I Was Away From The Allotment For 2 Weeks And THIS Happened...
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ย. 2024
- This growing season is close to defeating me, and it is probably the worst year on the allotment so far. I'm sure many of you can also relate especially if you live in the UK. The weather has been dreadful and it's made gardening incredibly challenging. Cool, wet weather means slow growth, pest damage, and more problems with disease.
I've also been away on holiday for 10 days which means the plot has gone a bit wild, not with vegetable growth... but with the weeds! which are growing better than the actual vegetable crops!
It seems as though many crops just aren't growing at all!
And to add insult to injury (if the plants weren't already growing poorly because of the weather) we've been badly hit by aminopyralid herbicide from the horse manure.
So not really the update I'd like to have done, but I like to keep things real and transparent on the channel and show you guys how things really are. The reality of vegetable gardening just isn't how people make it look on Instagram.
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Cheers!
- Jim 🧑🏻🌾
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Hi Jim... really feel for you. Started most of my garden from seed for the first time this year. Those little guys are like my babies. I've lost a few and suffered when they struggled. So i can only imagine how awful it must feel to have your little seedlings done in my some shitty pharmaceutical company's toxic herbicide. You are handling it so well ... and learned a huge lesson. Thanks so much for sharing it with us ❤️❤️❤️
Thank you for your kind words. I'm really sorry about that, it's heartbreaking when you lose your precious seedlings. Thank you for watching and happy gardening ☺️
Keep at it mate.
We are all struggling this year.
Thanks, I will do. I'm sure things will pick up through July and August. Here's hoping! 😂
Why Is "everyone" struggling this year, I've seen loads of comments like that this year, my first year growing veg and I've done it from seed, not up to much yet but I have nothing to compare to.
@@nat-xs2fs plots water logged , late sowing for spuds ( a benchmark to success) slugs and snails (no frosts ) terrible spring, simply a freak year in my opinion
That was rough! Carry on Jim…..I planted tall telephone peas very early on and the critters decided that they like the pea tops. What should be very tall by now are only two, three feet tall.💕
Thanks for watching 😊 hopefully they pick up soon! Still time yet
quite often in a bed with cougettes growing and one side of the bed looks sickly, it could just be chlorosis which is treatable. the first thing i would be looking for; are there any trees growing nearby? if so, the roots always seem to head for well fed soil sapping the goodness out of it. just a thought. not all damage is pyralid based................brian
There are trees overhanging my plot so it's likely the roots are sapping nutrients from my plot yes. The yellowing courgettes and poor onion growth I think is down to the wood shavings in the manure which was mixed in robbing the nitrogen. and I only noticed when the manure had broken down leaving behind the shavings. Absolute pain, won't be using it again
This sowing year has been a complete wash out . Unless it’s a weed of course , they flourish !! Thanks for the video
It is suspicious how the weeds always seem to do well. I picked some huge ones out yesterday. Glad you enjoyed the watch thanks for watching!
No such thing as a weed. I think you mean self-raising-flowers.
Actually I have over sixty square yards of wild flower garden and so far this year 45 species have flowered BUT it is clear the slugs and snails have had a field day with some species I planted, e.g. lupins seemed to be doing OK and just vanish overnight. At least six species that I planted as mature plants have also shown no further growth. I'm still hopeful of 50+ species this year with goal of a hundred in time but getting things established is not as straightforward as I imagined. Management of some common plants is essential. So maybe not so self-raising after all.
Agree it has so far been a tough year for UK gardener's, wet, colder than usual and so many slugs just so many. Sorry this comment got so long but here goes.
In order to get the best harvest from your elephant garlic, well any garlic for that matter, remove the flower stems, ( scapes ). the plant will put energy into growing a bigger bulb rather than wasting energy blooming and making seeds. they are delicious cooked, I like to fry or steam them in a little oil and butter.
It appears that in general, things you have in buckets or pots and consequently nice compost are doing great. Things in the ground are struggling. You mentioned you have a clay soil, clay is good as it is full of all sorts of good stuff your plants should love. The problem with clay as you alluded to is to much wet and a lack of drainage causes rotting and compaction to much sun and it dries out to a brick so the roots cant brake into it. Adding sharp sand and heavily mulching with organic matter will help improve things going forward.
Lol. Your funky black beauty tomato. I had a Delicata squash grow like that last year with what looked like 10 plus's stems all fused together. It still produced lots of healthy squashes. Im not entirely sure what causes it.
