Blight!

Over the last few days we have finally had some weather that could reasonably be described as "Summery". Daytime temperatures have been in the mid- to upper-20s. Woohoo! The tomatoes like it, that's for sure.



But there is bad news in relation to these tomato plants too - several of them have contracted blight. Blight is an airborne fungal disease, and is fostered by warm, humid conditions.The signs of this disease are unmistakeable - black patches on the stems and brown shivelled leaves.

I have cut off all the affected bits that I can see, but that is only ever going to be a temporary measure. Once blight has taken a hold there is no stopping it. Two of my tomato varieties ("Ferline" and "Orkado") are ones specially bred to be blight-resistant, but even they will eventually succumb. So it's a race against time now. Can the plants produce some ripe fruit before they die? I think the answer is Yes. The "Sungold" plant in my first photo above, for instance, evidently has a few fruits that are nearly ripe already, so it only needs to survive for a little bit longer.

Of course, I would like all my tomatoes to be completely unaffected by the blight, but that is no longer an option, so I have to do the best I can in the circumstances. If the plants get badly affected, I will pick the green fruits and ripen as many as possible of them indoors. Until such time I will continue to pick off the worst-affected leaves and hope for the best. Spraying with a solution of Bordeaux Mixture may help to retard the growth of the blight, so if I get the time I may attempt this at the weekend, when I get the time.
Next year I may try a different strategy: covering the tomato plants with thin plastic "coats" to shield them from the blight spores. I have seen such things advertised in catalogues, but I have not yet tried them.

Meanwhile, thinking more positively, the tomatoes' relatives the Aubergines have developed into big powerful plants - not tall but solid.

And covered in flowers now too...

Each of my two plants has about five or six flowers (it's hard to be sure because the foliage is so densely packed).

Since Aubergines are part of the Solanaceae family, along with the Tomatoes, can they get blight too? Does anyone know? Potatoes are the other prominent member of this family, and they certainly can!

Harvest Monday - 23 July

This week I have been harvesting Broad Beans, Beetroot, Cucumbers, French Beans and the first of my Tomatoes.

The Broad Beans this year have been particularly good, though they are coming to the end now. I reckon that so far I have harvested about 3 kilos of pods from my little 2.4 metre double row, which I consider represents a good VSR (Value for Space Rating) - especially since my beans were Spring-sown and did not occupy the ground all Winter.

The beetroot is still growing very slowly indeed, and I was only able to find five more of a useable size this week. Actually I think they are at the perfect size - about the same as a golf ball. I boiled these ones for about 40 minutes to make sure they were fully cooked, and served them just warm, alongside some pork sausages, new potatoes and Broad Beans.

I got one more of the "Iznik" cucumbers, which as usual we ate as a "nibble" with a drink before dinner. The skin on this particular specimen looked a bit tough, so I peeled it off before eating, but actually I think it would probably have been OK.



As you can see I also mustered a small batch of French Beans (these ones are "Speedy"). Not really enough to be a viable serving on their own, so these are waiting in a plastic bag in the fridge until some more come along.

Those three tomatoes are the first ripe ones I have had this year. Whilst they were lovely and sweet, they were also very tiny, so I sincerely hope I will get loads more before the blight puts paid to them. In order to minimise the chances of cross-contamination between the blight on the tomato plants I have arranged them at intervals all round the garden, well separated from their nearest neighbour. This may slow down the rate of blight attack, but I'm realistic to know that it won't cure the uncurable. [I'm going to write more about blight tomorrow...]

As well as the things shown above, I also harvested the rest of my Shallots, because it was plain that they were not going to grow any more, and their foliage was beginning to dry.

To see more of what people around the world have been harvesting this week, visit Harvest Monday hosted by Daphne's Dandelions.

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P.S. Apologies for my low profile over the last few days - we have been over to France to spend a couple of days with our daughter and son-in-law (which of course involved, as usual, a certain amount of consumption of excellent food and drink...)

We have Runners...

