Monday 18 June 2007

Better weather today

roseheart

Summer has returned, and looks set fair for a day or two at least. This is a good thing since the grass around the land and back of the house needed cutting and now it's been done, but the arrival of dry conditions has come too late to stop the blight from getting a hold on the Ratte potatoes in the main patch. Tomorrow I will have to remove all the foliage from most of the row and also from some of the Winston where the infection has spread. At the moment the Ambo and earlies appear to be holding up, I can't decide whether it's worth spraying them again or not.

More bad news in the form of solanum sickness - my greenhouse tomatoes have succumbed to blackleg. I can only think this is because I mixed their compost with some field soil gathered from a mole hill, thinking it would stretch the expensive bagged material without further spending. The cost has been the destruction of the three Beefheart plants. I've put them outside but without much hope of their recovery.

This raises the question; have we just been exceptionally unlucky with our crops these last two years or is the place riddled with dormant spores and bacteria just waiting for a chance to get into our veggies. I'm wondering how to resolve this so that we have a chance eventually of having a successful plot as we have done before and nothing is coming clear in my mind.

Doomed, we're all doomed, I tell you.

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