Comments on: zucchini time

By: Rachel

Rachel — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:06:16 +0000

I’ve never bought worms for my wormery. I started it off with a layer of compost containing plenty of worms from my compost heap and they do a great job. The worms in compost are different from ‘earthworms’ that you generally find in garden soil but I don’t know if they are tiger worms.

By: Helen Mcnaught

Helen Mcnaught — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:13:40 +0000

I am thinking of installing a worm farm as a way of keeping the mice away – they love my compost bin where I put kitchen scraps and the cat keeps bringing them inside for me!

Is it essential to use tiger worms? I read somewhere that different worms do different things – some condition the soil and some compost it but this doesn’t make sense to me – I have lots of worms at the bottom of my compost heaps in the dark compost – they seem to do a good job making humus and I wonder if they would be ok for a worm farm?

Regards

Helen

By: Graham Pickering.. Thames

Graham Pickering.. Thames — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 03:04:21 +0000

Hi all,
have any of you had a bad year with beans? particularly Shiny Fardenlosa, which I have grown for yrs but this year, great crop but stringy and flat and not Fardenlosa. Have emailed Yates and they say they have had complaints and are lookng into it, but in my yrs as a gardener these would be the worst beans Ihave ever grown.
Yet the short Top Crop type bean has bean great , thankgoodness
Regards
Graham Pickering

By: Rachel

Rachel — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:27:11 +0000

I’m not sure what’s causing the blotches – is it still edible? Slugs and snails can attack zucchini but that tends to leavee bits of skin missing.

I’ve had similar problems with tomatoes in the tunnel house and I think it is early blight. Outside ones are fine, but late. The alternating days of hot and cold weather in spring and early summer stressed the plants. If they are in a tunnel house or greenhouse then excellent hygiene will be important. If you can move them to a new position next year that would be best.

By: Lynne

Lynne — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:33:44 +0000

envious of the gold rush. My black zucchini has done well, but the gold one has green blotches all up the length of it. Any idea what may be causing that?

Had good result from lemon cucumber with everyone who tasted them saying what a great flavour. Will save some seed for next season of them. Like an apple cucumber but bright yellow (sorry no photo, ate the last ripe one today with our lunch!).

Tomatoes were total disaster, black stems, crumpled dried leaves, browned offf flowers, threw them all out as any fruit that came were covered in brown spots… presuming early blight. Does this mean tomatoes will be out next year as well with any soil residual nasties? Planted in tomato mix soil, with some comfrey, and fed.. but to no avail. Any advice welcomed.

thanks and love your updates.
Lynne