Penellype's 2016 Garden Diary

[Penellype]

Fusarium wilt

I mentioned in an earlier post that the Legend plant I cut down appeared to have fusarium wilt. This is not a good thing to have, as it affects all sorts of plants and can survive in the soil for years. I've no idea where it came from, as I've not had these symptoms before. The advice for people who have it is "grow resistant varieties".

Anyway, the Roma plant next door to the Legend also had it, and I removed this over the weekend (Roma is supposed to be resistant). I also decided to remove the Ferline plant which was dying having collapsed due to the weight of the fruit (I thought). Ferline is supposed to be resistant to fusarium wilt. This is what the stem looked like when I cut it off:



Its not easy to make out, but once you identify the cut off stem near the bottom of the photo, you can clearly see the brown areas in the xylem vessels which are charactaristic of this disease.

This is what a diseased plant looks like (also Ferline):



The plant in the middle (which was to the right of the one I just cut down) is dying from the bottom up, and has wilted in the hot sun. Unlike when the leaves die back naturally, wiggling them does not easily detach them at the leaf base, which is unusual - they remain firmly attached even when looking quite dead. The Mountain Magic (resistant to fusarium wilt) on its right is also beginning to look unhappy, but strangely the plant on the left (Ferline), which was next to the one I cut down, is ok apart from wilting a little in the heat (its 27C here today).

I think the important lesson here is the reminder that when a variety is described as "resistant" this is not the same as "immune". These varieties can still get the disease.

So, what's to do about this? Well, apparently the green manure Caliente Mustard, if grown then chopped or crushed and dug into the soil, will "fumigate" it with isothiocyanates - these are the chemicals that give things like mustard, nasturtiums and horseradish their taste. These apparently kill things like fusarium and verticillium wilt and also onion white rot (which I don't have as far as I know) - all these are fungal pathogens.

I have ordered a packet of Caliente mustard seeds (available from Marshalls) which can be sown now, and I will no doubt find out if it works next time I grow tomatoes in that area (which will be soon as it is one of the few areas that is sunny enough).

[Penellype]

A lovely weekend - mostly sunny but not too hot.

At my friend's
Lots of weeding as the rain and warm weather have combined to make all the weed seeds germinate.
Cut back more brambles and himalayan balsam from amongst the bushes.
Tidied up the tomato plants in the greenhouse a bit and removed the Garden Pearl which had just about finished.
Attempted to tie up the outdoor tomatoes - one each of Mountain Magic and Ferline, both of which resemble a small thicket. Loads of fruit and no blight so far.
Planted 3 well sprouted Charlotte potatoes (from last year!) in a spare bucket of compost. I had the potatoes, the bucket and the compost and it can go in the greenhouse when it starts to get cold, so why not?!
Harvested tomatoes, cucumber and a courgette for me and gave away several tomatoes, courgettes and a cucumber to people who had arrived to ride their horses. The courgettes in particular have gone mad, with fruit all over the place.
Noted that a different arrangement is required in the greenhouse next year, as it is getting quite hard to squeeze past the peppers and sweet potato plant, which is huge.

At home
Continued the tomato blight vigil, inspecting the Sungold carefully every day, removing any dead foliage and harvesting the tomatoes as soon as they start to change colour.
The hot weather is making the harvested tomatoes ripen really fast and I am having to check them frequently and make sauce to freeze. I've resorted to storing some in the fridge to slow them down.
Potted up some of the older strawberry plants into individual pots and put them on self watering trays in the growhouse. This is part of the plan for trying to keep various nasties off them next year.
Harvested the last 2 buckets of Sarpo Mira potatoes. These were a disappointment, particularly one bucket which had one enormous potato (rotten) and several small ones. This bucket yielded only 0.55kg of edible potatoes, the 2nd bucket a slightly better 1.1kg. I expect more from Sarpo Mira.
Also harvested tomatoes, runner and french beans, courgettes, carrots, a cucumber, lettuce, mizuna, namenia, blueberries, a few wild strawberries and a couple of apples.
Lots of planning what to grow and where to put it next year (mainly so I don't mess it up by using too many buckets for overwintering crops).

[Penellype]

Carrot "Flyaway"
A while ago I decided to grow some of these in one of the 4 Quadgrow vegetable planter pots. The idea was to see if it can be grow without needing to net it against carrot fly, and if it can, does it taste any good. Some of the carrot tops are now about 1/2 an inch across so I decided it was time to do a test.

I pulled a carrot from the middle of the pot. This was deliberate - disturbing the foliage is the best way to attract carrot fly and I am trying to test that. The carrot itself was disappointing - I was expecting a straight root about 2 inches long, but got a short, stumpy thing that looked like it was trying to fork. There was no fly damage.

