This is what Cabbage White caterpillars look like when left to their own devices. I thought I had squished all of the eggs on my young Cabbages, Broccoli and Kale plants, but no. Apparently, this little clutch of siblings had evaded my thumb. I found them munching through this leaf and promptly nipped it off.
The thing is when they get to the moving stage I just can’t kill them. They’re too, you know, alive. So I put the whole leaf, caterpillars and all, in the compost bin. I’m not sure what will happen to them in there but at least they will have something to eat, if not anywhere to fly to. Oh well.
While inspecting my three Pears dangling from my Pear trees I found these, nasty-looking, day-glow spots on some of the leaves. Yuk! Apparently it’s Pear rust and is a fungal disease that affects Pears and Junipers. Infact, the spores need a Juniper to over-winter on!
I don’t own a Juniper bush! One of my sneaky little neighbours must be harbouring one. Humph.
I need to snip off the infected leaves on my Pear trees and prune infected branches off the Juniper otherwise the problem will keep coming back. Do you think they would mind if I hopped over the fence at midnight and did a little free pruning? No, I thought not.
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It’s about this time of year that I start to fuss and worry about blight on my Tomatoes. I’ve never really been able to relax since The Year the Tomatoes Died. So I thought I would re-publish this little article that I wrote last year for the Guardian Gardening blog. I will be doing all of this again this year, come rain or shine :)
When I first starting vegetable gardening in 2005 growing Tomatoes was a doddle, a breeze. Just bung in the plants, water them a bit, feed them a bit and ta-da! right on que at the end of August you’d be eating your own home-grown tommies.
Not anymore. Over the last few years, our summers have been, well, disappointing. And if we’re deluged in rain again this year it means one thing; that growing outdoor Tomatoes in the UK will be more of a battle with wind and rain in an effort to avoid the dreaded…gulp… blight.
As most will know, Tomato blight is a nasty disease that starts with small brown patches on stalks and leaves but soon progresses to the fruits.
If I had a greenhouse I’d take my Tomatoes under cover. But since I don’t have that option (and frankly the thought of ‘not’ growing Tomatoes makes me feel a little nauseous) then there’s only one thing for it - to fight.
Here’s my plan.
- Grow (or buy) vigorous, healthy plants.
- Don’t plant Tomatoes in the same spot as last year.
- Plant disease-resistant varieties (Ferline, for example)
- Remove the bottom leaves up to the first truss of fruits to avoid splash back
- Remove and destroy all plant waste after the growing season
- Avoid watering on to the leaves. Water directly to the roots and don’t handle plants when the vines are wet.
- Control weeds in and around the plants. Weeds serve as hosts for insects and disease.
- Control pests (particularly aphids) which may transmit disease from plant to plant.
- Remove plants as soon as the tell-tale brown patches are seen. Wash hands and tools with a detergent after handling affected plants.
- Choose a sunny location and provide a removable rain cover if possible.
- Pray (or at least ask the rain gods to take pity on me).
So there you have it my 10 - err 11 point plan. If anyone has any more suggestions then please post them in the comments. When fighting Mother Nature you need all the weapons you can get.
Ack! I’ve got White Rot on my Garlic. I noticed that some of them had started to split and the leaves were turning more and more yellow. I pulled one up to investigate and that’s when I discovered this nasty little fungal disease, lurking beneath the surface. It’s not good news. White Rot is serious stuff for which there is no cure. All I can do is lift the affected plants and burn them. I won’t be able to grow Garlic in the same spot for quite some years, maybe even eight! Bummer.
I think the disease must have come in either some bags of manure I bought at the garden centre or else infected soil from potted plants. I grew Garlic last year and it was fine. But the worst of it is I also have a whole crop of onions (very susceptible to White Rot) growing right next to the Garlic. Hmmmm…
I suppose I’m lucky in the fact that I have four separate beds here at mtp. Each one with slightly different soil (one sandy, one stony etc) so I do have some other options. I’m also wondering if I shouldn’t dig all the soil out of that particular bed and replace it? Does anyone have any experience of that?
It feels quite cruel to be thwarted by nature in this way after all the care and attention I’ve put in. Especially, with something so devastating. To be fair though, I have had some very nice Garlic in the past. I guess this is just the year the Garlic gets it huh?
Off to drown my sorrows.
Yesterday, I ran along my Broadbean row, and like a good girl, I pinched out the tips from each plant. I was pleased with the results until I realised that I didn’t actually know why I’d just done it. I had some vague recollection of reading it somewhere in a book and that it had something to do with blackfly.
So I looked it up. Apparently, the main reason why you should nip out the tips is that it redirects the plant’s energy into setting fruit, rather than growing taller. So you should only nip out the tips once three or four trusses of flowers have appeared.
Secondly, nipping out the tips takes away the part of the plant that is most susceptible to blackfly attack and therefore discourages a future attack. If you already have blackfly then you’ll be removing most of them as you nip. So, everyone’s a winner, as they say.
Lastly, you can cook the tips (providing they are not infested with blackfly, of course). Wash and simmer for 2-3 minutes. Then treat like Spinach or Greens. I might try some.
So now I know why I’m pinching out the tips of my broadbeans I can be reassured that I’m doing the right thing. Yes…it’s much better to have all of the information, all of the time.
I recently sowed some Broadbeans. While doing some research I found out a few things that I didn’t know before now. I learned last year that you should soak them overnight before sowing. Which I did.
However, once soaked, previously I would have thrown the lot in the ground. But now I know that some Broadbeans are good, and some, well, not so much. It’s all about looking very carefully at your seeds and finding those tell-tale signs that will tell you if should sow the seed or bin it.
Firstly, if your seed has a black line where the little dimple is (it’s called a hilium apparently) then bin it.
If the hilium looks more like this then sow it.
Lastly, if your seed looks like it has had some critter make it its home, then surely bin it. What’s left should be nice, viable seed that will give you a better chance of germination. Happy Broadbean sowing.
I came back from holiday, tired, weary and very, very jet-lagged to find this in my garden. I could have wept right there and then. Virtually all of my Tomatoes were ruined by blight. Today, I spend an hour or so pulling up the dead plants and collecting the rotted Tomatoes in an attempt to keep the spores from lingering in the soil. It was like wrestling with the living dead! Horrid, dried-up, gnarled and crispy the plants spat pock-marked, flea-infested, brown gunk at me as I pulled them out of the ground and stuffed them in the bin liner. I hate Tomatoes.
Holy Heck! I found this guy hanging out in the Wisteria - quietly munching through some new shoots. He’s so amazing that I had to get my camera out and shoot him. Does anyone know what he will become? Something funky I bet.
If your peas are flowering, like mine are, then now is the time time to cover the plants with Enviromesh. Pea moths lay their eggs on the flowers of peas at this time of year and the resulting tiny, cream-coloured grub will burrow into your pea-pods ready for you to find later on in the season when you harvest your peas. Protecting the crop now will mean grub-free pea soup later. Unless you need the protein of course?
Holy heck, I’ve actually managed to harvest some carrots that are not either so small you need a magnifying glass to see them, so forked that they’re impossible to eat or so infested with carrot fly that err… you wouldn’t want to eat them anyway. This is the batch that I sowed direct in the old cold frame back in March. One of two things is happening here: either I sowed the carrots so early that they missed the first wave of flies or that my cunning plan of using the cold frame two-thirds full really did act as a barrier to the vertically challenged carrotfly. It’s anyone’s guess which one was working for me here but by the next harvest I should be able to tell as they were sowed much later. So it’s time for celebration here at mtp - after 3 years of trying we finally get to taste home grown carrot. Who said growing your own was easy?
