Sunday 6 September 2009

A Bleak Winter

A weekend or so ago Garden Dad dug up the remaining early potatoes, somewhat late in the season. The crop was a bit disappointing. We expected to get quite a small crop from the ones we had planted in potato sacks but we had hoped for more from those we put in the raised beds. Garden Dad believes that the poor crop resulted from mediocre mounding up. As a result he has decided that next year he will continually add height to the raised bed in the area where we plant our potatoes and simply fill the bed with additional soil each time. In the meantime we have our main crop potatoes to eat through, though with similar looking harvests to the early variety, I doubt we will have any left over to store for the winter.

I also recently dug up our first turnip only to find a wormy like creature nibbling its way through the heart of the vegetable. Much of it was inedible, with brown holes evident everywhere. I decided not to show Garden Girl the little grub for fear that she might not want to eat turnips. Unfortunately a lot of the turnip leaves look like they have been feasted on so I am doubtful that this turnip was an isolated case.

Our cauliflowers and purple sprouting broccoli also look like they might have grown too tall and are showing no sign of fruiting. I fear they bolted in the hot sun. Our leeks look spindly and weak and are showing little signs of growing into strong vegetables to feed a hungry family through the winter. It looks like we might be facing a winter with a poor selection of home-grown vegetables though I hope I am wrong.

2 comments:

  1. oh dear, theres always next year- and Waitrose. They might suddently come good, we had a weed last year which turned into some brussel sprouts!

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  2. Sorry to hear of the winter crop possible failures.

    The turnips might be under attack by the cabbage root fly grub.

    I think I might also have this as my recently planted out plants of mizuna, pak choi and kale are also being cut down at the base of the stem. I hope the infestation is small so a few plants get to survive to harvest stage.

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