Allotments 4 All
Produce => Edible Plants => Topic started by: Plot22 on September 18, 2020, 19:33:06
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On our allotment site we suffer from Allium Leaf Miner and Downy Mildew on all alliums. It has got to the point where onions have to be grown under netting to prevent the Allium Leaf Miner and to grow Downy Mildew resistant varieties to try to mitigate the effects of problem. Growing Hylander and Santero seems to certainly help with the Downy Mildew on onions. Leeks however is a different ball game . As far as I am aware after much research there are no Downy Mildew resistant varieties . If anyone knows of any please let me know. The only way again is to grow under netting which me and my neighbour have successfully done this year.
2 weeks ago another neighbour had 2 perfect rows of Spring Onions and 4 rows of excellent leeks. Within 48 hours they were all decimated because of the Downy Mildew. Fortunately the whole site had harvested all their main onion crop otherwise that would have gone the same way. This year it was late coming other years it can come anytime between May and September depending on the weather. It has got to the point that all brassicas because of cabbage whites and the pigeons and all alliums have to be covered. I have 6 nets in total.
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I’m afraid I haven’t got any suggestions to offer to help with downy mildew. It sounds very frustrating and dramatically ruinous in the speed with which it takes over. Great that the netting helps, though I’m surprised and puzzled by that.
But I also commiserate over the need to use netting. I have to cover all brassicas and alliums too, but for a different reason - rabbits. And they’re great masters of finding any loose fixing in the netting and getting in for a good munch anyway.
I hope someone can suggest a more resistant leek variety but a quickish google isn’t very encouraging on that score. ☹️