Sunday, 8 July 2012
Beans Means A Pretty Poly
It's a nod to the Linear Legume from me with close ups of Mrs Connell's Black and her beans! Courtesy of Zazen999. This is the legume side of Polly and in the background are the peas, climbing and dwarf. French beans (dwarf) in the middle. Runner beans in the foreground. Fingers crossed for a bumper harvest!
Thursday, 5 July 2012
Slugs, Snails and Salad Days
June came and went with a deluge of water and not much else. It was our first month of planting in the polytunnel and I had devoted a whole side to tomato growing. This was going to be my year to build up my seed bank of many different and rare varieties I had never grown before. However, foliage is browning, flowers are not setting and are dropping. Those that have set are growing slowly. There has been no sunshine to ripen them either. As we move into July the rainstorms are continuing. It's an oasis in the polytunnel though. As the weather lashes against the tunnel's plastic, the temperatures are peaking around 30-35 degrees centigrade, but I cannot ventilate the tunnel as we are experiencing Full Smith periods. These are the perfect conditions for breeding blight on your tomatoes and potatoes. It is the former in the polytunnel that yesterday I thought had caught the dreaded disease. I ripped them out without a second thought...two varieties stricken from my list in a swipe. But should I have left them to spread to the other plants? Now, a day later and I am undecided on whether it was blight or magnesium deficiency. I feel saddened at the gap that stares me in the face. To that end, I have planted my waiting celeriac into the space instead. I figure that in having lost some, with the tomatoes, I might win some by putting my roots under cover. Every year I end up with middling sized spheres, maybe this is the year, mixed up as it is, to see an increase in root size. I can but hope.
There is one thing that is loving life in the tunnel. Slimy things! Yes I am talking slugs and snails...ugh! Every night we are having a midnight feast by torchlight, picking them off into a pail, adding salt and disposing off their shrivelled remains down the lane. But as we find the partygoers each night, more find their way in by the next evening.
We do have a successful crop of salad leaves in the tunnel, whilst we wait for everything else to play catch up, so dinners are consisting of our own new potatoes (I am on a mission to eat them quickly before blight strikes), radishes (grow super quick in the polytunnel), salad leaves including basil and rocket and cucumbers from the greenhouse. Tomatoes? We are still waiting...
In June I sowed some peas direct, as the ones on the allotment were slow to grow. They are now romping up the bean/pea netting, so I am hopeful for something. The runner beans, sown and planted six weeks behind the allotment ones are lush and green and at the top of their canes already. They are Mrs Connell's Black and come from Zazen999. By comparison my HSL Blackpod, which were doing so well and looked so green and lush when planted out are now yellowing. It is apparent that the rain is washing any nutrient out of the soil. Sure we need some water, but not this much. I haven't had to lift a hose or watering can at the allotment so far this year. It's bad news for the growing season so far, which means the onus on the polytunnel growing is ever greater. I am wishing that we had ordered a 4 x 6 metre now, but we weren't to know the weather would be this dire. What is it they say? "Buy the biggest you can afford, because it will never be big enough!"
Veg Growing In The Poly In June
- Tomatoes
- Peas
- Climbing mange tout
- Courgettes
- French Beans
- Runner Beans
- Celeriac
- Cucumbers
- Leaves/herbs
- Grapevine
- Fig
There is one thing that is loving life in the tunnel. Slimy things! Yes I am talking slugs and snails...ugh! Every night we are having a midnight feast by torchlight, picking them off into a pail, adding salt and disposing off their shrivelled remains down the lane. But as we find the partygoers each night, more find their way in by the next evening.
We do have a successful crop of salad leaves in the tunnel, whilst we wait for everything else to play catch up, so dinners are consisting of our own new potatoes (I am on a mission to eat them quickly before blight strikes), radishes (grow super quick in the polytunnel), salad leaves including basil and rocket and cucumbers from the greenhouse. Tomatoes? We are still waiting...
In June I sowed some peas direct, as the ones on the allotment were slow to grow. They are now romping up the bean/pea netting, so I am hopeful for something. The runner beans, sown and planted six weeks behind the allotment ones are lush and green and at the top of their canes already. They are Mrs Connell's Black and come from Zazen999. By comparison my HSL Blackpod, which were doing so well and looked so green and lush when planted out are now yellowing. It is apparent that the rain is washing any nutrient out of the soil. Sure we need some water, but not this much. I haven't had to lift a hose or watering can at the allotment so far this year. It's bad news for the growing season so far, which means the onus on the polytunnel growing is ever greater. I am wishing that we had ordered a 4 x 6 metre now, but we weren't to know the weather would be this dire. What is it they say? "Buy the biggest you can afford, because it will never be big enough!"
Veg Growing In The Poly In June
- Tomatoes
- Peas
- Climbing mange tout
- Courgettes
- French Beans
- Runner Beans
- Celeriac
- Cucumbers
- Leaves/herbs
- Grapevine
- Fig
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