Tomato Blight and Allotment Thieves

Blight Strikes Tomatoes

The plum tomatoes have been ripening slowly under their fleece cover but some sort of blight has struck. The stems and leaves are yellow brown with blotches and some of the fruit is showing the the signs.


Stripped off any fruit that is starting to turn colour to ripen off in the greenhouse at home and took out one plant completely. I find the very green tomatoes don’t always ripen so a chutney will be called for.


Need to be careful with them as blight can spread very quickly. Hopefully I will get a few more pounds yet. Took 2 full carriers home.


Thieves back


Having failed to get my largest pumpkin further than the next door plot, the visitors had returned last night and tried for the slightly smaller one. This they had managed to get a good 3 yards into the middle of the main path. I have removed them both from danger but in case the visitors can read I won’t say where just yet.


Nearly gave myself a hernia lifting them!


Compost Recipe


I was really tempted to post this in recipes, but maybe not.


Emptied the bin on plot 29 down to the 6″ layer of turkey litter at the bottom and then put a layer of stems from the calabrese and some of the potato haulm. Next about 2 barrow loads of comfrey cut from plot 5.


Another layer of potato haulm and general green waste (hate calling it waste, it’s a resource) then a barrow load of fresh horse manure, donated by Tony from plot 28. Thanks Tony.


More haum etc, more comfrey, more manure. A tasty layer cake. The logic is that the nitrogen in the manure and comfrey will act as bacterial fuel to quickly break down the stems of the haulm and convert it to a beneficial compost.


I still have a heap – about three cubic yards – of potato haulm and other green material to go on. The pile should fall considerably in the next couple of days so I can continue the layer cake.


Hopefully, I will catch up next week when we are off to Spain. We are staying here, courtesy of a satisfied customer (I design web sites). We stayed a couple of years ago and it is a lovely Andalucian village on a hillside. Winding streets, no traffic and peaceful yet vibrant.

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