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Don't overwater your peppers!

28/7/2014

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Well, it's too late for me. I thought I'd treated them the same as every previous year, when I'd always had good results. In essence, I had treated them the same - but I'd forgotten to take account of the difference a very wet winter makes!

Phytophthora is an unpronouncable family of fungus diseases that affect a wide variety of plants - potato blight is just one of them. The fungus which attacks pepper plants lives in the soil, and thrives in damp conditions. My pepper plants are in the ground, and usually I have to water them like billy-ho as the sub soil is, by late summer, sucking up every drop I pour on.

This year is different, though! The soil is fully charged with moisture and conditions are ripe for Phytophthora to flourish. The first sign is a branch, or, sadly, a whole plant, suddenly wilting catastrophically. The fungus has got into the tissues near the base and has either traveled up the water tubes or girdled the whole plant, cutting off the supply of water and killing the tissues. The fatal sign is a brown soft mushy-looking section.

If only a branch is affected, you may be able to cut ot off and save the rest of the plant. Good luck - mine are doomed, and all because we are so used to dry weather here I never even thought to check about the watering requirements of peppers!

What I now know is that I should have let the soil dry out well, till dry two inches down, before watering. Watering every day - essential for tomatoes - is not so good for peppers! The disease stays in the soil, but as I change the soil in my greenhouse beds every year, as well as rotating the crops, I hope to do better next year!

For more about preventing pepper blight, click here.

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Plant autumn potatoes now!

26/7/2014

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Planting potatoes now for autumn cropping is relatively new. It means you can be harvesting new potatoes at a time of year when we'd normally only have old, stored potatoes. Specially prepared tubers are more expensive than ordinary seed potatoes; to get the best value from them consider growing in a potato bag or raised bed. You will get a far heavier crop from a small number of tubers like this than from growing them the traditional way. You do not need to buy a special bag, you can easily rig something up with a large plastic compost sack or even one of those 'bulk bags' which building supplies come in. (Click here for more about using 'bulk bags' as a raised bed)

Autumn-planting seed potatoes are available from Harringe Plants at Sellinge (the Potten Farm site), as well as other outlets. Varieties available are Maris Peer (slug resistant), Pentland Javelin (scab and eelworm resistant), and Charlotte (firm and waxy). Harringe Plants are an independent owner-run nursery and well worth a visit. When you spend your money at local independent retailers, it stays in the community instead of finding its way to offshore accounts owned by multimillionaires! Click here if you'd like to go to their facebook page and learn more.

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Perfect time to clear your plot!

17/7/2014

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If your plot needs clearing and digging, you may have been telling yourself "Oh, there's nothing I can do till autumn". But that's NOT TRUE! In a normal year, the heavy rain we had at the beginning of the week would have vanished. But because the subsoil is still soaked from the winter, the topsoil is lovely and moist RIGHT NOW. The surface may look dry, but less than an inch below that surface there's moist dark soil which you will find surprisingly easy to get a fork into.

So instead of waiting for autumn's short, cold days, make the most of the pleasant summer weather and get out there with tools. If you don't like the heat, then an early morning trip, or an hour or two in the pleasant evening temperatures, is a bliss and a joy. There is no need to water any plants you've already got growing (unless they are very newly planted) so you can concentrate your energy on the bits that badly need attention. All the weeds you fork out can be composted (whatever the books say, it all rots down and you need that humus), and in no time at all you'll have ground ready to sow lettuce, spinach, beetroot, late carrots or even pop in a few cauliflower or broccoli plants. Instead of waiting till next year to enjoy the fruit of your labours, you can be eating your own veg this autumn!
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Look out for potato blight!

15/7/2014

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PictureBlight on a tomato.
Spells of warm, humid weather mean blight. Blight is a fungus disease, spread by rain and wind, affecting both potatoes and tomatoes. The first signs are small patches of brown on the foliage, with the damaged areas drying and shrinking. Click on the pic (left) to go to the RHS advice page.

Blight can be prevented by spraying with Bordeaux Mixture - a post which said Bordeaux mixture was to be withdrawn, on this page, was MISTAKEN - your website compiler was reading info on the RHS website wrong. There have been a number of attempts to withdraw Bordeaux mixture over the years but it is still currently available. If you spray with Bordeaux mixture you will need to re-apply it after rain!

On tomatoes, pick off any affected leaves and burn or bin them (don't compost diseased material), spraying with bordeaux mixture to stop it spreading. Tomatoes in greenhouses, protected from the rain, are less vulnerable.

If your potatoes have already formed a decent crop - and I don't know about you, but my 'first earlies' are the size of maincrop, while my 'second earlies' rival some of the smaller moons of Jupiter - then you can simply cut off all the foliage and bin it. Thus will stop the blight migrating down to the spuds and you can lift them in your own time.

If there is any suggestion that blight might be about, store your potatoes in hessian sacks rather than paper. If you don't have a nice dark cellar (how many of us have one of those?) Then use the sacks double to keep out the light.

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    Kent's climate is drier, hotter and has a longer growing season than the average for the UK. Advice in gardening books may not fit Kent. This blog has local tips on what will grow and when to do garden jobs.

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