What I did today 2022

[ameno]

Did some watering and liquid feeding.
Bagged up another developing melon in a net bag to protect it from slugs. That's four developing now.

Also, I noticed that my maincrop potatoes are starting to get blight already, although it seems not to be spreading too quickly yet. Went around and removed all of the suspect-looking leaves. Ended up with just over a bucket full of them.
For some reason this year, the blighted leaves are so far concentrated almost entirely on the bottom-most, oldest leaves. This seems pretty unusual to me, as usually middle-aged leaves seem to be the first infected (they lack the vigour of youth to protect them, but they are still fully exposed to the air and rain, and so spores get onto them easily).
I'm not sure yet whether this unusual phenomenon is a good or bad thing. On the one hand, the old leaves in the shade of all of the other leaves are the least useful for the plant and have the least ability to photosynthesise, and so even if I have to remove them the plant doesn't really lose much from it. But on the other hand, they are closest to the soil and therefore the tubers, and so therefore might increase the risk of the actual potatoes becoming infected. In previous years, although my main crop have always gotten foliage blight, I have managed to avoid any infected tubers. Hopefully this year won't be different.

[Bren In Pots]

Gave my parsnips, and french beans a good soaking we've had no real rain for ages.

[Jungle Jane]

We haven’t had good rain either,I dug two holes for more broccoli on Thursday & it was so dry,water took longer to drain (I fill the hole with water then plant) I gave the pear & apple tree 10 litres each for a deep watering,I rarely water them but drought conditions affect them.

[fimblefowl]

Cleared brambles and nettles away from the stile leading out of our garden into the field. Probably built ~200 years ago as a route to the church, just visible.

[ameno]

Went to the allotment after work today and watering pretty much everything.
I was last there on Saturday, and I was shocked by how much everything had grown in just 3 days. The sweet potatoes have grown almost another foot, and the squash plants a good 18 inches.

Also have 9 melons developing now, and one squash.

[Sweet savory]

Watering plot every other (early) morning for the foreseeable future it seems. At least the main crop carrots have germinated and have had very little in the way of slug attention due to the dry conditions.
Harvested a few of my red onion sets . They almost all bolted so am using as I take them.
Also picked the first climbing peas and some mangetout. These last appear to be giving up rather soon, presumably due to the drought. The climbing peas were planted over a trench filled with veg peelings and grass clippings but the mangetout were just added as an after thought at the end of the row so didn’t get the same benefit and I think that’s the difference.

[ameno]

De-blighted my maincrop potatoes again. Filled another bucket with leaves. All in all they are holding up surprisingly well, though, and are resisting it better than I expected. I am growing a different variety to previous years, so maybe this one is a bit more resistant? This hot, dry weather probably helps, too.

Also cut the leaves off half of my onions, as they are pretty much at their limit now, the leaf fungus having almost killed them. I was planning on doing all of them, but the bag I brought to stuff the leaves into wasn't big enough...

[ameno]

Cut down the second early potatoes (Jazzy). The leaves were pretty yellow at this point, anyway, and since blight is starting to spread about on my allotment site I thought I might as well just cut them down now to reduce the risk.
Also finished cutting the leaves off of my onions, then bagged them all and took them to the tip, along with some other garden waste which I couldn't shred or compost myself.

[Bren In Pots]

Tipped out 2 containers of Charlottes, watered GH and removed tom armpits, planted out more lettuce. Pulled out bolted mustard spinach.

[Sweet savory]

2 little gem lettuce to make a decent meal and a carrot from the trough. I am very impressed with the results from the lidl 99p seeds. They are all a decent size and healthy. The next tub has been planted and the seedlings have been thinned and covered with net.
French beans, mangetout peas and alderman peas, a couple of mini tomatoes and a cucumber. Slowly harvesting the red onions.

[ameno]

Sowed another short row of radishes.
Planted out half a dozen dwarf french bean plants.
Pruned two of the grape vines, and brought the prunings home to process into folly wine.

[ameno]

De-blighted my potatoes again. Not much this time, presumably because of the hot, dry weather.
Did a lot of watering.
Pruned the other grape vine and took the prunings home. It was a massive tangled mess. Lots of good bunches of grapes coming, though.

[ameno]

Cut out the old fruited loganberry stems, and tied in the new ones.

[Sweet savory]

Planted out some dwarf french beans Ferrari and chicory and radicchio from their modules.
Cleared the climbing peas and sowed a summer green manure.
I had great difficulty planting two psb and couldn’t set them as deep as I would have liked due to dry conditions.
Noticed butterbush squash had set 4 fruit so put tiles underneath. The 2 Waltham plants haven’t even produced any female flowers yet although they are roaming freely. No idea why they should be so different as pretty identical conditions.
Resowed a pot of lettuce that had been slugged.

[ameno]

Dug over half of the patch where I had my onions and planted out some chicory plants.
Sprinkled some extra hot chilli powder around my sweetcorn to try and keep the badgers away. They all seem to have 3, 4 or even 5 cobs growing per plant, so I should get a bumper crop as long as the badgers don't attack.
Watering.