Farming Friends & TopVeg have collaborated to create a How To Grow Summer Radish growing card.
How2Grow_Summer_Radish
The card may be downloaded, printed off and pinned to the potting shed wall as a useful reference on how to grow summer radish
We hope that children, as well as established vegetable gardeners, will find this useful, as they can grow summer radish in pots or in their own space in the vegetable garden.
radish
Please complete the contact form below if you would like us to send you a pdf of the grow card for summer radish
Thank you Sara at Farming Friends for designing this grow card.
Three days after 9 cm of rain, the lawn is still flooded.
flooded-garden
The early broad beans which were sown in November are ready to harvest.
The pods have swollen and the beans inside are properly formed, but
still really small and sweet.
broad-bean-pods
It is always a balance between yield and sweet tenderness.
An e-book, Famine in the West, has just been published which forecasts a
worldwide famine by 2025, when our cheap energy runs out. The author,
John Gossop predicts that the energy crisis will come sooner than the
experts expect. This, together with competition for land to produce
food, will trigger famine within 12 -15 years, even in the UK.
This easy-to-read book is essential reading for everyone. The book shows
not only how serious things could get, but also how we could use
innovation and the abundant energy we receive each day from the sun to
feed the 8 billion people of 2025.
The e-book costs £2.49, and can be purchased from peakfood
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Gardeners are noticing that some leaves on vegetables are turning yellow.
There are several reasons for the yellowing of leaves:
* *senescence* – the natural process of deterioration which follows
the period of development of a plant.
* *shading *- as the plant grows, the leaf canopy expands, thus
reducing the light available to the lower leaves, which then turn
yellow.
* *water logging* – causes yellowing and wilting – the plant will
not be happy.
* *nutritional problems* – usually a deficiency. The essential
element for green leaf production is nitrogen. Lack of nitrogen
is the most common cause of yellowing. This is easily rectified
by an application of a nitrogenous plant food or fertiliser.
Deficiency of certain trace elements also causes yellowing of
leaves, for example manganese.
Downy mildew of peas (Latin name – Pisum sativum) is caused by Peronospora
viciae, which also infects broad beans. Downy mildew is regarded as the
most common foliar disease of peas and is a major problem in the UK,
particularly in the east. Late-drilled peas are the worst affected.
Downy Mildew Symptoms in Spring Beans & Peas
Yellowish blotches appear on the leaves, with a pale mauve or brown
mould on the underside. Infected pods are spotted and distorted.
mildew-spores
Downy mildew is more likely to appear when temperatures are below 10°C,
& when crops have been wet for more than 12 hours.
mildew-on-one-leaf
Downy Mildew Control in Spring Beans
* Crop rotation reduces the possibility of downy mildew
* Plants affected with downy mildew should be burnt after picking
the crop
* Sprays are available to control downy mildew. Although the disease
may be present when the crop is in flower, no benefit will accrue
from spraying at this time. Always follow the manufacturer’s
instructions on the spray container.
The Invicta Gooseberries have started to drop off the plant so they were picked. The 3 year old bush yielded 7lb of gooseberries.
invicta-gooseberry
There are two types of gooseberry varieties:
* *cooking* gooseberries are often picked in the green or immature stage, but when they have reached full size.
* *desert* gooseberries are left on the bush until they become pink, softer and develop a sweeter flavour.
Gooseberries can be picked from the plant:
* individually or
* stripped off the stem with the leaves (wear leather gloves) and
separated later
The gooseberries have a stalk which attaches them to the parent bush. At
the other end is the remains of the flower.
So the gooseberry must be topped and tailed with scissors before eating.
ripe-gooseberries
Elderberry bushes flower in June. The latin name of the Elder is Sambucus Nigra.
elderberry-bush-in-flower
The flat flowerheads (called umbrells) are made up of many tiny cream-white flowers.
flowering-elder
The flowers are strongly scented with an unusual flavour. Their flavour combines well with gooseberries. Elderflower cordial is a thirst quenching summer drink.
There are several environmental factors which provide the ideal
conditions for the fungal disease Potato blight (Latin name – Phytophthora infestans).
These environmental factors have been quantified, and described in two different ways:
A Beaumont Period is a period of 48 consecutive hours, in at
least 46 of which the hourly readings of temperature and relative
humidity at a given place have not been less than 20C (68ºF) and
75%, respectively
A Smith Period is at least two consecutive days where minimum
temperature is 10C (50ºF) or above and on each day at least 11
hours when the relative humidity is greater than 90%
Potatoes are most vulnerable to potato blight when the leaves have met
in the row & by watching out for these particular weather periods at
this time, it is possible to forecast the onset of Potato Blight. Then,
protective fungicides may be applied to prevent the onset of the disease.
Both a Beaumont and a Smith period give relatively accurate forecasts,
but a Smith period is more commonly used. Information on Smith Period
reporting & blight forecasting can be found on the British Potato Council website.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (HarperCollins, 2007) is a must for vegetable gardeners.
The book chronicles a year in the author’s family as they attempt to eat food that is produced locally, and turn their backs on food that is shipped in from outside their one hour delivery circle. The author accepts that not everyone has the same climate, amount of space or time.
It is full of common sense and is an amusing read.
There are some scary facts, including today’s children “are predicted to be this country’s first generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents” & “transporting a single calorie of a perishable fresh fruit from California to New York takes about 87 calories worth of
fuel”.
