Late Summer Bits and Bobs 2021.

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Westi
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Hi Primrose!

They are upgrading their site I have been advised so no alerts - I hope they get it sorted before next year. I think it is fair to assume after this little heat wave under cloud & sticky (down here anyway) & incoming storms the next perfect conditions for blight will be upon us. I only have toms in the tunnel now, (not totally accurate but the outside ones are from the self sown ones that pop up every year & just cherry ones for snacking on). I'm planning to give the tunnel a copper spray tomorrow as I can't close the doors as it is hitting the way high 30's & already lost some plants in there to blight so don't want the blight resistant ones to boil in their skins. I'm also very aware of the 'resistant' not 'proof' with them as well!
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Primrose
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Westi, interestingly I,ve found in the past that the few self sown tomatoes I,ve allowed to thrive and do their own thing have seemed to be more blight resistant than the "domestic" cultivated ones. I,ve no idea why this should be.

We had some heavy rain for a couple of hours last night and it,s desperately humid here this morning so will be keeping a very close eye on my remaining plants.

Somebody advised me not to eat any "good" tomatoes from a plant from which a couple of blighted tomatoes have been removed.

Can somebody advise me on the wisdom or otherwise of this advice. If I pick the remainder now, wash and let any unripe ones ripen i doors will they be safe to eat if no signs of blight appear? I do hate waste if it,s not completely necessary. I've done this in previous blight years and we've suffered no ill effect so that's the base on which I'm operating. The sniff and taste test seems to have served well in the past.
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oldherbaceous
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I’ve never heard of that before, Primrose, we always use any usable tomatoes, off blighted plants!
Kind Regards, Old Herbaceous.

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Primrose I had blight last year I had to discard over 34 large tomatoes but I persevered I kept spraying the plants with jeyes fluid it did not kill the blight but kept it at bay ,I used all the tomatoes that were ok and I’m still here
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Primrose
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Thank you for your responses OH and robo. I,m glad i'm not the only person not to throw the tomato baby out with the bathwater.
Annoyingly though I'll have to avoid putting my chopped up tomato haulms into my climbing bean composting trench this autumn.

Interestingly none of my five Prima Bella tomato plants show any sign of blight. The only ones affected are Moneymaker and those grown from saved Ferline seed last year. (Yes this probably proves they haven't reproduced their blight resistance properties so it was an experiment worth conducting.)

Meanwhile here today the temperature suddenly seems to have dropped quite rapidly this afternoon and I've noticed the first leaves suddenly curling up and dropping off our little Acer tree. It seems to have been such a miserable summer weather-wise that there's almost little regret in seeing it passing,
Westi
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I was aways led to believe that without a host, ie: the live tomato and spud plants; blight does not survive and you can put it in your compost. It does not affect the bean family either so with the infected plant bits composting in the trench over a cold winter (which it also can't survive in) & growing a different veg there I don't think you will have any problems using your usual regime for topping up the trenches.

I am still a bit sceptical about putting it on my compost until the plant is actually totally dead so I tend to throw the infected bits in the big trug of water I put the bindweed & other nasties in until they rot down. Not pretty to look at or smell but it all gets thrown onto the compost when totally rotted & slimy. I also use any unaffected tomatoes on an affected plant, but within a couple of days as if they are left too long they do start developing blight blotches. Yes more pasta sauce & soup! ;)
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Primrose
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Interesting the remedies people have for potentially keeping blight at bay.

One I've just come across is Spraying 75mg of soluble aspirin to a litre of water on the foliage on a weekly basis, and more frequently when the weather is warm and humid. Apparently it seemed to work for the individual who was using it.
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Primrose:- :( How annoying.

I don't know what the spray does to the tomatoes but at least the pain of loosing all your tomatoes is addressed.
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Westi
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I really thought with the hot sticky weather & coming storms it would be perfect for blight - only problem being we did not get any rain so my share of blight spores were inadvertently passed onto someone a little further north from me.

I love reading the suggestions growers have for all sorts of things to aid growing. My favourite is putting a fish head in the hole before planting tomatoes - I would have to open a nature reserve on the plots with the many critters down there that would smell that from a mile away & in the process of fighting & digging for them probably wreck everything else. Epsom salts are another thing suggested a lot but any name with 'salt' in it worries me a bit, although it could just look like salt I suppose??
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Primrose
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Westi, I smiled at the fish head suggestion although Ive no doubt if it were left buried long enough to completely decay it would add nutrients of some kind to the soil even if it didn't,t ward off diseases. . However, as you suggest there are too many wild creatures around with an acute sense of smell for many dead corpses to remain buried for long. As an example, some years ago a neighbour of ours was very distressed to find that her newly buried dead cat had been exhumed in the night and its corpse decimated - presumably by a fox.

We do occasionally bury prawn shells deep into the middle of our compost cage and they don oletely decompose over time but that's our limit in burying deceased remains. As you say, it,s an invitation for wild creatures to come and dig and have a field day. Perhaps a way of getting a new overgrown allotment dug over although I,m sure a couple of pigs fenced in would do a more efficient job. Maybe a pig owning entrepreneur with some secure portable fencing could go into business hiring his pigs out for this purpose ??
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The fish you buy over the counter at our supermarkets is past it’s best ,I was second in line at Tesco I wanted a bag of muscles for bait the next day ,the pensioner in front of me asked for a mackerel the fish munger gutted it for him which wasn’t hard as the guts were coming out on their own he then put it in a bag as the old guy “asked what should I do with it know “ I’ve never been a nosy person but I couldn’t help my self I said to the old guy the best thing you can do with that is put it in the bin he looked at me astonished the so called fish monger was giving me daggers ,I told the old guy the fish was rotting if he eaten it he would need a trip to hospital I told the guy the other side of the counter as he should not be called a fish monger that it was disgusting selling fish that was plainly going off he hadn’t a clue , if you go to our European friends the fish they sell is perfect no wonder we don’t eat fish in this country
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Primrose
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Robo you,ve reminded me of a couple of mackerel we bought from a supermarket counter some time ago. It tasted very unpleasant. We both had upset stomachs the next day and neither of us have been able to face eating this fish since. It was a very far cry from the shiny skinned mackerel we used to buy fresh when we visited the coast. Our two nearest supermarket have both given up their fish counters. The quality had become so poor that they're not missed. Fortunately we have a lovely guy who visits our village every week with his refrigerated fish van straight from the docks at Grimsby so we can still get decent fish, albeit it at a price.
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I gave my eldest 9 mackerel a week last Thursday it was 9 o’clock in the evening they were straight off the boat I told her I had gutted them but do not freeze them under any circumstance as they don’t freeze well the look on her face told me I had spoiled her plans I should have thrown them back alive I hate waste
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I live near the quay & the boats used to sell direct or to the fish stall down there so fresh as could be. Now days their catch has to go to Billingsgate under ice to be returned back down to the fish stall & around the country from some strange new rule. It has left the fishermen right out of pocket & not even breaking even due to the buy price, so they have set up direct sell. You contact them on a social media 'chat' line & they tell you what they have caught that night, you order, their wife's prep while they catch up on sleep & they deliver about lunch time.

I'm not sure but think the fish stall is buying direct again through as by some means as their display looks just like it did years ago. I did ask & they told me they buy from the hobby fishermen who fish off the beach, their wee boat or the quay. Hmm?? Luckiest hobby fishermen I've ever heard of to supply the holiday trade & just how do they have so many live lobsters in the tank. Certainly not complaining mind! :)
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Primrose
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I think fisherman have probably had years of practice trying to getting round EU fishing regulations Westi to try and survive !
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