My Monarda Needs YOU!

Can anyone help me help my poor monarda plant?

It struggled last year for lack of sun and was very leggy. In our new home it gets plenty of sun and it started the spring very healthy, so I thought it was going to look great this year, but instead the leaves are discolouring...

...some of them have black crispy patches on...

...all the lower leaves are dropping off...

...and the stems have a white bloom.

My first thought (before I noticed the white fungal stuff) was that it lacked food or water, so I watered it more and fed it some fish, blood and bone. But first advice on the interent was that monarda thrives on neglect and was probably overfed and watered! Oh noooo!

I tipped the whole thing out of its pot to make sure it wasn't too wet, and it doesn't seem it. Not sure what I can do to reduce the soil's fertility now! And I've misted it with a sodium bicarbonate solution (1/4 tsp to 1/2 litre) to try to tackle the fungal infection. It's not looking any better so far.

Any ideas? I want me some more of these this summer!

Courgettes in May??

One of my courgette seedlings, which lives outside except on the coldest nights, decided it was going to start flowering and fruiting right there in its tiny 3" pot!

So on Monday I gave in and planted it out in a big tub. I wasn't really planning on growing one on the patio but it makes sense to have some closer to home; we're so rubbish at harvesting everything right on time at the plot, and we have enough plants for both! Again, we can still drag this inside if we have any more really cold nights, but it's put up with plenty of low temperatures already and I don't think we're really at risk of frost anymore. In fact at the moment it looks like the young plant is most at risk from the wind...

So unless disaster strikes, it looks like we could be eating the year's first courgette in just a few days. Crazy!

Radishes

My extremely delicious salad sandwich today included the first claytonia flowers, chive flowers, fresh oregano and the first 'French Breakfast' radishes!

But what's all this about, hmm?

They're not supposed to have cores!

Symptoms of dry weather, or pulling too late? Either way, luckily the taste and texture is still just fine.

I did the right thing growing French Breakfast this year - they're much gentler on the tastebuds than the ones I tried last year which nearly blew my head off! The other variety here is a 'Giant Radish' - they're not especially big yet, but these are just thinnings really. The flavour is nuttier than most radishes and they're supposed to be very mild, but they tasted pretty fiery to me! I'll blame that one on the dry weather too, I think...

Hurrah!

Our strawberries survived the frost! And what a lot of them there are!

I'd better get some straw...

Very pleased to see fruit forming on our apple trees too. The biggest harvest we've had from this tree previously was four apples, but this year there are four per branch! Will they all last...?

And this tree has never given us so much as a single blossom before, but this year is doing so much better!

Our Allotment Association

I've never been one to involve myself in our allotment association. Sure, I pay my £5 a year for a quarterly newsletter, public liability insurance for the plot and good discounts on seeds and manure and stuff. They look after us well, with a community orchard where members can pick their own fruit, picnic areas on each site, and regular deliveries of woodchips, skips, compost and more. But the social events are usually at awkward times for me, and when they're not I always find some other excuse to avoid going and meeting new people, and anyway, I'm still not quite past the point where I'm a little bit embarrassed about the state of my plot... We lead such busy lives these days that it's hard, sometimes, to add a new thing to the mix. I always say we should get more involved, but it never actually happens.

You'll understand, then, that I was pretty surprised when our 'plot officer' and my allotment neighbour, Terry, asked me to take over the newsletter! Apparently somebody got wind of my being a copy editor and it went from there... I agreed - they obviously really needed someone and it seems the perfect opportunity to get more involved in the allotment community.

So I made an extra special effort this morning and went to the association's AGM, a very friendly and informal do held in the 'sub aqua' clubhouse next door to our site. I was surprised to see a couple of familiar faces there from other walks of my life, and quickly started chatting to a few people as we waited for proceedings to start. The big issue discussed was money; outgoings for the association are going up and up - just like everyone else's - and subscriptions aren't enough to cover it any more. Then we elected new committee members (yours truly included) and the meeting was hurriedly closed to move on to more social pursuits! One of the members provided a barbecue - with lots of lovely homemade stuff including freshly baked bread, spicy burgers, coleslaw and potato salad and some lovely parsnip and lemon muffins - and there was an informal plant and seed swap, for allotmenteers to offload some of their spares or pick up plants they didn't have. Most importantly, I managed to put lots of faces to names I'd read in emails and newsletters, and had a good chat to the chap who did the newsletter previously, and to the new chair of the committee.

No excuses now! I'm going to have to stay in the loop and try to get to more events! It'll be nice to get to know some of the people we share the site with a bit better (although a lot of them are from the site over the road and I won't bump into them as often) and to feel we're making a contribution too.

Maybe I'll even get round to entering some veg in the show this summer!