Good news and bad

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Lots of the veggies in my garden are doing well, but one of them is under threat. Let’s deal with the good news first…

My first cucumber is nearing pickable size. It’s one of the “Mini Munch” ones. I have perched it on a stone to stop it touching the damp soil, which might cause it to rot.

Having been convinced by a spell of hot weather that Summer really is here, many of the Chillis are now setting fruit. This is the “Indian Chilli Bullet”. Hopefully before long it will have a whole cluster of bullet-shaped fruits.

The Runner Beans are racing away, and the plants are producing loads of the bright red flowers so evocative of Summer in England; you see them in all the allotments and kitchen gardens.

OK, so you can see there is plenty of good news, but now the bad news. I have another case of weedkiller-contaminated compost.

For some time now I have been aware that the upper leaves of several of my tomato plants have been curled inwards. This sometimes happens if we get cold nights after hot days, but we haven’t had any cold nights recently. Now I can see that some of the plants have contorted leaves and their growing tips are producing the fern-like growth just like the ones last year had. One plant is particularly badly affected. Ironically it is one of the blight-resistant ones, “Primavera”.

This plant has already produced five trusses, four of which have set fruit, so I may get away with it, because I would be “stopping” the plant soon anyway (i.e. pinching-out the growing-tip to persuade the plant to put its energy into fruit-production.)

The other plants are either not visibly affected, or less severely affected. So far, the situation is a lot less dire than it was this time last year. In some of the plants, some significant changes of leaf-shape have occurred. Here’s an example. This is a “normal” leaf, low down on a “Ferline” plant. It has quite a smooth surface and the edges are rounded, with few indentations.

Higher up on the same plant, the leaves look like this – much more pointed, with indentations and serrated edges, and their surfaces are knobbly.

Last year, lots of the tomato fruits were distorted into very strange shapes. Will things be any different this time, I wonder? This fruit truss on “Orkado” looks OK so far, doesn’t it?

With a bit of luck this lovely flower on “Chocolate Stripes” will go on to produce an equally lovely fruit!

The growing-medium I used for my tomato plants is a mix of “Jack’s Magic” multi-purpose compost from Westland, and composted stable manure from The Compost Centre in Woking. I suspect that the contamination is in the Westland compost. The reason I say this is because The Compost Centre supplies the RHS gardens at Wisley, and I think they of all customers would notice if the product was contaminated! Significantly, my potatoes have been grown in the composted stable manure, and they have suffered no ill effects at all. The tomato plants, on the other hand, were germinated and grown-on in small pots of the Jack’s Magic before being planted-out into the big self-watering containers in which they are growing now.

I described this problem on my blog last year, so you might like to re-read what I said…

http://marksvegplot.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/contaminated-compost.html

http://marksvegplot.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/second-thoughts.html

Further information on the contaminated compost issue can be found on Sue Garrett’s blog, here:-

http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/where-theres-muck-there-may-be-problem.html

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