Kitchen Garden Forum

Primrose they are greedy feeders as well as thirsty ones! They naturally abort I find if they can not support a crop. I put cut off bottles in their spot - now hidden with foliage so a gentle walk around in the vines & I give them a sprinkle of fairy dust aka 6X chicken manure flakes in the bottle & fill that with the water so they get a bit of goodness each water or you can dig in slow release fertiliser when prepping the spot. I will take a pic tomorrow when down! I've got powdery mildew on one vine already so I think I have the size they are going to be for all of them! BTW milk does not work!

For me it has been a terrible season for the whole squash family. We are not over run with courgettes. We grow a Fairy squash in the polytunnel, last year it had 25 fruit on it, this year so far only one is developing properly. Similarly with Hunter butternut, I don't remember how many it produced last year (a bit less than the Fairy) but this year the plant has hardly grown and we shall be lucky to get any. Outside I grow a double 10' row of various types of gourds for drying and we usually give some away to 2 or 3 people, this year no fruit yet.

Retro
My hanging basket toms are certainly alive but are being very slow to ripen. I have needed to take them down and soak them a couple of times, they are on the floor in a shady place after the hot bank holiday weekend.

Lots of fails or big reduced yield - Cucumbers, Runners, French beans, Garlic, Onions, Cauliflower, Cabbage & all Salad crops. But on the positive the Tomatoes are going mental, my late sowing Runners are producing, Squash & Pumpkin doing OK, Swede is huge, Kale is well ahead of itself - & I can report that garlic does deter flea beetle & I have some good looking Chinese brassica's & carrots do like the potato sacks!

Our late brassicas are turning into this year's failures: the leaves are like lace from the ravages of caterpillars. It was lovely to see all the butterflies this summer but now we have the results of the 'cabbage white' invasion. I tried to pick them off but the majority obviously got away and ate their fill!

It's amazing how brassicas will recover from caterpillars, Monika......so maybe they might rally round.

Our first planting of Tuscan kale was chewed down to stalks, but most has now recovered. The caterpillars are still working on the new lot, but the first lot is now being picked. We covered it last year, but the whitefly was so awful and trapped/breeding under the net, that we decided the caterpillars could do no worse. Hang in there Monika.

"We covered it last year, but the whitefly was so awful"

Had similar problem last year been spraying with garlic solution which looks to be keeping them away.

My plot neighbour is trialling garlic spray this year, I'll have to ask how he's getting on. We certainly have enough garlic to make a brew, I supplied the garlic for his spray!

Thanks

I,ve bought all my outdoor peppers in pots indoors today to finish their season on my lounge window sill. They're still growing some very healthy green peppers of various sizes but with the nights forecast to drop much lower from Sunday I wasn't prepared to risk losing them.
Just hope the whitefly don,t attack them. That often seems to be the ultimate fate of peppers and chillies I bring indoors. They,ve grown rather tall and leggy this year. I don,t think hard pruning back after fruiting this autumn is going to work in terms of trying to overwinter them.

I took up my last 2 rows of my main crop spuds! It's a time I usually regret as the slugs & wireworm take their toil! OK I have grooves in the spuds from my watering, but I have huge perfect spuds as well! Looks like Jacket Spuds for lunch tomorrow!

Now dug four different lots of spuds so far this year.

Over-wintered Charlotte.
All small, well flavoured, shallow sitting, very little damage from pests.

Foremost
Excellent, variety of size, superb flavour, very clean lifting, minor damage from pests.
Did some super mini baked potatoes.

Charlotte 2019
Nothing particularly large but reasonable mix of usable sizes, good flavoud.

Marfona.
Hmmm, poor, lots of damage, including shallow light brown blisters on quite a few extending about 3mm under the surface. But puzzled what this is, a fellow plotholder thinks it's caused by ants?

My main crop was Piccasso! I've always grown Cara before & this is the next generation. Jazzy is my fave for boiling & tickling out as a 2nd early (& in my case even a true early), as I like the taste! I'll report back tomorrow on whether the Picasso is as good as it's breeding!

Potted up 100 prepared Hyacinth bulbs, for forcing this morning....now I know Christmas is just around the corner...

And just been digging my Kestrel....so far, well over 1cwt off 20 roots so very pleased..... no slug damage and quite a good size too.

Show over for another year, not as good as we'd hoped for, but not as bad as we'd dreaded, in fact the judges said it was better than last year's one, so onwards and upwards.