Straw for Strawberries

Today we went and bought straw for the strawberries, pvc piping (like the kind used for electrical cabling) and netting.

I've erected one hooped cover for one garden bed (ironically, for the cauliflowers which still have an undetermined fate, but whom the ducks seem to think are extremely tasty), and covered it with netting. It looks really professional and quite tidy too. I'll take some photos and update tomorrow.

The pvc pipes cost 89c each and I'll be going back tomorrow or Wednesday and getting enough to do all the beds. I think it's the only sensible way to keep the ducks out of my plants!

The straw comes in 5 kg compressed vacuum sealed bags for about 5 euros a bag. You can buy uncompressed bales, but they're much bigger and I'd need to have the car commercially cleaned to get rid of all the dust!

I used one five kg bale to do both strawberry beds and give each squash and courgette plant a nice warm base. The gemsquash look like they grew about 5 inches since yesterday! The other bale is waiting to replenish the berries later in the season.

Vertine has some nice photos of all the 'protection' methods used on her allotment site to keep the birds out of the berries.

Today I'll be sowing some more dwarf beans here at home in 3 inch pots, transplanting some of my tomatoes to bigger pots. The ones that I showed you a week or so ago now have at least two flower trusses showing.

The difference in growth after they are transplanted to their final growing area is just incredible! The ones at the allotment are also looking pretty good.

Finally, my garlic looks as though it might be ready to harvest in about 2 weeks.

Club root on kohlrabi

So so disappointed ... I had a look at my kohlrabi this morning and something prompted me to pull two up. Sad to say that they seem heavily afflicted with clubroot. I didn't lime before planting and I have no idea what the gardener before me planted in the area that is now occupied by my cauliflower, cabbage and kohlrabi.

Apparently he planted brassicas. It seems I may have also shot myself in the foot by accepting seedlings from a fellow gardener - she may not have started hers off in sterile potting compost and the fungus could have been present even before they reached my garden.

You can see more pictures of the afflicted roots here.

Tomorrow I have the wonderful task of either going back and pulling out all of my brassicas to try and contain the spread or just leaving them alone and hoping for the best for the rest of this season.

Oh, and the three trays of broccoli and cauliflower seedlings I have here waiting to go in the ground? I guess they'll be ... not.

In the autumn I can heavily lime the brassica area, which will be a different patch in my rotation and then try again next year.

Here's another useful factsheet. And in case you wanted to know, clubroot is called 'knolvoet' in Dutch.

Spots on Tomatoes and Spots on Bugs

I haven't been to the garden this weekend yet, so no nice pictures to show you unless you're interested in 7 year olds playing football! No?

I did some research because my tomatoes, healthy up until yesterday, suddenly developed little spots on some of the leaves. I found a wonderful website entitled the 'Tomato Problem Solver'. Perfect!

The other website I found which I thought I should bring to your attention is the Harlequin Ladybird Survey website for the UK. We have Harlequins here in Holland and I don't like them much. Nothing at all like a Harlequin Romance, these bugs actually eat other native ladybirds!

I've seen some 7-spot ladybirds, but recently the Harlequins have been more prevalent. Larvae of both sorts of bugs is peculiar looking! Who would have thought a ladybird came out of such an evil-looking larva?

My tomato problem seems to be bacterial speck, or Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato, thanks to all the rain we've been having. I've removed the affected leaves and isolated the plants. Let's hope it doesn't spread.

Tomorrow I'll be in the garden making sure the slugs didn't eat absolutely everything that's growing.