Brassica Massacre

Thursday 1st September 2011

Despite Diana's best attempts Mother Nature is waging all out war on her brassicas. We decided to unfleece them yesterday to see how they were doing, unfortunatley it quickly turned into a lesson on pests and diseases of the brassica family. Some of the plants at the edges were looking sickly so we pulled them up only to be confronted with the dreaded club root. It was soon apparent that much of the crop would not produce anything edible so all the earlies came out only leaving the vague chance that the winter cropping varieties will come to fruition. I have to admit I have my doubts, as when a plant is weakened by one attack it seems to be susceptible to anything else nasty that is hanging around. We also found evidence of brassica aphis and white fly and "redistributed" many cabbage white caterpillars into the bargain. Diana says the club root fungus can stay active in the soil for several years and can be transferred from bed to bed by boots and birds feet, so I don't know if she will try again next year, I wonder how I will fare in my raised beds?

The only decent thing to come out of the whole plot yesterday was this charming little self sown flower, I haven't been able to identify it so if anyone out there in cyberspace knows please leave me a comment.

"On every stem, on every green leaf and at the root of everything that grew was a professional specialist in the shape of grub, caterpillar, aphis or other expert, whose business was to devour that particular plant"

Oliver Wendall Holmes