After the disappointment from the tomato blight, I have had to remove a further eight ‘blighted’ tomatoes. There seems little I can do to save them really, so I have just removed the bad ones in hope the others will survive.

The broccoli which is flowering turns out to be, well very pretty much past it. I have been informed that the broccoli has died probably because it got too hot and dry (http://www.plant-passion.co.uk). So the insulation properties of the Cultivation Station are pretty good which means that next time we must remember to water the plants every day, because if I am honest there have been times when we have missed a few days here and there.

So that’s the bad news done and dusted, onto two pieces of good news.

Firstly the red onions are on the turn and the bases have pinkish red tinges to them, so I think that is a good sign (will take a photo for next time) and we have a new pepper on the red/green pepper plant.

 Second we have had a donation of beans for the middle of the Cultivation Station that we are hopefully planting up this weekend. I believe they are green beans but having said that they could grow tins of baked beans for all I know! That would make for quite a good picture, don’t you think?

I’m now thinking about replacing the broccoli for a winter vegetable, maybe a cabbage and then I guess I will start planning for next year.

Crop wise so far it looks like we will be living off onion soup. Onion soup all round!

So the weekend was a little disappointing, well garden wise it was. As I was lovingly attending to the plants at the weekend, I noticed something disturbing. Moving closer to the pepper plant it became apparent that the small mark on my prize pepper started to turn into a bigger mark, then a small hole then a bigger hole. In fact a slug sized hole to be quite specific and there was even a ‘trail’ of evidence.

I was gutted, and that would be putting it mildly. Granted I would have to give it marks for cutting it out perfectly, it looked almost like it had been done with a laser.

So in conclusion the Slug Stop does not work, it really doesn’t. I had a discussion with a friend who wasn’t surprised this had happened as they believe the slug eggs are already in the soil when you buy it, which would explain why I have found a few baby snails/slugs lately.

Unfortunately I have had to get some pellets, I didn’t want to, but at this rate we are not going to get anything from the plants this year, which will be a real shame as all the plants have actually grown really well. I did read the instructions for pellet application on the box but the in reality it turned out to be pretty much the same as it would be if you were applying sprinkles to ice cream. In order words, far too many of them!

So anyway I apologise to slugs and snails everywhere in advance.

In other news, the blight which has now been confirmed seems to be spreading. I keep removing affected areas but I have a horrible feeling the whole crop is going to go at this rate. Also the broccoli is flowering and doesn’t look broccoli shaped and I have no idea why. Answers on a postcard please!

So the Cultivation Station is looking extremely tidy now. I hadn’t realised just how untidy an unruly tomato plant can make a raised bed look. Rich very kindly created a pyramid of canes (of which he was very proud of) and tied up the tomato plant (thanks to advice from www.growingyourownveg.com). I meanwhile dutifully removed the excess leaves that were bearing no fruit in order to aid ripening (thanks Daisyboots). It was like Christmas as a curtain of tomatoes were lifted and we noticed lots of little ones growing that we didn’t even know were there. Joy!

Unfortunately however we have also found some more tomatoes along with their stalks which are going brown, and I’m concerned after mentioning it on Twitter that it could be ‘blight’. I had my suspicions and resigned myself to the fact that we would loose a few to bugs, but this ‘blight’ is something I knew very little about until I had advice (thanks to http://twitter.com/Plantpassion).

If anyone else has any ideas, please do let me know.

I would like to say that I am finding Twitter very helpful at the moment following some advice from some Twitter gardeners. I’m currently keeping an eye out for caterpillars on the pepper plant leaves, but I have still not seen anything so I’m still thinking slug. Additionally more advice has come in the form of removing the leaves

shading the peppers in order to aid ripening as our big pepper is still green. It sounds really obvious when I think about it now, but still hopefully it will help.

Anyway please see a birds eye view photo of the tidy Cultivation Station, well ok top floor view.

A general growing update on how the crops in the Cultivation Station are performing. Some positive bits but also some negative bits too.

Something is attacking the pepper plants and the broccoli for that matter, the leaves look a little holey at the moment. I have checked underneath them and there are no bugs, and after soaking the plant in bug killer (just in case) I can only assume that it must be slugs/snails. So in response I have put down some of that pest friendly ‘slug stop’ as a border around the raised bed and hopefully they will stay away from it.

We’ll see….

In other pepper plant news, I do have a huge pepper forming, it is still green instead of yellow but it looks lovely at the moment and it’s my current pride and joy. Hopefully it should be ready for picking and eating soon!

The red onions are also growing well and they really seem to have shot up since I took the photo, I was under the impression they would be ready to pick soon but Daisyboots has informed me that I have to wait until the bulbs pop out of the soil. I was just going to yank the so that shows how little I know really!

Tomatoes are also a success story so far. Although they are still green, they are very large and we have noticed more little ones appearing. I have been advised to cane up the tomato plant and chop away the stalks that bear no fruit which should help ripen them. In all fairness we probably should cane them up as the plant is a huge heap of tomatoes and leaves at the moment, lying on the raised bed looking exhausted from holding so much fruit.

Following the onslaught of the slug attack, the lettuce in the Lucky Clover has recovered really well. I must admit I thought it was dead, but it is looking lovely and healthy with large green leaves. It’s a huge relief as I thought I may have to chuck it away.

And finally we have had a few more strawberries, and I say a few as I am wondering if they are coming to the end of the season as there are not many more appearing. However it’s not all bad as thanks to some very helpful advice we have managed to get a few more strawberry plants off our first one.