As I understand it the amino pyralid is most likely from the hay the horses or other livestock were fed. The hay fields are sprayed to kill the weeds. The animals eat the hay and their poop is then contaminated. Amino pyralid is also sprayed on grain once harvested, apparently it speeds up the drying process of said grain. It is then fed to the animals. Wood shavings are used as bedding. It is of course from trees. I see no reason why trees big enough to be chipped into shavings would be sprayed. Mabe when they were tiny ? But by the time they are big it should have broken down or be so diluted as to have little to no effect. But Im not sure.
Thank you for such a well explained and detailed answer. Some really helpful information there.
I think you're right about the clay soil. Most things in the ground are doing awful whilst anything in raised beds or containers is doing much better. I'm planning on making most of my allotment raised beds eventually as some beds can barely even be worked without a rotavator and even then the roots struggle to grow.
Thank you for watching and for commenting. Happy gardening 😊
the subtance called METALDEHYDE has been removed from slug pellets, in fact its banned, it dehydrates them immediately on contact so now it is useless, slugs and snails 🐌 are having a field day,
I feel for you with the carrots - they have been awful, as have the lettuce. Going to view an allotment this weekend and will be watching for inspiration. Thank you for showing it as it is!
Good luck! It's challenging but so worth it in the end. Nothing is ever perfect. Happy viewing and gardening 😊
Glad you had a great time. Onions and leeks aren’t dead and not dead is good 👍. Tomatoes 🍅 don’t even get me started 😅 some of mine have leaf curl th other half got eaten by slugs. I on,y use mushroom 🍄 manure it isn’t supposed to have any problems 🤦♀️. But enough about me.
You have worked so hard but this year Mother Nature won and we can on,y move on from here. Chin up we’re gardeners we simply move on 👍👍. Have a better day, Ali 🌞🇨🇦
Hey Ali 😊 still a good 2-3 months left of the growing season so it's all to play for yet! Mother nature hasn't won just yet.
I've done some harvesting this week so I feel a bit better, early potato harvest next week so I'm excited for that 😊
It's always baffled me how slugs go for tomato plants, you'd think they were far less appealing to them than say.. a cabbage or head of lettuce! 🤔
Have a fab weekend! 💚
what ive use this year is a copper fine mesh. cutting it puts loads fine very small bits copper go everywhere so around my plants fine copper strands and its kept a lot slugs away well ive not seen any on those plants so it seems to worked. its like a mine field of copper bits for the slugs to get to my main plants and so far its done great so i sure do that again
Hi, it is refreshing to see a gardener share their failures for a change , focus on spring veg now as slugs have mullard me
I like to show things how they really are
There are treatments I've seen that involve mushrooms. They absorb it all up but it takes a few years.
That is devastating, you put in so much work, that’s textbook pyralid, so sorry Jim, saddened by that.
It's okay, there are things we can do moving forward. First thing being.. no more manure! Second, growing unaffected crops in the contaminated beds till it breaks down. I'm just glad we have more tomatoes!
@@downtoearthwithjim Thank god you have more tomatoes, my plot was devastated 2 years ago, I took a chance on manure from a local stable and paid the price, it took me 18 months till it dissipated, I am way more careful now, I ordered I lorry load of mushroom compost this year, it was certified organic and still I planted runner beans and a potato before I spread it around the garden!
Chin up, you will get over it, tough lesson learned!
If it's any consolation I'm having a poor growing season with multiple parsnip sowings failing, vine weevil, and generally slow growth
And I fear the chem trails are causing cooler and wetter weather.
I've heard a lot about these chem trail theories but I'm not too sure what to think of them. My opinion is that the climate is warming due to greenhouse gasses (CO2) and causing more sea evaporation, so more moisture in the atmosphere. It's all knocking things out of balance and causing swings in weather. Just my opinion. I know others may disagree
up north looks like peppers sure behind. im in central uk and ive harvested a lot already, tomatoes loads ready to harvest. be even better further south
not just the uk, America has been plagued with poisoned soil. everything is growing so slow, berriess are tiny. you can try to release tiny frogs to eat the slugs.
I have a small pond with a few frogs knocking about but not enough for the army of slugs I've got 😂
Hi Jim, we have just returned from Tenerife same dates as yours. Nothing seems to have grown apparently it’s been very wet and dull. The weeds have gone mad,
Good luck with the weeding. I sure you can turn it around, be positive we have the whole summer to look forward to.
