2020 Growing Adventures

[burnie]

The leaves on your tomatoes look like they have blight, see what they look like tomorrow. Use beer traps for the slugs and finally give the pumpkins a feed, I
use tomato feed.
If the tommies go down hill rapidly I would right them off and bin the lot in the council waste bin.

[Penellype]

Definitely blight on the tomatoes. It will spread like wildfire. In this situation I pick all the tomatoes, green and red and spread them out in a tray under cover. Check them every day and remove any that show signs of brown appearing either on the calyx or on the fruit. If you are very lucky you might find some ripen without rotting. The longer you leave them the fewer will be edible.

The alternative is to make them into chutney, if you like it (I don't).

The plants should be ok to compost if you bury them in the middle of the compost heap or put them in a hot composter. Blight can only survive on living plant material.

Wash your hands and change your clothes after dealing with these plants before going anywhere near uninfected tomato or potato plants.

[ghexton]

Thanks for advice Penellype will go and cull tonight, which is shame. How did I get it? Was there not enough air flow agaisnt the fence/ had I not trimmed / thinned them out enough? Bet year I will look to place these growers on slabs in flowe bed hopefully with more air flow.


Going to have a fair few outdoor quad grows now any ideas what could go in them?

[Penellype]

The weather has been very humid a lot of the time and a couple of weeks ago we had blight warnings every day for about a week. Blight takes a couple of weeks to show, so my guess is that it was around somewhere near you and was blown in on the wind. There isn't anything you can do about this really - with blight it tends to be a case of when, not if, and you just hope that it arrives late enough to allow you a harvest.

All sorts of things grow well in quadgrows, but avoid anything that needs to stay out all winter as the water in the bottom may freeze and crack the tray. You could try quick crops such as lettuce or spinach, or perhaps carrots - there is still time for the quick growing types. You might manage a crop of dwarf french beans if you start them now.

[ghexton]

Thanks Penellype thats really helpful. I live in terrace house and 3 gardens away (20m) is large allotment.
I guess it may have blown over from there. Ive ripped most of them up now, cleaned my clothes and secateurs.
Here the ones rescused, should i leave these in bowl outside? in the sun?


There are the trimmed back plants.


With regards discarding the old compost and roots. am i okay to shake the roots out best i can and chuck the compost in the flower beds.
I will remove and bin the capillary matting. Do you think i should remove the rest of the other toms?

I may just give the pots a good clean and pack away for next year.
Ive just planted another bed full of lettuce anyways, and have bed full of carrots to harvest.

Thanks for all the help!

[ghexton]

the water butts just arrived, wahooo set that up soon.

[burnie]

Looking good now, I don't harvest all my carrots, but pull a few as I need them, but water them afterwards to settle the soil again, I cover them in the winter with fleece and the carrots were great right up till the springtime.

[ghexton]

Water but arrived, nearly setup.
Any ideas on how to connect to this fitting on GH rather than a drain pipe?


Other option would be to buy some guttering and have it connected to run off from shed roof, however then i will need to buy some guttering ect.
uggh.

thanks all.

[Penellype]

No need to leave green tomatoes in the sun. They will be fine indoors, and will ripen quicker if near other ripe fruit (eg an apple or banana).

If the other plants don't have brown/black marks on the stems they should be ok to leave for now, but watch them like a hawk for signs of blight and harvest the tomatoes if you see it appearing.

[ghexton]

Penellype I gave everything real good water last night and decided to cull all the outside toms in quad grows.
that 8 spaces cleaned out, i really didnt want to take the risk and i didn't think i was going to get much from them anyway.
lesson learnt i guess, next year they will all be different location.

Water butt rigged up, slightly dodge though. ha.

[ghexton]

And also the penny has finally dropped what i thought was a melon in the corner isnt, tuned out its crystal lemon cucumber. ha. idiot.

[burnie]

We are all still learning, gardening is dynamic, always changing, no-one knows it all, I am impressed with your efforts and enthusiasm.