Return of the red spider mite

GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
They're back.

Spider mites are the peskiest of pests. There are two sorts of red spider mite, those which suck the blood of chickens and those which suck the life out of plants in the polytunnel. Neither red spider mite is red! Both are very destructive and an absolute pain to get rid of.

I first identified red spider mite in my polytunnel four years ago. These tiny arachnids multiply rapidly and in that first year weakened my Yardlong beans so much that I got virtually no crop.
One standard treatment for red spider mite is to import a biological control predator, but it's not cheap. I don't mind spending twenty quid if it gets rid of the problem, but not if it merely controls the numbers to come back every year.

In my ignorance I hoped the spider mites would vanish over the winter, but over the following two years they came back stronger each spring. Last year I'm pretty sure they got outside too as my whole bean crop was disastrous with the plants making no headway whatsoever.

So this winter I blitzed the polytunnel, spraying with Jeyes fluid (I had previously tried less aggressive solutions such as Citrox) and treating the wood with creosote. I also removed all possible overwintering homes such as bits of wood, support ropes etc. I've also been using the overhead irrigation regularly, as spider mite do not like humid conditions. The trouble is, these conditions encourage moulds too, which can be a problem when the vegetation in the tunnel inhibits air circulation.

All of this brought me success in my battle... or so I thought. My plants have grown well with none of the tell-tale signs of spider mite damage.

Luxuriant growth in the polytunnel

Growth trimmed back to allow air circulation

But then, a couple of days ago, I went to check if any of my aubergines were beginning to grow fruits and I came face to face with leaves that looked like this.

This mottled effect is caused by a

multitude of bite holes which

significantly weaken the plant and can kill it.

On very close inspection, for spider mites are absolutely tiny, I could just about see the pesky little blighters crawling along the stems.

Look very closely!

In preparation for this I had brought in some Pyrethrum, newly available as a group of producers clubbed together to pay the huge cost of getting it approved for use. I also made some rosemary oil earlier in the year, as this is supposed to be the active ingredient in some hideously expensive commercial sprays.

The pyrethrum is to be sprayed at seven day intervals. I spray it in the evening, after the bees and hoverflies have gone to bed, making sure to drench the plants and get right under the leaves. Fortunately I have caught it early so only need to do a small area of plants.
In the morning I turn on the irrigation to wash the leaves before the sun comes up and to keep conditions humid during the day.
But I am taking no chances. On the days I don't spray with pyrethrum I will use a weak rosemary oil solution. I am praying that my actions have a significant impact, as last year it was a tad demoralising.
If I don't see a change very soon the aubergine plants will go - they rarely give me a crop anyway, though I suspect that is because for some reason they seem to be extremely prone to spider mite.
Other plants which get hit are beans (I don't grow these in the tunnel any more), cucumbers and melons and, in a bad year, even the pepper plants. So far the tomato plants have seemed largely unaffected. Removing all the leaves below the developing fruits probably helps too.

Meanwhile, the harvest has started in earnest. Tomatoes are ripening and cucumbers are coming thick and fast. It looks like a very good year for melons too.

Cucumbers galore

When your companions begin to smother you

The title of this post is NOT a subtle hint to Sue. It's actually referring to pot marigolds, nasturtiums and borage. For these plants are wonderful companions to other plants in the vegetable plot and they randomly appear all over the place every year. But it's important not to get too attached to them, for they are still a plant and still compete for valuable resources. They all grow exceptionally well on my soil and, if left, will swamp the intended crop. So it is important to be firm with your companions, keep them in their place and kick them out when they start to get too much of a foothold.

Friday 1st July
The first cucumbers of the year. They'll be on tap now for a few months.

