I need to let off steam and stamp my feet very firmly so please ignore me whilst I do, I have just checked on my Outdoor toms and it appears that the whole Bl**dy lot has got blight!! >:( >:( >:(
I'm SO GUTTED!!! :'( Isn't it crazy that we get so emotional about it, my partner has to bring me down to earth and remind me that no one has died and that life will carry on (which is true) but you feel so angry that the plant that you grew from a seed and nurtured has gone and snuffed it!
Last year I made some fab chutney with the huge glut of toms which we loved and had with everything, oh well.
Shall we pretend this summer never happened?? :-\ Roll on summer 2008!! :)
same thing happened to me as of yesterday. 70 plants, 15 varieties. So much for the Year of the Tomato. I knew it was going to happen weeks ago, so i'd got over the disappointment even before it happened. As Homer Simpson said -you learnt an important lesson today, Bart. You tried, and you failed,,,,,,,,and the lesson is, don't try
Know the feeling Womble :-\
I am SOOOOOOO f***ing pissed off. Especially since I've been researching the whole phenomenon about rainfall and it would appear that it's to do with Global warming and 'man-made'
atmospheric conditions.
It makes me sad & mad:
I look at my 3 allotment sites and GET ANGRY.
poor thing Glosterwomble :(, so much effort and nurturing for nought. As you say - roll on 2008 :)
fustrating yes very!
man made - doubt it.
its not the first time its been like this and it wont be the last, just probably the first time we've experienced it in our society with a growing need to have a theory or to be able to put a label on something.
All we can do is make sure that we adapt our plots to cope with such eventualities, although somethings we cant ......like blight etc.
for example runner beans were flooded out this year due to water running off the avenue into my plots so its off to wickes to get some boards and for next year i'll have two raised beds just for beans.
I don't think it's Global Warming - man made or otherwise. It's Weather!
After all there was no industrial pollution at the time of the last Ice Age .
If Global Warming was man made, why didn't it happen during the Industrial Revolution with it's "dark satanic mills", smogs and so on? In fact, rather than warming, the Thames froze over in London.
I can remember walking back from Merton to my parents' house when I young. It took us over 6 hours, taking it in turns to carry my little brother. The trains, buses and trolley buses all stopped running. We started walking in single file. My father leading, and mother at the back, holding on to the person in front. Other people joined on and left as they reached home. After that came the Clean Air Act. I don't remember a Smog since then, so air pollution is much less now. This is just another band wagon the politicians have jumped on. I think it was 1949 that Windsor was badly flooded. There were much less cars and planes then. Carbon footprint be blowed.
Whatever it is, it makes one a bit sad. All our remaining potatoes must be cut down. They looked so good. But at least we'll have potatoes. Not so our outdoor tomatoes.
Thankyou for the comments, I'm feeling a bit better now!! I had only just found the blight when I posted the first comment so I've calmed down, I didn't lose as many as you though Rhubarb Thrasher 70 plants :o you have every right to feel gutted!
glosterwomble (hugs). Sorry to hear about your Toms, I felt exactly the same when I found it on my spuds, fortunately they were ok. I now have it on my Toms at teh lottie, but not at home.
Well I have to say that I believe that it is global warming enhanced by human activities that has caused the problems we are having. I have spent the last 4 years doing palaeoclimate research, and in my opinion GW would be happening anyway, but now it is happening a lot faster than I have identified as happening in the past. Too fast for life to adapt.
One for the older end;
I seem to remember that around thirty - forty years ago Summers always seemed to be wet (perhaps not as wet as this) although I do remember the disaster in Lynmouth in the early sixties.
My point is;
........is this the same as what we used to call the normal British summer? i.e. as soon as you packed a case to set of for the seaside the rains came, then when you got back to work the sun came out, and does this mean we can expect blizzards & deep snow drifts this winter?
I must admit I am not 100% convinced that this is all man made, can it be a ploy so that the powers that be can install more stealth taxes upon us?
To my knowledge; the south pacific ocean is colder than normal, and this has affected the jet stream which in turn has affected our climate.
Should the question not be; what has cooled the south pacific?
edit; Sorry if I have gone off the forum subject i.e. edible plants!!
Hi Glosterwomble, also sending you hugs and yes I too am looking forward to 2008. We lost our crops to floods overnight so I can relate to how you feel.
Losing anything you care for is grieving, wether a loved one ,a pet or a plant and while they are all different the loss is hard at first. I try to balance it by telling myself that I can grow the plant again,not so the loved one or pet.
Take care, and start working out your plans for next year, I have found that has helped me.
XX Hugs Jeannine
I don't mind about the tomatoes too much. I had a premonition. It's just a shame because a lot of them came from seed swaps with people here, and they all looked so interesting and exciting
just have to look forward to all the new beans i've got, again partly from people here. Or do beans get blight too?
