more blackleg

Another potato plant lost to blackleg. I noticed one of the plants was looking a bit sickly with curled and yellowing leaves and stunted growth. Closer inspection showed blackleg at a fairly advanced stage with rotted stems which just pulled away from the soil with no effort. It would have to be a Lady Christl which is the best tasting of all the first earlies I’ve tried. That makes four plants lost so I’m thinking infected tubers from that particular stock pile. If anyone else is growing Lady Christl I’d be inclined to give them a careful check to make sure they’re still healthy. No other varieties I’m growing have been affected.

blackleg infected potato haulm

But the day wasn’t all doom and gloom. We had our regular treat of fish and chips at Silloth and they were fantastic. Well worth the drive.

Criffel and the Scottish side of the Solway from Silloth

And when we got home I indulged in a little bowl of home-grown strawberries.

I've just completed my ritual evening inspection and all my little veggies are now tucked up for the night so I can relax with a beer. Unfortunately it's not draught as the nearest pub is three miles away. One of the few downsides to our rural idyll.

aphid infestation

There’s a serious aphid infestation on the growing tips of my blackcurrant bushes and I’ve had to resort to the spray gun. I wouldn’t normally do this as even the relatively harmless insecticides are still pretty indiscriminate. Trouble is I’ve seen very few ladybirds about this year and as they are the natural predators of aphids the little bugs are getting the upper hand. The bushes have plenty of fruit on them but I’d rather they didn’t spend their time being gobbled by greenfly, etc. The aphids can also carry more serious viral diseases so that’s as good a reason as any to get rid of them.

the underside of the curled leaves is crawling with little beasties!

The new potatoes are coming thick and fast at the moment.  This pic shows more than 2.5 lbs of Maris Peer from two plants in a large pot. They are a second early and should have been left longer than 12 weeks but we needed some taties for tea!

A lot of stuff in the greenhouse is sulking at the moment due to the cool weather and lack of sunshine.  Some of the tomatoes have their first flowers but the peppers, cucumbers and aubergines are just sitting there refusing to grow. I know they'll pick up when the weather improves but sometimes I find myself willing them to get a move on.

leeks, to trim or not to trim?

A showery sort of day but still plenty of time to get things done outside. Anyway, I’d still rather be outside in the rain than stuck indoors. I have some young leeks which have really outgrown their pots so I separated one lot and put them out into dibbed holes in a small patch I had been keeping for more peas.

There’s quite a bit of folklore attached to leek planting. A lot of people say plant them out when they reach pencil thickness but I’ve never let mine get to that size. Some say trim the roots and leaves before planting while others say it’s not necessary. I do trim any long straggly roots as it makes it easier to get them into the holes and I also trim the tops to stop them blowing about in the wind before they get established. I also tend to ignore conventional spacing recommendations and grow them much closer together. These techniques work for me as you can see from the photo.

I’m a keen recycler so I took the compost from one of the potato tubs that was finished, mixed in some fresh, added some BFB and planted out another courgette with some lettuce round the edges. You should always try to get two crops from each lot of compost if you can, especially if you are buying commercial stuff.

Sowed more spring onions in small pots. These will be planted out as clumps whenever and wherever a space becomes available. We usually manage to have spring onions for much of the year by doing it this way with successional sowings. The later sowings can be left in the pots and brought under cover during winter to give an early crop next year.

It’s been quite cool today but not so cool that the bees couldn’t go about their work. Here’s one hovering near a rhododendron flower cluster.

We are surrounded by hills here, even though the Solway plain is very flat. Skiddaw, seen across the estuary to the south, often wears a cap of cloud

and if we look upstream we can see the Pennines in the distance to the east and we also have the Scottish border hills to the north

O.K. geography lesson over for today now back to the garden. The main potato patch is looking quite healthy but these are second earlies so it will be a while before any will be lifted.

The onions in the tub are in a space left by one of the diseased plants I removed and I don't like to have unproductive ground on the plot.

Just to illustrate how quickly things are growing now these pics show a tub of Lollo Rossa lettuce. There are just eight days between the two photos but the plants have bulked up enormously.

the rest of the garden

The vegetable plot is coming into production with all available space now taken up with growing plants so I can turn my attention to the rest of the garden. I must admit that I tend to neglect everything that doesn’t produce food so I’ve had a spell today trying to remove a heavy growth of couch grass from around some buddleia and azalea shrubs in a far corner. It was also starting to encroach on the soft fruit beds but that wasn’t my motivation. I'm going to have a go at reproducing some of the azalias and rhodies by layering them so I've been clearing round them and will peg down suitable branches later this month.

Then there’s the back and front lawns to cut. An onerous task but it does provide compost and mulch material. Trouble is the lawns produce far too much cut grass so half of it goes into the green recycling bin.


