Blight. Potato blight. The five rows Charlottes were in flower when I left and on my return they were just stalks. I dug them up the very next day. To my surprise the crop was largely unaffected. There was just a beginning of softness in perhaps twenty tubers. The five rows yielded 50lbs and they taste great. The remainder were fine. I washed the spuds before I left the lottie and picked over them again when I got home. I hope this will mean they will store well. The twelve rows of the main crop were starting to show the first chocolate spots indicating blight. I chopped the haulms down to a few inches above the ridges and cleared away the debris. I hope that this we provide me some time by preventing the blight spores getting into the tubers. I am in a spot at the moment as I do not have anything in which to store the main crop. There are likely to be bags and bags of spuds.
During me holidays it was reported to me that there had been a lot of rain. The garlic was in poor condition so I harvested what was was available. The bulbs where small but in good condition. The bulbs have put to dry in the greenhouse. The Onions have a little rust so I am holding off pulling them to see if the warm weather we have been promised helps them. The Chick peas are a complete disaster so they will have to be dug up. The early broad beans are not to bad but need picking and bed clearing. The Saporo broad beans that I put in later have flowered but not set pods which is probably to do with the bees not being able to get about.
The brasicass bed is a mixed lot. The Chard, Broccoli, Swede and some of the cabbages are doing well but the seedlings I put in before my holidays have disappeared and the caulis are rotting. So that is another area that has to be cleaned up.
I seem to growing Carrots for the first time. They need a more weeding which is not so good but it is a result. Sweet corn is doing well but the Gherkins and Pumpkins less so.
I found a small leak on the central heating system at home so I had to spend almost all Saturday repairing it and as it is a little over year since it was installed I flushed the system and treated the system with an inhibitor. In case that was not enough the fruit tree border is three feet high in weeds. It seems I am the only one with a strimmer that is powerful enough to tackle the weeds. So that is what I did last Sunday morning. The strimmer can not cut the grass so I will have to go over it again but with wire attachment. The wire cannot handle the heavy stuff but chops the grass a treat. I though I would do some hoeing as the Pumpkin patch is looking a little tatty. More or less with the first stroke of the hoe the handle snapped. End of hoeing. It is a good excuse to buy a new one. I have never been happy with the old one but I have had it a great many years. I hope to buy a Swoe. It is a hoe that looks like a sand iron golf club. It is supposed to be good for getting up close the plants. It is stainless steel so I imagine it will last a long time.
Just before my holidays I picked up a couple of plastic composters from the council. I have this plan to use them for the long term composting of Docks and other weeds. I have always run a pile of Docks athe end of the plot that does, in time, rot down to a useful compost. It takes a year or more. With the two composters I hope to reduce the time it takes to convert them into something useful and keep the end of the plot tidy as well. The black plastic really gets hot which I hope is going to be the key to speed up the process. I think I might fill them from the Dock pile this evening.
Because I broke the hoe I decided to spend a few minutes to tidy up the end compost bin. The bin has turned into a collecting point for bits wire, part rolls of chicken wire, plastic bags and useful bits of fleece. All those bits that are too big to throw away but might be useful in the future. They might "come in" as H says. I reorganised the bin so as to make room for the composters and re-positioned all the spares to be neat. I even took somethings home for the dust bin men.
As it stands I have done precious little on the plot. I am going the the plot this evening the job list is:
Start composters
Clear away Chick peas
Clear away manky Caulis
Use the new Swoe!
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