No just slugs!
;D
what do you mean "just" slugs? Aren't those pesky molluscs enough?
we've got more to worry about. Last Monday I caught a girl of about 10 trying to steal some shallots from my plot (twice). She must have been sent round to get them. Good to see her Mum is encouraging a healthy diet.I had too pull them all up on the one day I didn't have the car.
On the Wednesday some kids were damaging a plot, one of the out of sight ones. I had to chase them out several times and got a reasonable amount of abuse
the fence has been cut with wire cutters this week
today i see that the same plot has had all their sweetcorn cut down. It's their first year and they've worked so hard
Chester police just now have a period of zero tolerance of anti-social behaviour, so of course all these problems will vanish in a day or two, and the natural order of peace and harmony will return for ever and ever, Amen
Quote from: Rhubarb Thrasher on July 26, 2007, 22:29:44
Chester police just now have a period of zero tolerance of anti-social behaviour, so of course all these problems will vanish in a day or two, and the natural order of peace and harmony will return for ever and ever, Amen
Yeah right!!!!!!!!!!!!
Quotejust slugs!
They must have escaped from my experimental farm where I hope to launch a new product to the Japanese market called slugshi.
QuoteShould the question not be; what has cooled the south pacific?
I thought the South Pacific was being cooled by the melting icebergs. The real question is, What is melting the icebergs?
Whether the weather is caused by mans activities I cannot say but the climate has noticeably changed over the past 30 years or so. Who remembers when you had to take geranium cuttings every year to keep your stock? What worries me is if the guilty jetstream stays where it is now, we are likely to get a severe storm about a week after each hurricane in the us crossing between London and the Midlands.
Quote from: Jeannine on July 26, 2007, 21:11:32
Hi Glosterwomble, also sending you hugs
Thanks Jeanine, aren't people nice on here! ;D
Quote from: SueSteve on July 26, 2007, 20:40:48
glosterwomble (hugs). Sorry to hear about your Toms, I felt exactly the same when I found it on my spuds, fortunately they were ok. I now have it on my Toms at teh lottie, but not at home.
And thank you to a fellow Gloucester resident/sufferer!!! Hope you're coping alright without water like us Suesteve. It's been so bad this last week that I haven't even got to the plot to discover if the potatoes are suffering aswell.....watch out folks another crying session imminent if they have blight!! :'( ;D
In the process of loosing all ours at home in gh and plot, you cant get upset, just look for the positive, in my case huge
blousy dahlias .I am planning next years tommies it is going to be a good year(official)
Quote from: markfield rover on July 27, 2007, 09:54:41
I am planning next years tommies it is going to be a good year(official)
Can we hold you to that one !!! ;D
Like Wylie Coyote, if I do not look down,,,,,,, !
Quote from: markfield rover on July 27, 2007, 10:22:59
Like Wylie Coyote, if I do not look down,,,,,,, !
Does the Acme Corporation breed tomatoes? They're sure to be OK
I want to cry too. :( My tomatoes haven't got blight but the foliage went wild when I was away for 2½ weeks and it rained everyday. All the pinching out I had done beforehand had all gone to pot. I just have flowers and a few very small green tomatoes on the plants. This year I decided to grow them all outside because they did better than the greenhouse ones last year. My peas came to nothing, the new potatoes are huge and eaten by slugs. Everything has suffered in the garden. Being an optimist though I try not to dwell on this year's disaster and hope that next year will be all right. :D
I agree with Wildthing when our eldest son was born in 1963 we were frozen in(somerset & devon) everybody was shouting about a mini ice age coming and we would all be living on 6ft of ice. The experts got that one wrong as well. 8) 8)
IN geological terms we are still coming out of the last Ice Age and that's what I have told my toms.
Things are not too bad here(kiss of death?) but I can sympathise. I get frustrated when weather conditions ruin my plans. When I used to cry/get fighting angry was in my lottie days and all my work was destroyed by mindless prats.
We cannot change the weather-but we should be allowed to box the ears of those who get onto plots/into greenhouses and vandalise them
I'm not entirely sure if it's blight that's causing the leaves on my outdoor tomatoes to go brown and shrivelled, as I'm new to all this and haven't seen blight first hand before. It's mostly affecting my Sub Arctic Plenties - my Ferlines aren't too bad, but I think they're meant to have some blight tolerance, so it does seem to suggest blight to me.
My question is - all my outdoor tomato plants have produced loads of big green tomatoes, and despite the brown scrunchy leaves and the odd beige coloured tomato, most of the fruit are still shiny and green. Are they worth picking for green tomato chutney or something? I'm just trying to get something from my efforts if I can, but don't want to poison myself or end up with pickle that tastes of bad fruit! Has anyone been in a similar situation to this before?
