Next time I write an upbeat blogpost, somebody stop me. You should never get carried away and start thinking it's been a good year until it actually has!
Last week's update spoke of first time successes, harvest gluts and generally a feeling that everything was under control. Well, I should have known...that with nature you are never actually in control at all - nature is. And boy has it let us know in the last few days.
First of all the winds. This is August. You don't expect 40 to 50 mile per hour winds, once in a summer season, let alone twice. But that's what we've had. Two separate 36 hour episodes of very strong winds which are particular damaging in mid season because plants are in full leaf.
The winds cause me two different types of problem. The first is that we live fairly high up in our town where the prevailing westerlies can gather pace across some valleys and farmland before pretty much first stop is our garden...or in particular, my runner beans. This year was the first year I've tried them in the garden. I can't get to the allotment regularly enough to keep on top of the picking so this year I have dedicated a pathway border to them in the garden. And as we picked our first beans in last week's blog, we looked forward to a prolific crop, fuelled by my regular harvesting. This is what they looked like this morning as the winds finally subsided. The cross beam cane separated from the vertical canes and the whole row now fixed leaning 30 degrees to the left.
I can fix the canes, but the power of the wind has broken a number of the stalks and now the plants have grown so tightly up the canes, it's almost impossible to reposition them. So lean they will have to. You will also notice the absence of red flowers where all the new beans would come from - literally blown away.
I've also written before how nature also recovers quickly so here's hoping that the forthcoming sun and showers in the forecast give them sufficient time to regroup and produce a second flush...otherwise, at that leaning tower of Pisa angle, they will probably have to come out.
The second problem the winds cause me is on the plot. I've said before I can't get down there every day, in fact its more like once a week. Which means if the netting over the brassicas has been disturbed, then it's open season for the butterflies and caterpillars to do their worst till I get down there. Now on checking last week's post storm damage I was pleasantly surprised by how well the netting had stayed in place. Yes, it seems the odd butterfly can crack all my mesh security but generally things were looking pretty good. In fact I spied a real surprise - one of my broccoli plants sporting a very decent head underneath the netting (below).
Then I looked along the row. Where once a similar green crown would or should have existed was...well, nothing.
Now, the fact is, that at this moment in time I have no idea what has caused that. My guess is that it has been eaten from below. But this just goes to show, how close you can be to collecting your prize only to be scuppered in the final yards. I left the 'good head' in the ground (hoping it will get bigger) but my fear now is I shall return this weekend to find that it too has gone the way of its mates along the row. I will definitely know then it's something from below but just what, who knows? If you do, perhaps you could let me know!
Returning to the garden, my optimism regarding regular salad harvests has also been shattered. I had grow bags on the floor, shrouded with plastic bottles and covered in netting to keep off the sparrows that nest in our border hedge. I also have a hanging basket of leaves, where the intention was to pick little and often so that the plant would just go on producing into the autumn.
Well, the growbag lettuces with their transparent protection were no match for the slugs who systematically cleared the lot in the 48 hours that I couldn't really go outside because of the persistent raining. And the hanging basket? Well, the netting was the perfect thing for the sparrows to get their claws into, so that, with a Samson-like grip, they could peck away at the leaves inside the netting with impunity.
I doubled the amount of netting protection, but even that was only a temporary respite as the wind tunnel effect of the side passage of our house soon had all the netting closer to the greenhouse on the other side of the garden and the birds, unencumbered breakfasting on lettuce when I woke up yesterday morning.
I have tripled the amount of protection now around the basket and reinforced on the ground!
So what does this all prove? Well, as the title of this post suggests, you really can't say you're having a good year until your food is on the plate (or at least picked successfully off the plant) as there's usually always something around the corner you hadn't foreseen. This is normal though, and for all those reading this who are early in the veg growing journey, such disappointments go with the territory. I fully expect all my great looking potato tops to have potatoes with slug damage, my outdoor tomatoes to get blight a week before they are ready to harvest and the brassicas...well there's another 3 months before the sprouts, cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli will be ready - that's a long time for nothing...at all...to go wrong. And in a future post, I'll probably be telling you what did!
Until then, enjoy your Bank holiday.
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