Page 52 - Simply Vegetables Spring 2023

Annual beds planted
white butterflies and carrot fly, there are also cabbage root flies. Like carrot flies, they also lay their eggs on the soil near the plants and the grubs, when they hatch, go into the soil and eat the plants roots. Again, a physical barrier is the best solution you can buy felt discs that fit round the base
of the plants but you can make your own using any suitable material like carpet underlay, thick polythene or plastic circles.
Aphids can be a problem greenfly
attack a large variety of plants, blackfly attack beans, particularly broad beans and whitefly (related to aphids) go for brassicas. If there are only a few, you can, of course, squash them but for larger infections you need to resort to spraying. Make sure you read the instructions on the label and use one that is recommended for edible crops.
If you grow gooseberries, you could have a problem with gooseberry sawfly, the maggots of which strip the foliage very quickly. Again, you have to resort to spraying so do it as soon as you notice them before much damage is done.
The most troublesome disease, I think, is potato blight it affects tomatoes as well because they are related. It doesn’t usually arrive till July, but it is worth spraying with a good fungicide to prevent it. The first thing you notice are brown patches on the leaves. When it rains, the spores are
Runner beans planted
washed down into the soil and can affect the tubers making them unusable.
Another disease that is worth spraying to prevent is chocolate spot on broad beans. As the name suggests, you get brown spots all over the leaves and also on the pods later on. It is not as serious as potato blight, but growth is affected. Mildew can affect marrows and courgettes, so it is worth spraying these as well.
Apart from looking for pests and diseases, what else needs doing? You need to keep earthing up potatoes. This means drawing soil up round the stems it helps
to prevent the tubers being exposed to the light which causes them to turn green. If you grow first early potatoes, some may be ready for harvesting. Just dig up one or two plants to see if the tubers are big enough.
Climbing bean Rob Roy for planting
You may be happy with “baby” potatoes. If you are growing tomatoes on the
cordon system, which means just allowing one stem to grow, attached to a cane,
you need to keep removing side shoots. These are shoots which grow between the leaves and the stem. Greenhouse doors can stay open from now until the autumn. In hot weather, you should spray water on the greenhouse paths to create a moist atmosphere this is referred to as “damping down”.
If you are growing Chrysanths or dahlias, when the plants are about 6 inches (15 cm.) tall you should pinch out the growing tip. This is known as “stopping”. It causes side shoots (known as laterals) to grow which will eventually carry the flowers.
In the last three months, I have mentioned sowing seeds in drills, then thinning out the seedlings as they grow. You will probably need to keep doing it this month as well till the plants are in their final positions.
In the fruit garden, you could tidy the strawberry bed by removing any dead or dying leaves. You will probably have some ready for picking this month. Put straw under the developing fruits to keep them off the ground and put a net over them so that the birds do not get the fruit before you do.
52 Simply Vegetables
Winter onions for harvesting