The Allotted Month - October 2007

Autumn has well and truly arrived and the leaves are falling off the trees by the bucketful.
Leaves are welcome on the plot, they make good compost but do have to be collected up for compost.
On the areas that are clear of crops they can simply be hoed in. This year's potato blight did
cause some concern. The recommended practice of cutting off the shaws as soon as blight
appears has paid dividends. This allows the skin on the tubers to harden and resist the
entry of the spores which cause the tubers to rot in store. Visibly affected tubers
were discarded when the crop was harvested after a couple of weeks. The potatoes were
then washed to remove any remaining surface spores and put into store. At the end of the
month the stored potatoes were inspected and any showing signs of rot were discarded.
This will be repeated in another couple of months and at the same time any sprouts will be rubbed off.

The Crimson Clover green manure in section A was sown a bit late, the germination was
poor and there hasn't been much growth. In March the tops will be hoed off before
digging the section for potatoes. All the crops have now been harvested.

In section B the celery (Green Utah) has bulked up well and is being regularly cropped.
Most of it goes into soup. Harvesting the parsnips (Countess) has started and results are good.
The clover was sown earlier than in section A in the areas vacated by crops and has grown well.

This year seems to have been good for the brassicas in section C. Summer cabbage (Minicole)
is almost finished. The club root resistant Kilaxy cabbages are poor by comparison.
Cutting the winter cabbage (Celtic) will start soon, it has good solid heads. Over the
years I've tried various varieties of brussels sprouts. Peer Gynt has always been good
but it is now off the market. Its successor, Maximus, seems even better and this year
it has been the only one grown. The three rows were sown on 23 March, 29 April and 24 May.
The first two rows began cropping at the same time with good solid buttons which break off easily.
The third row will start soon. I'm hoping that successional sowing will crop right through the winter.
Maximus is listed as early and mid season but in the past it has lasted well into the new year.
The calabrese (Chevalier) is still producing a useful number of spears but I expect it to run out soon.
The White Rock cauliflower has a useful advantage over the earlier Candid Charm in that
the curds are protected by ingrowing leaves. A useful advantage in the autumn, but not many
of them are now left. Candid Charm has to be harvested as soon as it matures or the open curds
suffer weather damage. In all of the plot any yellowing leaves are removed to the compost heap. T
his helps with plot hygiene and also lets the air in around the plants.

Not much is happening in section D. The clover was sown a bit late but will go on growing
through the winter and get hoed off in April in time for planting the brassicas.

The only pesticide that I use is liquid Derris. This year, apart from the growing points
of the peas when there were signs of thrips, I haven't used it.