If I had to nominate my favourite vegetable, I reckon that Runner Beans would be a strong contender. They are a crop that I grow every year. So do 99% of all Allotment holders in the UK, apparently, judging by the masses of them I see from the train on my journeys to and from London.

My 14 plants are covered with scarlet flowers:

Close inspection reveals that many tiny bean pods are also forming:

In some years pod-formation (or flower set) can be poor, which is influenced by a number of factors including moisture levels. When the weather is hot and dry you are supposed to spray your plants with a fine mist of water. No such requirement this year! Runner Beans also like lots of moisture (and preferably shade) at the roots, so I often end up watering them every day, but I have only had to do that once so far this year, way back at the end of May. If you're planning to grow Runners for the first time next year, my advice is to choose somewhere with moisture-retentive soil - either naturally or artificially. It's a good idea to incorporate lots of bulky organic matter for this reason. Some people dig a planting-trench at about Christmas-time and gradually fill it up with vegetable peelings from the kitchen over the next few months, and then cover the trench with soil shortly before planting the young beans after the danger of frost has passed. I don't use this method myself, but I do try to dig-in a fair bit of home-made compost a few weeks before planting.

These tiny pods will grow rapidly now, and I expect to be harvesting the first of them in a couple of weeks' time.

Elsewhere in the garden, there are beans of several different sorts. In a big tub over by the brick wall I have a wigwam of bamboo canes supporting Climbing French Beans "Cobra" and a few of  "Mechelse Tros" (aka Mushy Pea bean).

All the plants in that tub look yellow and sickly. I think they are just not getting enough light. I probably won't grow beans there again next year.

The Mechelse Tros have plain white flowers like this:

And Cobra has pale mauve ones:

I have several pots of Dwarf French Beans, dotted about wherever there is space:

The plant with the paler foliage in that photo above is "Polka", which produces yellow pods, like this:

There are also the "Cherokee Trail of Tears" beans, of course, in the Three Sisters bed:

That's their wigwam in the centre, with Broad Beans at the left of the picture, and Runner Beans to the right.

This is a Cherokee flower. Very beautiful, I think.

So you see, my garden is full of beans!

Brassicas - an update

My little Purple Sprouting Broccoli and Cavolo Nero plants are no longer that little. They have grown a lot in the last couple of weeks.

They are big enough to be planted out, but there is no space for them yet. My intention is that they should succeed the Broad Beans, but (happily) the BBs are still going strong and there is no way I am going to dig them up prematurely. The brassicas will have to wait a bit longer.

A couple of days ago I tidied-up the bigger brassicas plants, which are growing in one of the raised beds. They have been underneath a net up till now so it hasn't been easy to weed them. I removed the bigger weeds, and any of the lower leaves of the veg that had gone yellow. There was surprisingly little slug damage, but just to be on the safe side I applied a few more blue slug-pellets. Since I have seen so few butterflies I deemed it safe to leave the net off, allowing the plants to get a bit more light - for which I think they will be very grateful in our current gloomy weather conditions.

Here's a closer look at what's in that bed. There are 3 Brussels Sprout plants "Brilliant" (the tall ones in the photos):

Brassicas behind - Garlic at front

 

Brussels Sprout "Brilliant"



There are also four green Summer Cabbages (Golden Acre), just beginning to heart-up:

"Golden Acre"

And there are four Red Cabbages (Primero F1), which are developing very slowly. They won't be ready for harvesting until the Autumn.

"Primero F1"

The Brussels Sprouts are getting quite tall now, and beginning to be top-heavy with all that foliage, so I will soon have to think about staking them up in case they topple over in the wind. At present they are supported by some stout sticks, but I think they have just about outgrown those. I'll eventually replace them with 6-foot hardwood stakes.

How are yours doing?

The Blueberries are ripening

Sitting writing for the blog this morning I suddenly noticed a Blackbird peering in through the sliding doors, with his beak full of Blueberry and a guilty look on his face. I jumped up and shooed him off, letting him know in no uncertain terms that he was NOT welcome. [I hate Blackbirds - they are so destructive!]. Actually, I hadn't realised that any of the Blueberries were ripe, so I went out straight away and made a close inspection. I found that right at the back, up against the wall of the house, there were a few berries that were very nearly ready for picking.

