Well, things aren't going great, I'll admit it. Let's go for the successes first. Runner beans have developed well, the onions likewise, we are still eating my Rocket early potatoes, there's a load of broad beans in the freezer and the tree is full of ripening plums.
Now to the bad news and this season there appears to be a lot of it. The Picasso main crop potatoes look pathetic, the plants are small and I doubt very much if there's anything worthwhile underneath them. The brassicas are awful - I said last month that I had given some spare sprout plants to my allotment neighbour and his Brussels were twice the size of mine, well, his have all keeled over and died. Closer inspection has shown root fly at the base. Both my summer cabbage and sprouts are stunted, no doubt due to a lack of root development despite rubber disks at the base of the stems.
The most tragic for me are the Winter squashes which usually provide lovely food well into the new year. Not this time. None of the squashes have flowered at all, not even the courgettes which usually produce so well that they are a plague by the end of the Summer!
I'm not sure about the Picasso spuds, maybe they just aren't suited to my clay soil but more likely it's because the weather has been dry and they have suffered. The brassicas have been hit by root fly, I'm certain of that so I'll have to have a think about how to combat that next season.
The squash failure is curious but I think I know why they haven't done well for me this year. I planted them out in early June as usual but unfortunately the weather became relatively overcast and cool for a few weeks. Squashes really don't like that and cooler temperatures just after planting really interrupt their development cycle. I'll leave them in the ground but I know from past experience that signs of fruiting should be appearing by now if there's going to be a decent crop.
Anyway, I'll sign off with a picture of a more fruitful squash crop from a previous season just to remind myself that I'm not a total idiot! Bye for now.