I hope you had a lovely time 😊 I'm slowly getting on top of things next week, hopefully next week's update is more positive. I suppose there's still time yet.. July, August, and even September. So I think a recovery in July is likely 😊
I find it really interesting to take note of what slugs would or wouldn't eat. The ones at my allotment love potato leaves and beans, but like yours they don't bother with sweetcorn.
They like eating onions too when I plant them early if there's not much else around, and they'll munch a squash plant pretty rapidly.
They started eating my artichokes but stopped as they got larger.
My runner beans really suffered, the combination of the cold weather and slow growth along with the slug pressure killed half of my runner beans before they could reach high enough on the canes. Hopefully the 6 that were left will enjoy the extra space 😄
Interestingly slugs tend to stay off my beans too when they get larger. I've heard (not sure if it's true or not) that some plants such as dahlias are unappealing to slugs once they are bigger as some chemical in their leaves changes. I noticed this a couple years back - young dahlias got obliterated but when the plants were bigger and in flower, they barely touched them.
Onions have been ravaged by them this year, cucumbers the same which is unusual. Potatoes have also been nibbled on.
Thank you for sharing and happy growing!
It's definitely been a slow start to the year and I've never experienced slug damage so bad. I've noticed my runner beans and courgettes are very slow to get going. But my onions and potatoes are doing really well. I've also noticed that onions do better in normal garden soil fed with chicken pellets and not compost.
Last year I'd given my onions plenty of horse manure. I'm not kidding, they did amazing! Best year ever for them. I did the same again this year - total opposite this time. I'll put it down to the wet, cool weather but who knows.. could be something else in the manure this year causing it. I'm just using chicken pellets next year no horse muck with straw and wood shavings, doesn't seem to be doing much good this year
Its been awful this year ...except for the slugs and weeds! 😅 Im in Manchester so probably same weather as you. Actually ridiculous hiw much cold rain this month
Sorry about your big poly tunnel 😢
Looks like it's going to improve next week but the question is for how long? I'm thankful that I have the peppers doing well in the big poly at least! Happy gardening 😊
I feel for you Jim. The herbicide damage is awful and so devastating. Def slow growth here. I hope things pick up for you Jim. Chin up. Mags
Cheers mags. It's a real pain but at least some things are doing okay..
Have you ever had any issues with herbicide?
@@downtoearthwithjim I have never used manure from a farm or stables. I occasionally have used manure bought from the garden centre but my go to is chicken pellets and fbb. So never experienced any problems.
I know the feeling, I went to Italy and came back and couldn't believe how much I've lost to pests and poor weather. This year is the absolute worst in every way
That's the challenges of organic gardening isn't it. I can honestly understand why commercial farmers have to use chemicals for pests and diseases
We had the manure with the herbicide in it, and we found that brassicas grew well in it.
That may be an option. Only trouble is, one of the contaminated beds is in the polytunnel. I wouldn't usually grow brassicas in a polytunnel unless I'm overwintering them. I could do that perhaps
Yes ,that's a problem for you as it took about 5 years for it to get out of the soil on our allotments.
out door growing mixed results for a lot, ive been quite lucky my best year so far. but as i got a cacti collection i do not go away in summer as they dormant in winter so no watering so stop watering few weeks before colder weather arrives then i go away for a time away and as im not going away its gave me great chance to grow food too but winter or autumn times lovely time to go travel weather just right. i did ust go go away for few weeks but to much risk so i stay home and at least i get something out of it my cacti flower well some them and get food and loads chance to get the garden sorted. we grand solar cycle what comes around every 350-400 years and we only sen a tip of whats to come so far we coming on 5 years in to it and next 2/3 look hell for growing food and things start to normalize by around 2053. even historic records reports crop loses and crazy weather events we back in another cycle nothing we seen in modern times but at least now we have tech to help if the worst case indoor growing in controlled conditions but either way food costs are going to go through the roof. this grand cycle made up of three 11 year cycles and we at peak of activity in the first, from this year onward solar activity will reduce till around 2030 and according to noaa the the peak is hardly anything in the forecast so activity could stay at historically low activity for over a decade right in to mid 40's and if noaa right food production is in serious trouble. around 2010 is just a glimpse of whats to come as those years around 2010 were lowest activity for 100's years. be ready and at least have other methods growing just in case. forecasts can be wrong and on this one we can only hope they are if not we all in trouble, check out noaa SOLAR CYCLE PROGRESSION. we can only hope its wrong
