Netted brassicas with tagetes ineffective against white fly
Weather still wet and windy. Would you believe it it's mid August and it seems cold enough for October. The weather has seriously affected stuff on my plot, situated as it is at the bottom of the hill and with a tendency to water-logging. The beans have not been happy at all and have not thrived. Nor have the courgettes been as prolific as I would have hoped in spite of feeding them liberally with organic seaweed fertiliser. They do have quite good foliage but the fruiting is sporadic as the bees are sheltering from the rain rather than buzzing about pollinating the flowers. I have noticed that the cucumbers are only half developed too.
Carrots have been grown,in this old cold frame. this seems to be extremely effective at preventing carrot fly form reaching the roots. I have had little or no trouble from this pest since I have been growing them in this frame. I just move the frame from one area to another every year.
To add insult to injury those pesky critters, the squirrels, have got all my sweetcorn. M and I had eaten a total of five ears before they got the remainder. I arrived at the allotment on Sunday ready to harvest my crops, fully expecting to pick at least half a dozen ears of corn to find that there were none left. What a disappointment. I won't be letting them get them next year, that's for sure. I will put padlocks on the netting! I think I will be investing in a fruit cage for the purpose.
On the bright side, I have grown a novel variety of courgette this year; an Italian pale yellow rough skinned type. this has excellent flavour and is unusual looking in that it is shaped rather like a slim gourd with pale yellow skin, not the bright sunshine yellow of the standard varieties, and with a bumpy wrinkled surface. The skin is very thin and tender too, which makes for very good eating.
I am a bit disappointed about the productivity of my plot, in spite of all the organic matter and organic chicken pellets and seaweed fertilizer the crop yields seem much lower this year. I hope that the soil is not becoming exhausted. I don't crop intensively nor do I grow on every bit of land every year and follow a fallow field regimen for the most part; so it is all a bit puzzling.
Another success has been the broccoli; I have had the main broccoli on four plants that were given to me. and I am now harvesting side shoots every week. This seems to be a very good value plant for the space it takes up. I am, however, unable to control the white fly, but reckon as long as I wash the vegetables thoroughly it should be OK. I have grown tagetes among the brassicas but this seems to be completely useless as a deterrent.
My onions have been harvested and are now cleaned and laid in trays in the greenhouse to dry off. The harvest was not great and the onions were quite small. Next year I will set them further apart in an attempt to grow larger bulbs. I am harvesting leeks too. These have grown well and so far none has bolted, they may stand through the winter if I let them.
My biggest disaster so far this year is my plum tree. This was thriving and then one weekend it looked half dead and the next weekend it was completely dead. I really don't know how it happened; the tree just went brown. I will leave it in this winter and see what happens in spring but I think it is a goner.
This was one of the plants I grew from seed for my garden, Scabious Summer berries. They have turned out to be lovely flowers at all stages of development from the buds as shown here on the left to the mature flowers and seed heads. The colours are wonderful too in all shades of pink and red the darkest being nearly black.
I have real trouble editing this post with pictures I don't know how to wrap text around the pictures or to add captions or even to get the pictures to stay in the right place. If anyone out ther can explain this in Plain English and not in Blogese I would be grateful to hear form you.
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