It's a trying time again. A couple of months ago, slugs and snails were the bane of my garden, destroying plants, especially brassicas. Well they haven't been a problem for a while, although why is not clear. I moved the plants to a new spot, and frankly killed all the molluscs I could find, especially the big fat garden snails that seem greediest and most destructive. But also, it's been mostly very dry as all the news reports will tell you, so perhaps it's that.
But now there's a new public enemy: butterflies. I love butterflies, although growing up as a gardener the white ones were always viewed with suspicion. And lo, they are here by the dozen, fluttering about and surreptitiously laying eggs on every brassica they see - apart, so far, from the main stand of kale. At first there was an egg here and there, but now every single plant has dozens, even small seedlings, and the red cabbages that at first seemed uninteresting to them are succumbing too. If they all hatch, the plants will be stripped of leaves in a couple of weeks and that'll be it for my dreams of cabbage, Brussels sprouts, more kale, cauliflowers, broccoli, swedes, and kohl rabi. That's far too big a chunk of my time and effort potentially wasted, so action must be taken.
The foolproof way is netting the crops, which is to say, laying netting over a frame, be it canes or hoops, or sections of flexible pipe, so the butterflies can't physically reach the plants. But I am growing most in pots before finding somewhere for them, so there's no practical way to net them, and the ones I have planted are all in different beds and containers, so netting them all is impractical (although some will be done). However, someone reminded me of a treatment I read about earlier this year, based on bacteria that kill the developing caterpillars before they can do much harm, and although it's hard to get in the UK, I have found some for sale, so I will try that. I don't use chemical pesticides (although the distinction is a bit arbitrary), and this is safe to other wildlife and the wider environment, so it should be fine. It riles me that being a gardener naturally sets you against nature to some extent, but if I want heavy crops of food rather than caterpillars, then this must be done.
As if to emphasise this message, I have been chasing blackbirds off the raspberries again. They've been landing and gorging while I was working nearby, utterly brazen, and they seem unwilling to fly off until I run at them hissing and waving. This is all energy I could be putting to better use, and to be honest, I'll be glad when the soft fruit season is over. Indeed, there aren't many butterflies in the colder months, so autumn is for once an appealing prospect.
Incidentally, another pest has also been trying my patience, the beet leaf miner. I mentioned this before I think - basically it's a tiny fly whose larvae burrow into the leaves of beets (another major family of vegetables) and consume them from within, making leaf beet and chard unusable. I recently removed and disposed of every affected leaf I could find, but upon planting some spinach beet yesterday, I find tight clusters of tiny white eggs on every single leaf. I rubbed them off but it is another depressing thing. It's much harder to guard against, because netting is too coarse and lets the insects through - you can use fleece but that's rather unsightly and I'm not sure it would be practical. So I must now check every plant thoroughly, regularly, and it's another pain. Hopefully regular harvesting will help, but I'm starting to wonder why anyone bothers trying to grow produce, especially organically. It's all very well talking about encouraging natural predators, but some pests don't seem to have any, or at least by the time the predators or parasitoids arrive, you've already lost a crop of healthy plants.
Above: the parsnips that germinated first are huge, with leaves a metre long, and they are growing strongly at the base. Below: lots of purple vegetables! Clockwise from top left: lettuce 'Bijou', kale, probably 'Scarlet', spring onion 'Lilia', red cabbage.
So what of hope? Well some crops are managing fine. The courgettes are growing, albeit slowly, and producing a few smallish fruits here and there, but no glut. The kale (curly kale of two varieties, 'Scarlet' and 'Redbor', neither of which is really red in most cases) is healthy, largely untouched by pests (save a few eggs on plants in a container), and cropping quite heavily. Sweetcorn, fennel, and peas are all fine, and all the greenhouse vegetables seem very happy. Borlotti beans I sowed amongst the corn are now the same height as it, and growing strongly. Parsnips are enormous - above ground at least, three feet tall and producing lots of foliage, with more germinating as time goes on (it's been very erratic in that regard). Lettuces are untroubled, except for the variety 'Yugoslavian Red' (again not really red, but pink), which although very pretty, has all bolted, even the third sowing. Maybe it's best left to the colder months. Some ornamentals are also doing fine, a batch of rooted dahlia cuttings that were delivered in June are already big plants, some flowering freely. At this point I must accept that, as I knew back at the start of the season, not everything can be a success, and the more you grow, the more will fail, and the more problems you will encounter. But I may well manage to grow more crops - in terms of sheer weight, and certainly variety - than I've ever done before, so I can't let it get too upsetting. Besides, in a few months, the insects will be gone, and the winter veg - including many of the cabbages curently in peril - will be swollen and sustaining.
The first aubergine flower has fully opened. This is 'Little Fingers', which has small, narrow fruits, but the flower is big! Amazingly, I checked and this was sown late April, but the plant is nearly chest high now - it must be happy in the greenhouse!
Harvests
27/07 - 115g elephant garlic*, 170g peas, 50g leaf beet, 35g chard, (40g redcurrants, 180g raspberries, 395g blackcurrants)
28/07 - 215g kale, 120g spring onions, 80g mangetout
29/07 - 165g courgettes, 45g onion**, 15g courgette flowers
30/07 - 100g peas, 5g chilli***
31/07 - 70g spinach beet****
YTD total: 8.175kg
*harvested a few days ago but left to dry
**accidentally pulled up whilst weeding a couple of weeks ago, now it's dry and I wanted to use it, so I've weighed it (the rest of the onions are still drying)
***accidentally snapped off; full size, but green
****I'm starting to think some of what I planted as spinach beet is in fact white-stemmed chard, but they're very similar, and I can't be sure, so I'm counting them as this.
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