26 Jul - It's An Annus Horribilis!!

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. 

22 Jun - Early Spuds & A General Round-Up

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.