1, Big Max pumpkin and some generic courgette, possibly Black Beauty. I've planted all the squashes in the usual way; i.e, planting an upside-down plastic bottle with the bottom cut off next to the plant to act as a funnel for watering and feeding. It looks silly at first but when the plants go haywire it's difficult to see the bottles let alone where the stems go into the earth.
I'm not sure if my precautions against brassica root fly have failed but both the sprouts and Summer cabbage look like they are struggling a little. It appears they just haven't 'grown away' since being planted out. I'll give them a bit of a feed and will hope for the best. What's galling is that I gave some spare Brussels Sprout plants to my allotment neighbour and his are double the size of mine - there's something up on my plot and it isn't good!
The onions are doing OK and are beginning to swell; the broad beans are romping away too. A word on broad beans - I'm not a fan of insecticide but I do use it on the broad beans at a very specific time. Just before the flowers come out I spray the tips for black-fly which is a real pest on broad beans at this time of year. Spraying later hurts the bees which love the flowers and isn't good at all - likewise spraying earlier doesn't catch enough of the black-fly to be effective. Any infestations after flowering can be dealt with simply by nipping out the affected area, usually the growing tips.
That's it for me. Bye for now.