Look carefully at this picture of the geese and you'll spot a very young gosling, for Golly the grey goose stayed sitting on two eggs while the rest ventured outside. I held no hope, but one day a little bundle of yellow feathers poked its head out from under her.
Sadly this gosling has already succumbed. At three days old she took it out and I was relieved that the others accepted it. It successfully joined the flock and was very adept at keeping up with mum, who protected it well. So imagine my sadness when one morning, having watched it follow mum into the stable the evening before, mum came out of the stable without it. I found it dead down a small gap between the tyre nest and the wall. So frustrating.

Main job for the day was to weed the sweetcorn and the pumpkins for they were in danger of being swamped by self-seeded nasturtiums. Most have got their roots down and are growing fast enough to avoid significant slug damage, but a few of the sweetcorn needed replacing as they had been starved of light and withered. This is a reason to grow more than you need and hang on to the spares until you're absolutely sure they are no longer needed.

Saturday 2nd July
An extremely busy start to the weekend. The most important job was to catch all the sheep to worm them and apply treatment against fly strike (hence the blue crosses on their backs). We have become very efficient at this now so it didn't take long. A few years back this would have been a whole morning's task. As a reward for their cooperation, I moved the sheep onto new grass. In the picture below you can see the contrast between the grazed area they moved from and the new area of long grass. They always head straight for the clover.

Next up were the Ixworth chickens who needed their wings clipped. One of the hens had taken to hopping onto her house and over the fence and I didn't want her 'befriending' the other cockerel.
This is a simple and painless operation.

Once the animals were tended to, we turned our attention to the crops. The garlic has succumbed to rust, not helped by the fact that it has become overtaken by weeds so there is no air circulation. This is not too much of a problem and I had delayed harvesting until we got some rain in the hope that the bulbs would swell more, but under all those weeds it was getting too hot and sticky, a perfect environment for things to start rotting.

After a couple of hours in the sun, the garlic bulbs were looking much better. I'll let them dry out for quite a while before processing them to be stored through the autumn and winter. The best ones will be saved for replanting in late winter.
Part of the reason for the mass of weeds was that I had sown parsnips between the garlic rows. These two grow very well together, but this year the weeds came through too quickly and I couldn't hoe or pull them for fear of losing the tiny parsnip seedlings.
Clearing unwanted plants is very easy unless you have to pick your way around others.

Finally, a few images I snapped as I was taking a well deserved break.

A Cloud Tick

25th August 2016

Minipop ready for harvest

as soon as the tassles show

After my trips to Cornwall and Ireland, I needed to catch up on some harvesting. The Sweetcorn Minipop has harvested very well so far, but the later flush of cobs have grown differently, with larger kernels. They don't taste quite so sweet and the cores are slightly woodier, but as long as you catch them early they are still perfectly edible.






In contrast, the maincrop Sweetcorn has been very disappointing this year. Even in the polytunnel I only got about 0.5 cobs per plant. The cobs I did get, though, were huge and a real treat. Outside was a similar story. The plants never flourished and produced small, half pollenated cobs. It clearly wasn't the year for sweetcorn, not enough sun in May and June.

I've cleared all the corn from the tunnel now, which should let more light and moisture in for the crops I've underplanted.
I had lots more vegetables to harvest, but a tweet to 'get ready to hammer it to Spurn' had me heading off again. For the rumour quickly firmed up that a probable Yellow-breasted Bunting had been photographed there round about midday. Several hours had passed since then, but if I waited for further news it would be too late for me to get there.

Curlew Sandpiper at Frampton Marsh

So I started driving, but it wasn't long before a very rare Yellow-breasted Bunting turned back into a Corn Bunting, a British breeding bird. As I was close by, I considered it rude not to pop into Frampton Marsh, an excellent RSPB reserve just north of The Wash. I had great views of a Kingfisher and there were lots of waders, most notably large numbers of Curlew Sandpipers. I see these every summer when the waders pass through, but numbers this year have been exceptional affording good opportunities to really study the birds.


I was most impressed, however, by a strip of sunflowers underplanted with winter seed plants for the finches. I had tried to achieve something similar here on the farm, but sunflowers just can't seem to make it past the ravages of the slugs.