If I were picking them for human consumption I would leave them another few days because they are still not 100% ripe, but the Blackbirds are obviously not so fussy. [I hope they get the bellyache!]



So, there was obviously a need for urgent action. The first thing I did was move the pot of Blueberries with the nearly-ripe berries on it into the garage whilst I made a plan...

I realised that I'd have to either erect a net or lose the whole crop. Once the Blackbirds have identified their target only physical barriers will deter them! Fortunately I found that there were some masonry nails in the wall, left over from years ago when at one time I had some Clematis plants growing up the wall. I attached a net to these and brought it down at an angle so that it stood away from the plants.

I weighted-down the edge of the net with my potted Chives. It's not brilliant, but it's the best I could do in a hurry. Next year I must think about this earlier.

So now this is the Blackbirds-eye view of the berries:

Let's hope it works!

Potatoes and Aubergines

The potatoes just keep on coming! We humans may have not enjoyed the incessant deluges of rain that the last few weeks have brought us, but the potatoes have. They don't seem to mind soggy soil conditions, and the tubers this year have been not only numerous, but very clean, with no sign of scab whatsoever.

This is what I got from two pots - a joint total 1.36 kilograms:

If ever you thought that growing spuds in small containers was a waste of time, think again!

The potatoes' cousins the Aubergines are growing steadily, and producing a number of flowers. No fruits visible yet though. I suspect that sunshine is required...

Aubergine "Pintung Long"

Just look at the family likeness:

Potato "Charlotte"

Here's another relative:-

Tomato "Orkado"

Now, the purple Aubergine flower is very impressive and distinctive, and now that I have seen one at close quarters, unforgettable, so what was it that these plants produced the other day, which at that time I thought were flowers???

Do Aubergines have male and female flowers?

Broad Beans - again!

The Broad Beans have produced a good harvest this year. I have picked two more lots this past week:

Each batch has been between 600 and 650 grams, which provides enough beans for a generous 2-person helping.

I thought you might like to see the difference in the pods produced by the two different varieties I have grown this year - "Imperial Green Longpod" and "Witkiem Manita". The pods of the former are long and slim and normally contain about 6 or 7 beans, whereas the other has short fat pods which contain 4 or 5 beans.

Imperial Green Longpod - long and slim

Witkiem Manita - short and fat

I think the Witkiem Manita plants have been bigger and stronger, and have produced more pods, but that may possibly be because they were from new seeds, whereas the Imperial Green Longpod seed beans were ones left over from last year.

Here are the two varieties being cooked together. I don't think I need to tell you which is which!

Meanwhile, the long-suffering Dwarf French Beans "Speedy" have delivered their first few pods:

OK, so as usual it's not a lot, but they are (though I say it myself) very fine beans! I think beans like this need to be picked when still young and tender. If you leave them too long they can go stringy. I would also like to say that I have an aversion to "squeaky" beans - ones that have been undercooked, as is regrattably fashionable in some so-called posh restaurants.

The Sweet Corn is looking good too, with each plant exhibiting at least one burgeoning cob, resplendent in its luxuriant silks.

I just hope that they have been adequately pollinated. Sweet Corn is wind-pollinated, with the pollen being blown down from the flowers up at the tops of the plants onto the silks on the cobs down below. This is why I deliberately planted my corn in circles, working on the understanding that whichever way the wind was blowing at any given moment at least one other plant would be downwind. We have had so much heavy rain that I rather fear than the pollen may have been washed away instead. Only time will tell. Just a thought: lots of people hand-pollinate squashes and pumpkins. Has anyone tried hand-pollinating Sweet Corn? It might be practical with a small number of plants like my 12.

Finally for today, I want to demonstrate that the first of my Tomato fruits are (is) beginning to ripen and turn red:

Yes, it's definitely not green any more!