Well, another long hot day on the plot! We've been concentrating on weeding the veg beds and the path edges in preparation for putting a new layer of bark chippings on in the next day or so, which should make the plot look a lot neater and tidier!
Lee concentrated on Plot 1, whilst I concentrated on Plit 2! The borlotti, runner and climbing french beans are all now weed free, and seem to be growing nicely!
The late sown broad beans are also doing well, plenty of flowers, so cropping could be good, but we did spot some blackfly on them today, so we sprayed them with diluted organic washing up liquid, it helps stop the blackfly and saves having to pinch out the growing tips yet!
The swede and turnip bed is also now weed free, and they are going great guns, much further on than this time last year, hopefully we'll have some ready to eat soon!
Whilst Lee was doing plot1, I was concentrating on Plot 2, starting by clearing the rest of the pond area, I'm hoping to get some plants to put in there tomorrow and get it finished off and looking good! The onion beds are looking good, as are the potato beds, though we did notice the first signs of blight today, so after weeding the spuds and treating with bordeaux mixture I removed the affected foliage and brought it home to go in the green bin!
I managed to clear most of the paths on plot 2, along with the last bed (at the back of the plot to the left of the fartichokes), so hopefully we'll be able to get them nice n tidy with more bark chippings tomorrow!
The first early spuds are looking great, no signs of blight here, but we've treated them with bordeaux just in case!
The second early spuds were the ones that were showing the first signs of blight, so the affected foliage has been removed and again treated with bordeaux!
The maincrops are as yet clear of blight, but have also been treated, just in case!Hopefully a timely application of bordeaux solution will stop the blight from taking hold, but only time will tell!
More updates to follow!
5 comments:
Good luck with the blight treatment, it can be a real pain.
Thanks, I'm hoping that we can keep it under control and get at least a reasonable crop of spuds, but only time will tell!
Are you sure it's blight? We haven't had any wet weather to speak of on this side of the Pennines, and only one near miss of a Smith period so far, so it hasn't had the chance to develop, yet....
Tattieman sells a blight testing kit on his site (JBA Seed Potatoes), which can be reused, might be worth investing in?
We had a full smiths period here about 2 weeks ago, for about 3 days in total, and looking at the plants it does look suspiciously like blight, not only on out spuds, but on others around the site too!
I may invest in one of those kits, sounds like they could be useful, thanks for the info and advice!
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