I cooked the carrot along with some Marion, which is one of my usual varieties and has a good flavour. There was a considerable difference in taste. Beside Marion the Flyaway was bland and uninteresting, and its texture wasn't as good either.

This is only 1 carrot. The idea is to see if disturbing the soil in the middle of the pot will attract carrot fly or whether these really are resistant. However, there is no point in growing them if they don't taste good, and if they are all as uninteresting as the one I ate, they could well end up being fed to the horses, fly or no fly!

[Penellype]

Today's job - cleaning up the onions which have been drying on racks in the garage for a month:



All are now relieved of roots, most of the leaves and any loose skin:



Any which are very small, damaged in any way or look at all dodgy (particularly around the neck) have been put aside to use first. The others will stay on the rack to dry a bit more, then I will string them.

Not a great crop this year (at home) probably because I grew them in the shade. The ones at my friend's are much bigger, but they were grown in the sun.

[Penellype]

Fuchsia berries!



Not sure when these are ready to pick so I picked one to try. The taste is ok, although i have to admit it doesn't really taste of that much. The trouble is they are full of very very tiny seeds:



As I've said before, I am very fussy about textures and all these seeds give them a very "gritty" feel on the tongue. They are so small that I don't think even cooking and sieving would be any good, and anyway there are not enough fruit for that sort of thing.

I think I am going to stick to growing hardy fuchsias and eating blueberries (strangely blueberry seeds don't bother me at all!).

On quite another subject, I have found a new way of anchoring the net over my strawberries and spinach...

[craftymarie]

Ha ha, nice to see the cat making itself useful I don't think my fuchsia berries are edible or I'd try one. I love how pretty they look with that deep reddy purple colour - interesting to hear what you thought of them. I wouldn't mind seeds if they had a big flavour. Funnily enough I don't like blueberries because they don't taste of anything to me. My daughter loves them.

[Penellype]

Blueberries have a much stronger flavour than these. They are juicy and refreshing, with a very light flavour, but the description (a cross between a fig and a kiwifruit) isn't quite how I would describe them. Kiwi fruit are much more acidic. I haven't eaten a fresh fig for so long that I've forgotten what they taste like.

[Penellype]

This weekend

At my friend's
More weeding.
Removed peas as they were dying of mildew. These are the "mildew resistant" Terrain, which admittedly have lasted longer than Hurst GS did last year.
Harvested the first of the buckets of blighted Charlotte potatoes that were planted in June. These were "saved seed" from last year and I forgot to add any bfb to the buckets. They hadn't grown very strongly and hadn't any flower buds when the blight struck so I was expecting nothing (as at home with the bought seed potatoes). In that context, 0.4kg of new potatoes upto the size of an egg was an astonishing crop. The potatoes in this bucket had been in the ground 54 days.
Also harvested courgettes, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers.

At home
Weeding, including all the cracks between the stones in the patio.
Potted up chinese celery and spring cabbages into buckets.
Sowed basil for microgreens and caliente mustard (green manure).
Harvested (in addition to the fuchsia berries above) tomatoes, lettuce, namenia, mizuna, pak choi, runner and french beans, carrots, courgettes, apples, wild strawberries and finished off the blueberries.

Tomatoes are still holding off the blight, much to my astonishment in this damp and often mild weather.

The biggest item this week, without a doubt, has been the saga of the leylandii hedge. There are 3 hedges - a 12ft tall leylandii at the back, and 8ft tall thuja between me and the neighbour in the front garden, and 8ft leylandii between me and the road. The end tree in the roadside hedge has been looking unhappy for a year or so and I have been hoping it will recover, but in the last few weeks it got noticably worse. Lots of leylandii hedges are dying in this area, and I gather the problem is due to cyprus aphids. As leylandii do not sprout on old wood, once they have died back there is nothing that can be done to save the tree. I decided to have the hedge removed and put up a fence, and that this was a good time to do it, before the bad weather set in.

I know the man who cuts the hedge tops can remove hedges and erect fences, and he was able to start yesterday. I have a fence at the back of the patio which has nice, strong horizontal rails, and I decided to have the same so that I could hang plant troughs on them. A bark path will cover the sawn off trunks (which are too close to the pavement to pull out without risking cracking the tarmac), and I will put pots of plants on the path and plant up the flowerbed in front. I also have small rockeries either end, and to finish it off nicely I will extend this along the end of the path (between path and drive) to cover what will be about a foot rise in level from the drive.

At least that was the plan...

So the man comes and cuts down the hedge, which has nasty brown centres to the branches and is clearly unwell. He brings a machine that looks like a huge corkscrew to make the holes for the fence posts. Then he goes to get the posts, fence panels etc. Meanwhile I try to source a few extra blue granite rockery stones.

