More emotion today! The drooping leaves of a few of the cos lettuces gave away a whole heap of activity going on under the soil. The lettuce root aphids have been busily doing their damage out of our sight. We had to pull up a whole bed of perfectly healthy-looking cos to try to stop the spread. It’s an affliction that had already wreaked havoc on a bed of the same type of lettuce at the Springfield site – where, again, all the plants had to be ripped out a few weeks ago.
Here you can just about see the root aphid. See the white, ash-like substance just above the plant in Ru’s hand…
Apparently cos lettuce planted between April and late June is more likely to be vulnerable to infestation. But how does this uncharacteristic July weather affect this theory? We don’t know. And, aside from this, Ru says he needs to do more research as none of the books we have give suggestions on how to deal with the little rotters after the attack. Rather they wax lyrical about how you can avoid them by rotating crops and planting resistant varieties. The first method is, of course, something we already do as organic growers. The question is how do you deal with the land once you have pulled up all the plants? We are trying the practice of watering the affected area with the liquid that comes from soaking a mixture of rhubarb leaves and garlic cloves. And at Springfield we’ve planted little gem lettuce in the place of cos as this is supposed to be more resistant. Now it’s just a waiting game to see how these will fare.
Scene of devastation…
Disease and pests, as all gardeners and farmers will testify, add a rather unpalatable twist to the delight of growing food. Really tests your wits but we will not resort to chemicals. And the learning we will gain, especially if we manage to contain the blighters, should help to develop our resilience to such problems in the future. That is the fervent hope and of course we will share our findings with you!
I can’t bear to only bring you bad news this week. So just have to give you this lovely picture of our first tomato harvest…
These are from the greenhouse at Springfield, where the plants have been climbing right up towards the roof. Such a bright and cheery welcome sight to find the tomatoes hidden among the vines.
Weekly stats…
Grower: 1 | Apprentices: 2 | Volunteers: 7 | Support workers: 1 | Visitors to the site: 3 families | Friends: 3 | Dog: 2 | Fox: 0
Harvested from the site…
Salad greens & edible flowers: 20kg | 2 punnets blackberries: 600g | Basil: 90g | Chard: 7.5kg | Figs: 11 | Tomatoes: 1.5kg
August 24, 2008 at 1:16 pm |
[...] for a while, then you might remember back to a little over a year ago when we had to deal with the aphids at Allens Gardens. They come down from the poplars and bury underground to do their dirty work on [...]