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Talkback: Tomatoes, aubergines and peppers

Been there, done that........except for a slight guilty feeling that I shouldn't be giving up and letting the bugs win.
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  • Mary  2Mary 2 Posts: 2
    I've been thinking the same! But I really will miss sprouting broc, so maybe just a little patch may be kept!
  • One word of warning: as you know allotments are a magnet for every conceivable pest and disease so beware of tomato blight. After 3 years of blight wiping out all my tomatoes, both outside and in a polytunnel, just as they were ripening, despite regular spraying, I will not be growing them on my allotment this year but instead will concentrate on peppers and chillies.
  • I completely agree. There comes a time when you have to call it a day. I have problems with aubergines though, I get them to the flowering stage, they then whither and fall off! I've tried them in growbags and large pots in the greenhouse but have the same result. I tried pollinating them with a fine brush. Perhaps I could be over watering them? Not tried growing them on the allotment.
    from
    Everoptimistic
  • stu jstu j Posts: 1

    about 8,weeks ago sowed tomato seeds all came through great .been away over easter weekend wet too check plants few seemed too be dying and brown-white marks on leaves can anyone advise what problem is thanks.

  • That's a shame you're not going to grow brassicas this year. Our allotment was plagued with both pigeons and white fly last year. The guy on the next door allotment rigged up a 'mock' hawk which fortunately for us kept the pigeons away from ours. The white fly was a different matter but we put up small yellow plastic squares covered in grease, then walk up and down the rows of brassicas. When the flies were disturbed, they were attracted to the yellow plastic and by the end of the growing season, the cards had trapped zillions of the little devils. And as a bit of a downer, I have to tell you that our peppers were decimated last year by an unknown 'thing' that burrowed a little hole in the pepper and if left, the pepper blackened and fell off. Whatever the bug was, it was impervious to insecticide. But happy gardening!
  • I had a problem with whitefly last year on my cabbages but got some yellow card and laminated it, coated it with grease (from my local garage) and put them up in the cabbage patch. As the flies are attracted to yellow, it did help to keep the numbers down, specially if you walked down the rows to disturb them. We also had a problem with pigeons but the guy on the next door allotment fitted up a dead stuff black chicken and that kept down pigeon damage.
  • Same here Kate, though not because of pests, just because we got so sick of eating cabbages of all sorts last winter. It was the same story with turnips the year before... note to self, must stop growing things in such vast quantities. But I could eat any amount of broad beans!



    http://www.mandysutter.com/blog/
  • If you take this to its logical conclusion you won't grow very much, Potato blight, Alium Leaf miner, black fly, greenfly, drought, cold, too much rain, not enough sun, too much sun etc. There never have been and never will be guarantees of good crops, that's nature.
  • i sow a little bit of everything inbetween shrubs and flowers, i sow potatoes in bad ground and it loosens the soil for next year...if my lettuces bolt i let them go to seed and collect that and dig it in as a green manure so not all is lost, if something really doesent do well or fails altogether then i try something else or a different place...i think by keeping such a mix of things it works and the predators have hiding places to attack the bugs, and im starting to see articles about my inadvertant type of gardening and its called permaculture, instead of digging over a new bed i tend to lay cardboard, use a cheap wooden framework or none at all and fill the area with compost etc, i use grass clippings for the paths around it and despite having horrendous heavy stony clay, by the next year i am able to easily sink down to a whole spit depth (before this on  my untreated ground i broke pickaxes and didnt reach an inch down), and the earthworms are bloody massive!!!i know straight rows look great but for me this works as i have a bad back and this no dig or gentle digging suits me perfectly...

  • annhigannhig Posts: 1

    yes, I'm giving up with brassicas as well. they take up so much space, get blown over, and anything that the scaterpillars leave gets eaten by the pigeons. 

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