What a difference a month makes!

It's now a month since my last posting and the man made bog has finally dried out and allowed the planting of the cauli's and sprouts. I've also managed to transplant Swedes that were sown in cells in the coldframe. They seem to have taken well and are showing new growth, so fingers crossed!

In my last post I'd mentioned that club root had killed off my summer cabbage (greyhound and golden acre) and that I was potting up some more to try again. Well, after a little research on the www, I found an interesting article on how the EC had banned many preventitive cures for club root. Some fungicides were taken off the market because of the astonomical cost involved in providing test data for the EC to grant approval. One of these was a product that had been used for years in helping reduce the effect of club root and is called "Armillatox". On reading their website I found that Armillatox had been reclassified as a greenhouse cleaned but the formula had not been changed. I applied the diluted Armillatox, as recommended, over the affected area, waited three weeks, as recommended, and planted out my rather healthy looking replacements. This was two weeks ago and all seems well. The plants are putting on new growth and look to be strong and healthy. Looks like we'll be have some late summer cabbage afterall.

what's done well!

Spinach..... We've already had three pickings ( two large spanokopita pies and more than a dozen blocks in the freezer. Unfortunately with the dry spell we've had the spinach is now running to seed so it looks like we'll be re-sowing another row for the winter cutting.

Carrots.... I've never had much success due to the pesky carrot fly. Not until this year that is. I've really gone overboard and planted a complete border of marigolds with an inner row of pickling onions and garlic and in between the rows of carrots I've placed 20x20 laths that were painted with neat Jeyes fluid. Not only do the carrots look healthy, but the patch smells clinically clean. Fingers crossed!

Lady Christl...... First early potatoes, we've only had two boilings as I was a bit late with planting but they are delicious.

Lettuce...... I've been told not bring any more home and give them a rest. Well I had planted 20 in the cold frame and about 30 in the boarders. A mixture of Lakeland (Iceberg) and Romano (Cos). The cos won by a mile. Full of flavor, crisp and quite large.


Sarpo Axona.... A potato variety that is supposed to be blight resistant.
Well, they are looking good, no signs of blight but it's still a bit early to claim as a success.







I tried planting the onions at 5" spacing with 12" between the rows this year. I'll be back to 9" with 15" between rows next year as they've been a devil to keep clean of weeds!
Also, the shallots will be spaced at 18" so that I can plant my St George winter cauli's in between. Pete recommended this to me as a space saving idea as the shallots will be ready for lifting by August and the cauli's won't have bulked out too much by then and once the shallots are up they'll have plenty of room. Sounds good and worth a try next year.

That's all for now, more photos with the next posting.