8th August, 2012

The aubergines are fruiting well, this has been the best year with >6 per plant.  I pinched the tops out when they were around 15cm high to get them to bush up.  I haven't done that before, so perhaps that is the key.

The potato bed looks bare but there are plenty of spuds in there.  However, they aren't very good quality, a lot of them have split which is due to a dry spell followed by a lot of rain causing uneven growth I suspect.  Well that was our weather.  What contributed was my awful soil which still clearly needs a heck of a lot of organic matter to retain water when dry and improve drainage when wet.

The fennel is growing well but I think it should be a lot bigger.  I got the plants from the plant swap I organise at work and they weren't that good when I got them, so this is a bit of an experiment and a bonus if I get anything.

The biggest disaster this year is the onions, the dry spell stopped their growth and they never recovered.  Again, my poor soil didn't help as it developed large cracks clearly indicative a lack of organic matter.

1st August, 2012

I still haven't picked a tomato and it's August.  However, the plants have reached the roof and there's plenty of fruit on the way.

There are some nice chillies that I could pick.

 

 The beans are flowering; both the runner beans.....

 and the dwarf beans

So I'm waiting for the first of those but in the meantime I am harvesting the kohlrabi and turnips.  The beetroot are ready too so I need to start the pickling; I'm still eating last year's and they are delicious, so definitely worth making again.  Also the blueberries are great this year.  I reckon this is because of the wet weather helping the fruit to swell  and then finally the sun and heat to ripen them.

But......that same wet weather with the heat is perfect for blight and that's what the spuds have.

The telltale black spots on the leaves are quite obvious, so I cut the leaves off and will leave the tubers in the ground for at least 2 weeks. This limits any spores being washed off the leaves into the soil to infect the tubers.  I dug up one plant and there was a nice haul of spuds of a range of sizes, so I should have a good harvest if the tubers remain free of blight.