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Friday 17 June 2011

Progress Tomato and Cucumber troubles

This week has been quite wet with sunny intervals which has meant lots of growing going on both inside and out

I entered the tunnel the other morning to find a trail of slime towards my Carmen cucumber  seedlings only to discover one of them had had the growing tip eaten out presumably by one of Dave Thornton's snails that will teach me to laugh at other peoples misfortune. I still have one healthy plant and 3 more have been sown to cover later shows





Also my Cedrico tomatoes seem to be suffering from some kind of complaint which seems to be similar to the problems Smithy is having with his it only seems to be my Cedrico that are affected




On a better note my Leeks are now filling the 32mm lagging which will need replacing with the larger size in the next few days the blanch is now approaching the desired 18" which is very pleasing.I have also been looking in to getting some Amblyseius which are Thrips eating predators to keep the flags nice and clean and unmarked.More on this when I receive them.







Celery is moving on well and the centres of the first 5 to be collared are now starting to blanch,I will be replacing the 10" collars with 14" ones this weekend and collaring another 10 plants with 10" foil insulation as they are now tall enough and ready so start blanching also.


I had a root about in a couple of the Potato bags to check on progress the one in the photo is a Blue Belle tuber which came away in my hand it looks as though I should have some nice ones in a few weeks.


Giant Pumpkin is at last finding its feet and starting to grow




My 3rd sowing of show perfection peas has just popped through and will be planted out in a couple of weeks 
the first sowings are now shooting up the canes,as they grow I have been cutting off all the side shoots and securing them to the canes with plant rings I will nip out the growing tips when they reach the top of the 8 foot canes.This is the method that Ian Simpson uses to grow his national winning peas.






4 comments:

  1. Just googled 'Amblyseius' and found this site from whom aforesaid beastie is available: http://www.defenders.co.uk/ Useful from my point of view as they are only a couple of miles from my shop.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Richard I have ordered 25 sachets see how they do
    Matron they are a pain as I preffer not to use pellets if possible

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yer see, I told you something good comes from down souf.

    ReplyDelete