Help MBE grow his dinner 2012

Aria`s_Tail

Yep, fed up of rain and wind too.
Haven't even ventured out to the garden for a few days.
Think most of my plants have drowned in the clay soil puddles or been blown away! Not much hope of strawbs ripening in this weather.
On the upside my chilis are all looking ok on their windowsills indoors!

Bluegreen143

Sorry to hear about everyone's wind problems Hope your gardens manage to recover!

Got some plants from my mum at the weekend - a wee tiny baby tomato plant which still only has a couple of leaves :rotfl:I don't think I'll get any tomatoes, but I'm going to keep it in a pot on my windowsill and nurture it just in case. Also got other things for outside - a courgette (good because I killed mine - only want one as have a small tiny garden), a gourd and a wee pot with some mint.

Haven't eaten anything except herbs and the smallest portion of spinach ever (only one handful, had to mix with salad leaves I had in the fridge). Kind of want to move house just to get a bigger garden that gets more sun, is a sign of an obsession beginning? :rotfl:

aliasojo

lemonjelly wrote: »

AJ are your toms outside? Or under cover? If under cover I'm not 100% it is blight.

I have both.

Some are in raised beds with a frame and plastic cover, others are outside.

The outside ones were the worst affected, the ones in the covered raised beds looked fine until I examined them carefully this morning and saw the same thing just beginning.

Drea

I've just been out, have tried to straighten my canes out as much as possible. Things aren't as bad as I first thought, a lot of the potato stems have snapped but not all of them, they are just drooping down so I'm hoping they might perk up again if it ever stops raining!

The tomatoes and strawberries are being pulled out, roots and all so I tried to bury them a bit but there's not a whole lot I can do in this weather. Runner beans are looking sulky but relatively ok apart from a couple of leaves being lost to slugs.

Fingers crossed.

mrbadexample

Bluegreen143 wrote: »

Kind of want to move house just to get a bigger garden that gets more sun, is a sign of an obsession beginning? :rotfl:

Yep. Sorry, there's no hope for you now, you might just as well go with it.

Pre-war_babe_33

Drea, try tying a piece of cardboard round those potato stems and fill with soil to give support. They should be OK if they have a good root system to hold them in the ground.

Pre-war_babe_33

Aliasojo, I had the leaves of my tomato plants go like that a few years ago - not sure what the cause was but they still managed to produce a good crop so don`t despair.

annie123

Aliasojo, doesn't look like blight to me, I had it for the last 2 years running and never before that, very annoying.
If it were hot and sunny I would have said you'd watered the leaves in the sun, could it have been there since the last hot spell but you hadn't noticed it?

When I first got it it was on a day off,and I could literally watch it spread. Had to take some in a bag upto the allotments to ask and they confirmed, they had it too. I just took all the leaves off and some of the stem, put newspaper over them and left them to fatten up the spuds, got a good crop in the end.

Sign up to blightwatch http://www.blightwatch.co.uk/content/bw-Home.asp no good just looking at the map, it's for pro growers and there aren't any in here in London for example, but you will get a text warning you for your postcode, so you have time to panic and check tatties/toms every 20 mins for the next few days:o


Unfortunately my dwarf cherry tree went over and broke the top off, and the pot too and managed to shed most of the cherries in the process:(
Last cucumber which was growing up the cane, broken off after 2" of stem and the 7 snails in the pot were munching on the leaves.
Stopped off at homebase and got the only cucumber they had, a Jamie Oliver one for 50p with a dent in the stem, so I've used a lollypop stick splint and put it on the kitchen window instead.

Garlic leaves flat as a pancake, spuds in tubs OK but the maincrop ones in the beds have lost lots of foilage, so may just get little ones from them if they don't rot that is.
Slugs and snail eating things faster than they can grow, but interestingly not the courgette de nice, they have little round fruits instead, first year of trying them and not a slug/snail interested in them

Other than that the garden is very soggy again with more rain everyday at some point for the next week.
I do hope the long range reports are correct, hot and sunny July, even the end of June is looking better than this.
Think warm sunny thoughts please

aliasojo

annie123 wrote: »

Aliasojo, doesn't look like blight to me, I had it for the last 2 years running and never before that, very annoying.
If it were hot and sunny I would have said you'd watered the leaves in the sun, could it have been there since the last hot spell but you hadn't noticed it?

Definitely wasn't there before.

I've resisted the temptation to bin them all but I have cut a fair bit off them.

Time will tell I suppose.

Badrick

aliasojo wrote: »

Think things have just got worse....

Is this blight?

It's on pretty much all my toms, some just with one or two spots, others with loads.

The following link will probably give anyone growing tomatoes paranoia, just looking at the number of afflictions. :eek:
Tomato Disease Identification Key by Affected Plant Part

Looking on other forums, possible suggestions are stress if transplanted in last 8 weeks or advanced magnesium deficiency (spray with weak Epsom salts solution). Good luck.