At this point we hit a problem. The fence panels are not available at any of the local diy stores, garden centres etc. We even try the local sawmill - they can make them but it will take a week. These panels are EVERYWHERE - I live down a 20 house cul-de-sac and there are at least 4 houses with the exact panels I want.

Blue granite rockery stones are similarly unobtainable - the only ones I have found are in Cornwall and are huge. Or I can have a pallet of several tonnes of the stuff. I want 2 or 3 smallish stones that I can lift. I got the originals from the local garden centre, but they don't stock it any more.

So where we are now is that the hedge is gone and there is a very unlevel area of soil full of sawn off tree trunks and several large holes (for posts). There appear to be NO suitable fence panels, so the man is coming back tomorrow to construct a bespoke fence from 6 inch planks and the uprights. I am going to dismantle the rockeries at both ends of the flower bed and see what I can do with the stones I already have.

Watch this space.

[Penellype]

Progress so far...

Sunday



Monday



Tuesday



I currently feel like I am living in a goldfish bowl!

[Penellype]

Wednesday (and Thursday as I was out all day):



Friday:



What's the difference? Well, unfortunately I didn't think to insist that the man put a tarpaulin over the gravel before he had dragged tree bits over it. The result is that the gravel is FULL of bits of leylandii. On the 2nd photo you can see a line across the drive, where I have (mostly) cleared in front of it, but still have behind it to clear. I'm having to sieve the gravel to get the small bits out then pick out the stones from the twiggy bits which seems to be faster than picking the twiggy bits out of the gravel...

This could take some time.

I've also rearranged the rocks slightly and think it looks better that way.

Next job (once I have cleaned the gravel) will be to move some soil from my raised beds in the back garden into the bed between the rockeries. I have some hardy osteospermums (pink, white and purple) which I ordered a couple of weeks ago and have arrived today - these will go in that bed (they have been potted up and are in the growhouse at the moment), along with a couple of stepping stones and some bedding plants to fill in the gaps for now. I need some more alpines for the rockery and some plants for the tubs along the path. Undecided on exactly what to grow there at the moment.

The fence will be painted later, when I have decided what colour is best (suggestions welcome).

[Nicos]

That fence calls out for something unusual Penelope ....here...have a look at some of these....

Get Creative With These 23 Fence Decorating Ideas and Transform Your Backyard

[Penellype]

Thanks for an interesting link Nicos. That's all very artistic, which I am not!

My idea is to hang planters and pots on it with plenty of flowers (obviously easier in summer). Training plants up it at this stage is not the plan because of the tree stumps meaning I will have to use containers. I may find in a few years time that the stumps have rotted enough to come out, and then I can try something different. There is a honeysuckle seedling in the thuja hedge on the right, which I may try to encourage in the right direction if I can get at it. Another option is to put one of the small blowaways right in the corner (tied to a fence rail) to give me extra hardening off space. Anything is possible right now, so I am trying not to rush things. To me its crying out for cordon or fan fruit trees (again not possible just now because of the roots) except that its next to the road so people might pinch the fruit.

Colour wise I hate blue or green fences which I think look horribly artificial. Someone down the road has recently put up a green plastic one, which is hideous (its not even all the same colour). My back garden fences are dark brown, but that might look a bit dark and gloomy - I'm not sure.

[Nicos]

I'm not very artistic either, but I know when I see something I like and then enjoy playing around to create something similar but tweaked more to my taste!

Dark brown is good- takes the fence away, but I can see white is good for reflecting light back into the garden.( the practical/ lazy side of me would think about the effort involved reprinting it regularly to keep it looking fresh and clean though!)

It does call out for vertical planting doesn't it?
Maybe some colourful insect boxes would look good, and be wildlife friendly at the same time? ( thinking of solitary bees to help with pollination?..and lacewings to munch on aphids???)
Just another thought!

[Penellype]

Painting it is not an issue - the man who put it up comes regularly to do things that I struggle with, including painting the fences round the back and cutting the tops of the hedges. Growing things up it permanently will obviously hinder this, as it does in the back garden with the clematis on the archway.

Insect houses (or a nest box for birds) are interesting - I will look and see what I can find and if I'd be happy looking at it. Might be a bit exposed for birds though.



Not sure I want to attract any more of that sort of bird!

[Jungle Jane]

Fence colours look good in brown,if a (visible from the road) garden gate is a particular shade of wood I'd coordinate with that,if no wooden gate or anything ignore all of that Looking at the photo,if the fence was the same colour as the house tiles in the background,it would blend in to the scenery,my gates that colour & one of my neighbours,another one of the neighbours has used a pale wood colour for her gate & she's got a matching raised bed in the front so it all matches & looks good.