Does anyone know what I should do to ensure the strawberry plants survive when it gets cold?

Busy time all round with the Bank Holiday and all. A couple of updates but I’ll begin with part one, an amusing Snail tale….

I used to be very good at throwing but I realised it wasn’t really my strong point when, slightly enraged,  I accidentally  relocated the first snail I found on the Cultivation Station the other week to the neighbours garden. I confess that in my quick thinking I forgot to take a picture to show you all, so this where this blog post is going to get amusing.

Once I realised I did in fact need photos to put on this blog I decided to find another snail and just remake the scene, but I couldn’t find a single one. I looked everywhere, behind bushes, under leaves, near the fences and in every conceivable nook and cranny I could find. But there wasn’t a single one to be found.

So I next enlisted help and was told quite categorically ‘no’. Anyway Rich finally came around to the idea and it was a good job he did as he found one in the front garden.

Never in all my life had I ever been so happy to see a snail. I really have to wonder what the neighbours must think…. ‘weirdo’s is all that springs to mind at the moment.

So I put the snail back on the Cultivation Station where I had found the original and it seemed a bit sleepy or dead, I wasn’t sure which at the time so we decided to go for a quick walk and see if we could find anymore. We could only find slugs, slugs and more slugs but no snails. By the time we had got back to the garden, Mr/Mrs Snail had woken up and was well on their way to yummy scrummy plant delicacies , and I have to say they are actually quick movers.

As it happened this snail quite liked the look of the potato plant, and me being slightly amused that it wanted to eat the most random thing in our raised bed, I couldn’t help but leave it a bit longer and take more photos. Rich on the other hand is quite partial to his potato plant so it wasn’t much longer after we noticed holes appearing where the snail had been that he insisted we remove it and call it a night.

Things we do for photography! Probably just me…enjoy the photos.

So after the slug fiasco I forgot to tell you that the red onions finally appeared the other day.
I was getting worried that they had died, or that I had planted the bulbs in the wrong way and that they were making their way to Australia. But, that wasn’t the case, and like a mad woman I ran out into the garden in the pitch black in my dressing gown, armed with a camera.

I call this photos… ‘Onion by Night’’.  Possibly art?

Oh and finally I also have to report that the random experiment is looking, well pretty random. We have had people saying that we may get potatoes off of it, and some have said we won’t – only time will tell!

This is what I found!

‘How could you?!’ I cried

 No response from the slug

‘Grrr’.
I ran into the house and grabbed the camera to collect photographic evidence.  Still in a state of mild anger I then proceeded to prod them with the stick (known affectionately as the slug-o-pult) until they let go.

(By the way that huge hole in the slug wasn’t me – I think it’s a breathing hole or something.)

Anyway, we then had words about our deal.

So, although I was a little, ok well very unhappy, I did decide not to kill them but to ‘eject’ them from the garden using my slug-o-pult.  It’s very easy to use, coax one slug onto the end of a stick, let it take hold, then draw back the arm and release with force.

I have to report that out of the two slugs that I managed to coax onto the slug-o-pult, only one actually made it over the fence to freedom, the other one made it to the fence and is currently still at large.

That aside I did feel bad for a split second as I heard the thud on the fence panel and I murmured ‘oops’, but it shouldn’t have munched my lettuce!

..…poor thing…sorry.

Despite my scepticism I have to report that the ‘random experiment’ is growing, and at a very fast rate, in fact it seems to be getting bigger every day. Consequently we have topped up the potato compost but it still seems to be shooting through. I can’t wait to see if we actually get any potatoes off of it, if anyone knows how long it will be before we can harvest the potatoes please leave a comment.

In other news we have also had our first strawberry! It was really nice and sweet, and probably all the sweeter because it came from our very own strawberry plant in our garden!

The strawberry plants are continuing to crop really well at the moment which is encouraging. In fact we have been told that we have another strawberry plant growing as there is and I quote, ‘a knuckle’. So you will be able to see that we have planted this shoot in another pot away from the Cultivation Station to see if we get another plant.

There comes a time when you think tiny things please tiny minds. I have to say that in my case, it’s true, because we have more shoots! Yes the spring onions have finally come through. Still waiting on the red onions but this is good, this is progress.  Maybe the rain dance worked?

In other news we decided to plant up a Lucky Clover with the lettuces I mentioned in the previous post, there would have been more photos but Rich got distracted at the time.

The Lucky Clover does look nice planted up, but we are supposed to stack three planters together so I am currently thinking about what to plant in the

other two layers. Any suggestions do let me know!

Ok, so a busy weekend all round. Let’s begin with the Virgin Gardeners Top Gardening Tip!

Yes that’s right folks, the Clueless gardener has a top tip for you all.

Unless you want crop circles or squares for that matter, don’t leave bags of compost or grow bags on your lawn after planting.

I have exciting news, we have peppers! I really should have looked harder as they were hidden under the leaves, and are a decent size already. They seem to have sprouted from the flowers, which I didn’t realise would happen, and when I say ‘they’  I actually mean ‘it’.

In other exciting news we also have a broccoli shoot which looks like a mini clover.

I am so pleased with the progress so far as I was starting to worry after my dedicated watering that all the seeds we had planted were dead in some way. However I am still concerned about the rest of the seeds so I may have to try a rain dance or something and see if I can encourage them to grow.

We have had some lettuces donated to us so my mission this week is to get them planted up in a Lucky Clover. They look a bit dodgy in places, probably because we should have planted them sooner, but I am hoping they will perk up and the holes will fill up!

That can happen cant it?