I'm concerned that it might spread to my greenhouse nearby, where I have some Tigerellas and Green Sausage Tomatoes that have been doing well. Trouble is I'm having to keep the greenhouse door open, because things kept turning brown and fluffy and dropping off when the door was kept closed and there was too much humidity. (I'm talking about the plants, not me.) Feels like you can't win either way sometimes! I thought the humidity would have been good, to keep red spider mite at bay. The other problem with keeping the door open is the leaves on my aubergine plants are now covered with greenfly, it looks like some kind of organic braille. So any advice on the sort of damage they might cause and how to deal with them would be greatly appreciated too! The greenfly are only interested in the aubergines at the moment, the tomatoes and chillies seem to be getting away without any problems so far.
Managed to find some useful information about greenfly in previous posts, I realise now I should have used the search function before posting, sorry!
Does anyone know the answer to my other question? I mean, if my outdoor tomatoes have blight but most of the tomatoes just look like normal green tomatoes, can they be picked and used for chutney etc? And is there a high likelihood that the blight will spread to my nearby greenhouse tomatoes now that I'm leaving the door open during the daytimes?
You can certainly use them, but be prompt. Indoors, they develop greyish mould and rot rapidly. But they make wonderful chutney.
I made the decision today to trash my outdoor toms. I had been nursing them along, picking off the blighted keaves as the succumbed, hoping to get the green toms to ripen. But today, some of the lower fruit were blighted as well, so I picked all the green fruits (only about 3lb sound fruit from 16 plants) and cut them all down (sob!)
My greenhouse toms have a lot more fruit, but are also suffering from blight, although only relatively mildly at the moment.... :-\
Chutney beckons.....
Did I post `kiss of Death`?-I knew I shouldn`t have opened my big gob-blight has appeared on my outdoor toms over the past two days- :'(
Mine too Stephan, you are not alone!! :'( :'( :'(
Just a note on weather the floods were v bad in 1947 after a proper winter with snow up the side of DD buses? but worse than that was 1905 so these extreme conditions have been happening foe a century at least!
Hope next summers going to be an extreme one Hottttttttt!
I can sympathise with the blight v disheartening
Quote from: Rhubarb Thrasher on July 26, 2007, 22:29:44
what do you mean "just" slugs? Aren't those pesky molluscs enough?
we've got more to worry about. Last Monday I caught a girl of about 10 trying to steal some shallots from my plot (twice). She must have been sent round to get them. Good to see her Mum is encouraging a healthy diet.I had too pull them all up on the one day I didn't have the car.
On the Wednesday some kids were damaging a plot, one of the out of sight ones. I had to chase them out several times and got a reasonable amount of abuse
the fence has been cut with wire cutters this week
today i see that the same plot has had all their sweetcorn cut down. It's their first year and they've worked so hard
Chester police just now have a period of zero tolerance of anti-social behaviour, so of course all these problems will vanish in a day or two, and the natural order of peace and harmony will return for ever and ever, Amen
Rhubarb Thrasher, our site has had lots of trouble with kids, breaking into sheds just because they can. We have reported it every time to the police, and now they have so many crime numbers in one area, that they have to round up the kids. At least something is being done now.
the police will not do anything without evidence so take a camera with you and try and get some shots of them doing the damage.
In my garden, everything that can get blight has been killed by it, 59 varieties of tomato dead, all my spuds. Gone dead and burnt. :'(
Mildew has got nearly everything else.
There is a glimmer of hope, however. I have one solitary tomato plant, that is doing just fine. It is a mystery volunteer that cropped up in my compost heap and seems to be blight resistant. I will use it for a future breeding project if it holds out.
thanks newbies and cambourne. No more trouble yet. The story appears to be they broke into a shed, stole lots of wood, cut down the fence and built a treehouse in the next field, and at the same time pinched a scythe and chopped the sweetcorn down
I visited a private allotment last week - completely enclosed and vandal proof. It looked like something from the Chelsea Flower show, I want to cry.. For those of you who have plots like that, you're so lucky
when you say completly enclosed and vandel proof what did they have??
Machine guns at each corner.
naw, that would need planning permission!
they have a high fence and a 10 foot gate. Greenhouses, polytunnels, sheds with gas ccokers, automatic watering systems some of them. No birds or animals
i suppose a downside is that if anything does get nicked then you know it's almost certain to be one of the other people there
some really nice plants and fruit, but I did notice that no-one seemed to be growing anything unusual
We've discussed getting electric fences with alsatians running between them to deter vandals, but council won't pay out even tho we promised to feed 'em (or not as required)... ;D The upside of my saddo squash season is that the little buggers can't steal and smash them this year!
We have all that around ours too but it doesn't stop the vandals, they managed to get greenhouses over it last year, they were seen and caught but they did it. They climb the fences with no problem XX Jeannine