I bought some native wild flower seeds a few weeks ago and have been sprinkling them around in small patches I've cleared around the edges of the garden. They won't get any special treatment, just like in nature. If they survive and bloom it will add a splash of colour and hopefully attract beneficial insects. With a bit of luck they'll self-seed and just get on with what they do best, leaving me to concentrate on food production.

Dodging the showers I managed to get some potting done in the greenhouse and all the tomatoes are now in their final positions. After doing a few swaps with a friend I now have five varieties: Alicante, Black Cherry, Costoluto Fiorentino, Roma and Shirley. Two cucumbers and a courgette are also storming away which only leaves the peppers and aubergines to be potted on when they get a bit bigger.

We had more new potatoes for tea today: Pentland Javelin which gave a better yield than the Lady Christl but the flavour was nowhere near as good.

I had two plants growing in a 15 inch pot and they gave me over 1 kilo when I tipped them out. Probably with more space they’d have given more but a lot of my container poato growing is still a bit experimental. I’m recording a lot of details to find the best combination of potato variety and container size.

Away from gardening for a minute I saw a guillemot down on the estuary today. We get the odd solitary cormorant but this was the first time I've seen a guillemot. They breed in colonies on cliffs but the nearest cliffs are on the other side of the Solway in Scotland so it must have been having a day out.

wind and water

I've had a break for a couple of days and what do I find? the rain has brought everything on dramatically, including the weeds. One big advantage of rain for the container grower is that it relieves you of the job of lugging full watering cans around the place.

It hasn't just been rain up here in Cumbria. We've had some very strong winds which have battered the tatie tops and broad beans so I've been doing my support act with sticks and string. I've also had to tie some of the asparagus ferns to canes to stop them whipping around.

But it's not all bad news. I picked some strawberries from the greenhouse this afternoon. Only four so not enough to go round so I ate them all. The hanging basket is another of those useful things that got washed up on marsh. I'm tempted to buy a couple more and grow more strawbs in the greenhouse next year. Oh, but then I'd have to share ;-)

We had more new potatoes for tea tonight. Just under two pounds of Lady Christl from two plants. Not a lot but you don't grow first earlies for the yield. It's all about the taste.

As a warning to those thinking of putting out tender plants too early I offer this pic of some young french beans that I left outside the greenhouse for a couple of days. We've not had any low temps. so I suspect this is wind burn.

It's my own fault and I'm sure they'll recover but going from the comfort of the greenhouse to the great outdoors too quickly has certainly upset them.

infected potatoes

There's always something isn't there. I inspected the main potato crop today and found three rather sickly looking plants with what looks very much like potato leaf roll virus. The leaves are a pallid yellowy-green and the plants are half the size of the uninfected ones.

While it is not usually fatal to the plants it does result in greatly reduced yields so I'm just going to remove them and dispose of them carefully. ie. not on the compost heap. What is annoying is that I make a point of only buying certified seed.

On a lighter note last night's rain was very welcome. I now have one water butt full so if we get a few more heavy downpours I should be OK water-wise for a few days at least.

The annual war against the cabbage white butterflies in now under way and I've covered the brassicas with debris netting. Not a pretty sight but I spent far too long last year picking-off caterpillars when I could have been doing something more productive.

Here's some Primo cabbage inter-cropped with lettuce although the lettuce seems to be coming off rather badly in the growth game. The close spacing of the cabbage is because this is miniature variety and only produces a small head - perfect for just two people.

first strawberry

Last week I had the first new potatoes of the season and today it was the first strawberry. As you can see it's a big ugly thing but it certainly tasted like a strawberry. Oddly, all the others on the two plants are much smaller and still green. These are in a hanging basket in the greenhouse and the little sticks are to keep the fruit off the compost.

It's been a funny year so far with everything much earlier than last but, of course, if we get a rotten summer all the gains will be lost. My experiments at getting early crops by starting things off in the greenhouse are paying dividends but it could all have gone wrong if the weather in April had not been so kind. I'll probably do the same again next year but will invest in some sort of heating just in case.

At the last count I had 105 containers with growing crops in them and I've yet to pot up most of the tomatoes and all the peppers, cucumbers and aubergines. This has only been possible because I make my own compost.

Last year I bought a big tub of pelleted chicken manure and one of BFB and these are the only commercial fertilizers I use apart from some tomato feed for the greenhouse crops. I do make a lot of seaweed tea, nettle tea and various other smelly concoctions and gather wood ash from various burning operations hereabouts. I really like the idea of a closed system where very little is brought in from outside and as much kitchen and garden waste as I can get hold of is composted. I'm even now recycling the compost from the first container of potatoes that I emptied last week. With a little added BFB it's now home to some lollo rossa lettuce transplants and when they are finished it's going on the compost heap. I can sometimes get three crops from the same compost but potatoes are very hungry and there is not likely to be much left when they've finished feeding!