I'm going with another mild winter, most are nowadays. There again it's been a cool summer so anything can happen
@@downtoearthwithjim anything can happen, if the jet gets locked in the wrong place we could easy have very wet very cold or more mild but as la nina forming we will see another shift in weather patterns and solar activity starting to settle over the next 5 years and solar winds of lack of changes shape of the jet so more wavy /less wavy and the weather we get the jet makes a huge difference. interesting years ahead as this grand solar cycle we only part way thorough it last one was 100's of years ago
Don't forget farmers/horse owners worm their horses and it is in the manure, therefore killing worms in your soil etc, , I am in my 60s and have gardened most of it, but some years you just have to stop or except a bad year, I've even realized my fruit trees have a rest year every now and then too, good luck
Yes very good point. I've noticed my outside beds don't have as many earthworms in now you mention it! Another reason not to use horse manure
So the aminopyralid is sprayed on the grass the horses are eating? Sorry of u get asked a million times, thanks
To my knowledge yes. I think it's sprayed on many things which can be either used to feed the horses or used for the bedding for them
I've got exactly the same problems french climbing beans are all yellow and the onions are way behind
Had my allotment for over 50 years.first time ever lost all my onions to leaf miner.beetroot is a no show.took two sowings of peas to get any.cabbage is hitty missing etc etc .but there's always next year (hopefully)but I've a shed and a stove and a cuppa so im a happy man.good luck.
I think we are all in the same boat this year, and I'm sure I'm not the only one wondering whether we are seeing the effects of a changing climate
Oh my goodness 😂
I have to keep it clean on TH-cam 😂
if you get horse manure,get black and leave it out on the ground for a year for chemicals to leech out
Thanks! 😊
It's been rubbish weather and taken loads of extra work and vigalence to keep most stuff growing well and limit losses.
P.S. Is that fasciation on your Black Beauty tomato?
Feels like a difficult defending game this year doesn't it.
Yes, I was thinking the same thing.. some of the flowers look like they're split into two. I could end up with some humongous mutated tomatoes 😂 That's common early in the growing season and can be caused by cool temperatures? Correct me if I'm wrong!
It’s hard not to be despondent when everything is getting eaten and bolting but we carry on regardless hoping it’ll come right in the end. Can I just ask regarding your marestail do you hoe it or pull it up? I’ve been pulling it out but it takes too long just to do one bed and doesn’t seem to slow its growth and I was wondering if I should just hoe it and save time 🍓
I pull it out but it is quite brittle and often breaks. I try and pull as much of the root out as I can. Trouble with hoeing it is it may break the root up into small pieces which will re grow, making it spread even more
Give your onions a liquid feed with comfrey tea once a week, it will perk them up. Jo Devon 🙂
Thanks for the tip!
Thanks for the tip!
Feel for you jim. Shit weather in scotland also just watch those early potatoes mines have early blight and can see it on yours. Once uve done ur earlies wash ur hands b4 touching ur tomatoes good luk mate.
Thank you James. I know a few people on our site have blight already so I'm keeping an eye on it. Happy growing 😊
Feeling it on my plot too nothing seems to be growing apart from the spuds
My spuds are doing great 😂 onions are absolutely terrible!
prune tomatoes and put the cuttings in the pot
I've done that with a few cuttings
😮😮😮👍👏
Not an easy growing year!
Example of the more you put in the more you get out
You reap what you sow 😊
Pure savagery
Absolute pure savagery yes
seems like you are supposed to grow potato.
What do you mean?
I'm gonna go and watch some of your videos and not do what you did
Definitely don't make the mistake I made with the horse manure and check there's no aminopyralid in it.. it's been a tough year this year for everyone and the weather is the main factor. As I always say, there are no mistakes in gardening, only experiments. Nothing is ever perfect for anyone. Thank you for watching.
sorry jim if that was me i woud be so upset but giveyou credit you take it all on the chin it is obvious you are a great gardener you know your stuff for sure take care buddy i am sure you will still get good harvest best wishes Henry
Hi Henry. Thank you for your kind words 🙏🏻 I've still got a lot to learn and there are definitely a lot of things which, when I look back I should have probably done differently. But I'll know for next year. There are no mistakes in gardening only experiments. Thank you for watching and happy growing to you! 💚
hi jim hope you can help your man of wisdom its my first year planting kohlrabi started off great but some not all are splitting is this a watering problem thanks jim take csare henry