26th August 2016
Back into the polytunnel today as I spotted a few cucumbers hiding. In fact, more than a few!

The polytunnel tomatoes are doing brilliantly this year too. I've grown fewer plants but given them more space and more attention. This strategy has paid off as Sue today froze our 30th carton of tomatoes.
Some of the outdoor tomatoes seem to have made it past the blight too, particularly a variety known as Outdoor Girl which I am trying this year. We're having to pick them before they are fully ripe, otherwise the birds find them, but they ripen off nicely on the windowsill.

27th August 2016
Absolutely stunning views of a hobby today as it repeatedly swooped through the top paddock attempting to catch itself a swallow for lunch.
But it was totally eclipsed later in the day by a sky the like of which I've never seen. The weather was spooky, on the edge of a storm. The air was incredibly humid and still, but it felt as if something major was about to go down.
It was at this point that the Asperitas clouds appeared in the sky. I first noticed a strange inverted funnel looking like the precursor to an alien invasion. The sky then filled with clouds in strange wave formations. It was just like snorkelling under the sea and looking up at the surface.

Asperitas clouds are, I have since learned, the newest named form of cloud, only officially going on the list in 2015. I don't think that means they've only just started occurring, but I've certainly never seen anything like them before.

They were accompanied by rolling thunder and occasional flashes of lightening, but despite their menacing appearance the rain did not come... Not till about half an hour later when the sky darkened ominously and the heavens opened. So much rain fell so quickly that it started coming through the porch ceiling. I quickly scurried outside to clear the gutter. While I was at it I linked hosepipes to all the water butt overflows to collect as much rainwater as possible.

If I ever see asperitas clouds again I'll get ready for the downpour.

RIP Terry The Turkey :-(

I've decided to try a slightly different format for my blog posts from now on. At this time of year I'm incredibly busy with sowing, mowing and growing... and that's not to mention looking after all the animals. At the end of the day I'm often just too whacked to keep up with the blog. So I've decided to go over to a diary style blog with occasional longer posts devoted to one subject. That way I get to keep a record of everything I do on the smallholding (and you get a true sense of everything that is involved). Hopefully I'll catch up with myself within a week or two.
22nd April
The broad beans are finally up. I used seed collected from last year and it's always an interminably long wait for them to poke their heads up. I don't plant in the autumn like many do as I don't see the point in such an early start. Besides, if the cold and wet didn't get them, the chickens sure would!
One of our Muscovy girls has started sitting already. I did read that they were very prolific, but she can only just have had time to lay enough eggs before plonking herself down on them.
She's in the corner of the big chicken house.
Two nights ago I got fantastic views of a Short-eared Owl hunting down in the young woodland I have planted. This is an infrequent visitor to the farm and must be on its way back to its breeding grounds. Anyway, tonight it was back again, swooping into the grass hunting voles. Unfortunately I've not seen the barn owls for a while now, not since the farmer who bought the field grubbed up all the scrub in the corner where the barn owl box is. As he did this during the breeding season, it's odds on the owls will have abandoned their nest. Let's hope they return.

23rd April
I'm trying Mangetout outside again this year, but I've bought a variety called Golden Sweet which has yellow pods. Hopefully they'll be easier to spot when harvest time comes around. I constructed a frame for them to grow up made of bamboo sticks interwoven with semi-dry willow which I harvested from around the farm during the winter and I planted them out this morning. I raised them in pots in the polytunnel and have been hardening them off for a couple of days. I prefer not to plant straight out as I've lost them all in the past, either to voles, slugs or pigeons. I've planted them close to a large water butt too so I can prevent them becoming too dry.
I also sowed some Salsify and Scorzonera today. Closely related, these plants have very different roots. The scorzonera has been sown in some of my new 'mini-permaculture' beds as this plant is a perennial and if the roots don't develop enough in the first year they can be harvested at the end of next year instead. If they were sown in with the root crops, that space would be needed by potatoes next year.
Next to them I sowed some Sokol Breadseed Poppies. These should give a harvest of white poppy seeds, as well as a fine display of flowers. The seed heads don't have holes around the edge so the seeds are easily collected.

