Grrr Is your allotment a hotbed of pests and diseases??

angelavdavis

Hi all,

I got my allotment plot just over a year ago.

Since then, I have had:

- Potato Blight
- Tomato Blight
- Peach Leaf Curl
- Flea beetle which turned the salads into lace curtains before the pigeons massacred the rest
- starlings eating all our fruit before it even coloured up!
- Mice - eating peas
- Pigeons - eating onions setts, cabbages, salads - well everything the mice and starlings don't seem to eat given half a chance!
- weevil in my broad beans
- allium rust in chives, garlic and leeks
- white rot in garlic and shallots
- slugs n snails (obviously)
- woodlouse in the beetroot and turnips
- wireworm in the potatoes that didn't get blight
- Potato scab
- Runner bean halo virus (I had to look that one up - never seen it before!)

And this weeks delight is
- downy mildew on the sweet peas and courgettes
In fact, it was that bad on the courgettes suddenly that I am actually wondering if it is dangerous to inhale it as I am sure I got a couple of good lungfuls of spores when I removed the worst affected leaves :eek:

OK, so I don't have rabbits, cabbage whites (learned to beat that one a long time ago), marestail, the gooseberries haven't succumbed to sawfly (although did to the pigeons) and we don't have moles - yet!

The only thing I have found that doesn't seem to succumb to any disease or pest is chard - but now the family are so sick of it as it grows in abundance and is tough as houses! In fact, even my vegetarian friends confessed to a full freezer of the chard from my plot and my money is on chard being the only vegetable to survive a nuclear bomb - so it will serve the cockroaches right if my bet pays off!

I am almost organic in my growing methods and have really really tried this year to feed the soil with lots of lovely stinky stuff, have loads of ladybirds who are merrily munching on the blackfly so they don't take over.

I have planted lots of companion plants and flowers, which makes the plot look very nice and the bees are happy. I always have at least one pot of stinky potion available of comfrey or perennial weeds, have built cloches covered in enviromesh to beat the cabbage whites, have a twinkly plot thanks to the CD (useless) bird scarers hung all over the place, use the tiniest sprinkling of non-organic slug pellets which are over 12 years old because I hardly use any, use liquid seaweed, HM garlic spray and even used a bit of bordeaux mix but am I really flogging a dead horse here? Do I have to succumb to non-organic methods to eat more than the wildlife do?

I must admit I have never come across so many problems (at the same time in many cases) growing veg in 20 years of doing so in my gardens but am new to allotments and know they must be hotbeds of diseases but have honestly been really surprised - I have more problems than months in the year and I only have a half plot! Are my experiences common??

valk_scot

Sounds perfectly normal to me. I've got all these things too (except the peach curl...no peach trees) and run the allotment organically too. You'll never eliminate all the above with organic methods. Best you can hope for is to keep them to acceptable levels.


If you're feeling overwhelmed with both though it might be worthwhile looking at (a) crop spacings (b) possible water stress (c) some serious weed control ... Senacio vulgaris carries the leek rust spore, for example and (d) watching your crop rotation like a hawk, which is not easy if you've just taken over a plot (e) be very careful what you compost and never use any diseased material and finally (f) net everything that the pigions might fancy, ie most things.

Linda32

Hi, I know what its like :eek:

We lost our Broad Beans last year, to just about everything they could get, starting with Pea and Bean Weevil, we did spray but of course it didn't make any difference, once they had taken hold. We got about 6 beans Yet this year we've probably had about 6lb so maybe the spraying did work.

The mice problem - I've found that its a problem if you sow too early. We're in the East Midlands and its really not worth the bother until the very end of April to Early May at the earliest. In recent years I've noticed that we tend to turn the heating off (central heating, I mean) about the end of March, when it warms up abit, but these another drop around mid April. I assuming that the mice eat the seeds. In the same way that the weather turned rather cold, rather quickly last Mid September here, it took away the potential slug damage.

These a chap on our allotment who has a mad planting session around the first two weeks of June, (He is retired so can afford the time), he plants row after row during those two weeks and everything is as well on as ours, doing bits when we can and as the weather tells us.

You've found that the CD method dosn't work, waste of time. Netting is the key with all brassicas.


I do know that it has been a terrible year for mildew, the nursery where I work lost their entire stock of impatians due to this.
So I expect these a cycle of sorts and you have been hit badly.

Two years ago we had vine weevil in the garden, but three sprays on and fingers crossed we seem to be free again. Hope I havn't spoken too soon

Very best of luck

angelavdavis

valk_scot wrote: »

Senacio vulgaris carries the leek rust spore, for example .

Thanks for this Val, this is really interesting, we are pretty good with the weeds to be honest as I do a lot of mulching and laying newspaper which I plant through.

I don't have grass paths I have weed membrane and bark chips down as I can't stand cutting grass and the grass on the site is predominantly couch grass which invades the borders at the first chance.

Having said that, I had noticed a couple of these plants on our plot that have recently appeared so will ensure they are removed tomorrow.

Our committee is being a little easy going with some of the other plotholders who are letting their plots turn into meadows - very annoying when you see the weed seeds flying through the air at the slightest breeze. But hey, you got to practice some tolerance on allotments.