![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fresh veg
Tea today. Onions, runner beans, sweetcorn - all from the allotment.
We had a really good crop with the onions. We don't know what we did right, but we aim to do it again next year! They're all drying on sunny windowsills at present. The runner beans are cropping fantastically as well - and they are stringless as the packet claimed. We've probably got the best sweetcorn plants on the entire site, so I'm very chuffed about those. (the flavour was pleasant, but nothing fantastic. It may be that I've picked them a little early, as they were white rather than yellow. On the other hand, they oozed fluid when I stuck a fingernail into them and that's supposed to be the test. On the third hand, I think the book said 'milky fluid' and this was pretty clear fluid.)
The tomatoes all got blight (they're related to potatoes and get the same diseases). We'll get some fruit off them, but not much. Lesson for next year - if it says on the packet "bush variety, does not need staking", do not believe it. The plants took a fair bit of wind damage and I'm certain we'd have had more fruit if we'd staked earlier than we did.
Two weeks ago, I thought the weeds were going to get totally on top of us, but it's amazing what a spell of sunny weather can do. The plot looks really good now.
The big downer is that we've got club root in the cabbages. It's pretty well impossible to do much about it and it can linger in the soil for a decade or more. The brocolli seems okay and some of the cabbages have escaped so far, but I'm not optimistic about most of the remaining cabbages.
We had a really good crop with the onions. We don't know what we did right, but we aim to do it again next year! They're all drying on sunny windowsills at present. The runner beans are cropping fantastically as well - and they are stringless as the packet claimed. We've probably got the best sweetcorn plants on the entire site, so I'm very chuffed about those. (the flavour was pleasant, but nothing fantastic. It may be that I've picked them a little early, as they were white rather than yellow. On the other hand, they oozed fluid when I stuck a fingernail into them and that's supposed to be the test. On the third hand, I think the book said 'milky fluid' and this was pretty clear fluid.)
The tomatoes all got blight (they're related to potatoes and get the same diseases). We'll get some fruit off them, but not much. Lesson for next year - if it says on the packet "bush variety, does not need staking", do not believe it. The plants took a fair bit of wind damage and I'm certain we'd have had more fruit if we'd staked earlier than we did.
Two weeks ago, I thought the weeds were going to get totally on top of us, but it's amazing what a spell of sunny weather can do. The plot looks really good now.
The big downer is that we've got club root in the cabbages. It's pretty well impossible to do much about it and it can linger in the soil for a decade or more. The brocolli seems okay and some of the cabbages have escaped so far, but I'm not optimistic about most of the remaining cabbages.
no subject
no subject
no subject
I'm still deciding whether to grow tomatoes again next year. The blight was made worse by the weather, but I'm told it hits the allotments every year. I'll keep an eye open for blight-resistant varieties, or possibly try tomatoes at home.