24th April
Time to sow the sweetcorn. This year I have 100 sweetcorn seeds. I am growing a supersweet variety again. The past two years my sweetcorn harvest has been disappointing after rats moved out of the fields before the corn was ripe enough to harvest. So this year I'll be growing some in the polytunnel and some further from the field edge in my main vegetable plot. I'm planning to undersow it with my prize mangel wurzels!
I'm also giving Minipop another go. This is harvested for miniature cobs before the tassels develop and hence before pollination. Therefore it shouldn't cross pollenate with the maincrop, which would risk spoiling it.
25th April
I have started some cucumbers off earlier than normal this year and this evening I took the plunge and planted three seedlings into the polytunnel beds. I grow Burpless Tasty Green - it's the bulk standard variety but serves me very well indeed when grown in the tunnel. I have tried others but found the yield inferior and the skin tougher. I will grow my cucumbers in two or three batches to extend the harvest period.
26th April
Mangel Wurzels and Finch Seed Mix.
Today I got a very big sowing job done. I have a 'spare veg patch' away from the main one, where I grow tougher crops which require more space. The soil is heavy clay here and pretty compacted, having been arable in the past. One quarter of this area is reserved for fodder crops. They only make a small donation to the animal food bill, but are a top up treat in the winter. I grow mostly Mangel Brigadier, but have sown some Yellow Eckendorff too. In all I sowed 1400 seeds, two every 15 inches or so!
Another quarter is, for the first time this year, reserved for the wild birds. I have sown a finch and bunting seed mix which should help out some of our disappearing farmland birds during the winter and early spring. Luckily this mix was simply broadcast and lightly turned in with the rotavator.
27th April

Hail and snow today and some pretty tasty thunderstorms. So I spent much of the evening in the polytunnel. I potted up all my tomato plants. These are the ones to go outside, always a bit of a gamble in our climate but I'm determined to manage them properly this year, taking off lower leaves and nipping sideshoots to give them the best chance of ripening and avoiding blight.
While I was potting up, I pricked out the celeriac seedlings too. Some of these won't be ready till late next winter so I don't want to hold up their growth even one little bit.
The storms obviously grounded a few migrant birds as my first Whitethroat for the year was calling scratchily from the dyke and a Chiffchaff was calling from the ash trees.

28th April

What a terrible start to the day. Sue was up at a ridiculously early hour and came back in to tell me that she thought Terry The Turkey had been killed. Terry is, or was, our turkey stag, a gentle giant who followed me everywhere. Only yesterday he had been stomping around in the kitchen with me. Up to now he had led a charmed life, firstly surviving Christmas and now settled with a wife and poults on the way. I went outside to investigate, but it was clear from the trail of feathers that something awful had happened. We had given up putting the pair of turkeys in housing at nights since they started roosting in random places. I often got a face full of flapping wing when I tried to move them. We've only ever lost one goose and a couple of guinea fowl to the fox, so this was a bit of a shock. He may even have died trying to protect his hen, who has been sat on her nest in the planter at the front of the house and only has 2 days to go until the chicks hopefully hatch out.

Polytunnel Prolifica

Tomatoes, cucumbers, chillies, peppers and beans.
The polytunnel really adds an extra dimension to our food production.

I've got aubergines this year.
The Listada de Gandia are fruiting
much better than the more usual
Black Beauty.



Tigerella and Black Cherry.

Things have moved on quickly in the polytunnel in the last few weeks.
We can now rely on a handful of ripe, tangy tomatoes everyday, red ones, yellow ones, green ones, black(ish) ones, stripy ones, big ones, small ones, round ones, pear-shaped ones. Or, to put it another way... Moneymaker, Sunbaby, Green Zebra, Black Cherry, Black Russian, Tigerella, Marmande, Red Cherry, Gardeners Delight, Ildi, Roma. It's a tad more inspirational than the tomato section of the supermarket!

