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

Black-fly Genocide

Wednesday 27th July 2011

The teenager was tardy getting up on Tuesday, completely ignoring the fact that some of the household had been up since 6.30 tending to the more dependant members of the family. She loftily declared that 10 o'clock was far too early to to rise and that she might consider it after lunch had been provided! This left me with a window of unplanned spare time so naturally I gravitated into the garden. The nasturtiums caught my eye and although they had been glorious they were now being ravished by black-fly, there was nothing else for it but to pull them up. Luckily I still had space in the green recycling bin so was more than happy to let the council deal with the beasties. It is interesting to note that the variegated types have suffered much worse than the traditional nasties, so I'm going to stick to the latter next year. Other pest bothered crops are my chillies and peppers, the chillies are just about holding their own against the green-fly, probably because they taste hot, but I've given up with the sweet peppers and put them outside to fend for themselves. I suppose I've over fussed them as usual , I'm also fed up with squashing green-fly so maybe the outside crawlies will do a better job than me, but I sense they're not long for this world, there's more to this veg growing malarkey than meets the eye!

The lavatera continue to delight, every stage of the flower has its merits but for me the bud is the best, like an old fashioned cone of sweeties twisted closed by the shopkeeper.

"No two gardens are the same. No two days are the same in one garden"

Hugh Johnson