There's always a slightly longer wait than we'd like for tomatoes and there's a slow build up. The real flood will be another month or so yet, but Sue has already started cooking up sauces and passatas to go in the freezer.








The cucumbers are coming gradually, but are a bit disappointing given the number of plants that I have. Having said that, we're still getting a couple a week, which is plenty. Just not enough to be giving them away or selling them.

Onto more exotic produce and, now that I've stopped the overhead irrigation, the peppers are faring much better. This is very exciting as it's a crop I've never succeeded with before.


Peppers and chillies, mid-August

 

Then there's the chillies, in their numerous forms and levels of heat. These have all done very well this year, but have left Sue and I with a bit of a puzzle.


Peppers and Chillies, early September

Several years ago, we joined a truck tour of East Africa for the summer holidays. Every day we would call in at a local market to stock up on supplies. I well remember rather brashly volunteering to test a rather small, green chilli for heat. I hesitantly nibbled the end, expecting my head to go volcanic, my lips to swell, my brow to sweat and my tongue to go numb. But not a bit of it. These chillies just tasted like watery peppers. We purchased a small bag full and they were duly added to that evening's concoction... which blew everyone's head off! For those inoffensive chillies had suddenly changed their nature and were fiery as hell.

The point of this little tale is that the same has happened again. We nibbled a little of each and every chilli variety in the polytunnel and, without exception, they all just tasty like rather mild peppers. But the minute Sue chopped one up they completely changed, like Jekyll and Hyde. This was made worse by the fact that Sue carelessly rubbed her eye and got chilli in it.








The Borlottis have all been picked now.

I've picked most of the beans now and saved the seeds either for sowing next year or for winter cassoulets. The chickpea crop has been abandoned after our harvest of one chickpea!

But this has left more space for the Butternut Squash plants to ramble. Other squashes, pumpkins and courgettes have performed disappointingly in the polytunnel. I think they are much happier outside. But getting butternuts to ripen is never easy and they seem happier with the tropical conditions in the tunnel.
It looks as if we'll get at least half a dozen fine specimens and the first is well on its way to being ripe.
I've got my eyes on the Fenland Smallholders produce show for a couple of these.

Butternut Squash coming along nicely.



Salad Days

Tuesday 28th August 2012

 

If I had any sense of pride I'd not be making this post. I'd be quietly not writing about salad crops this year.

 

As it is, I have had to wait till almost September to actually harvest a cucumber (though a very fine specimen it is) and my first two tomatoes, and there's not exactly a glut on the way. Like all failed gardeners, I do indeed intend to blame the weather.

 



The first cucumber of the year.

...and the first tomatoes, outside.

 

So here goes...my excuses!

Earlier in the year I had a very frustrating time with my tomato seedlings in particular, losing them to damping off. That put me at least a month back.

This was followed by months of dull, cool days so growth was sluggish (must try not to use that word, too many bad memories!) in the extreme. My little greenhouse became crammed with plants waiting to go outside, or into the polytunnel which sat in its packaging in the stables.

 

But I suspect there may be another reason for the staggering lack of progress made by my tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines, peppers and chillis.

For my little polycarbonate greenhouse was dismantled and brought with us from London. Now, when I originally put it together I remember a thin plastic film on the polycarbonate sheets declaring THIS SIDE OUT. Apart from that film, now peeled off, I can see no discernible way of figuring out which way round the sheets go, so it may well be that half the panes are actually deflecting the light and the heat!

 

Not to worry though. Gardening is a slow process of learning and improvement year on year, every year with its own unique and unpredictable challenges. Next year there'll be a polytunnel bursting to the brim with salad crops as well as all manner of other experiments going on.

And there's a new greenhouse waiting to go up too.

As for my little old greenhouse, it will find a use. Maybe a potting shed.