Plot 5

Unfortunately the 5 cucumber plants in the greenhouse are showing signs of Cucumber Mosaic Virus, which although not good, I’m hoping won’t be the death of them – or the tomatoes in there with them. Having searched around for some info on the subject I came across this useful post, today I’m going to follow the advice and see how the plants get on.

Just in case the above link doesn’t work here is the main info I was interested in…

How to Treat Mosaic Virus
There is no known cure, but all is not necessarily lost. Some advice is to dig up the plant and burn it but that advice is now generally thought to be out of date. Mosaic virus is transmitted from plant to plant in two key ways, by insects and by you, the gardener. Both result in the same symptoms of yellow leaves.

The virus won’t kill your plant, it will reduce it’s vigour and ability to produce crops. So, if you want to keep your plant then follow the steps below.

1. After handling a plant with mosaic virus always wash your hands thoroughly before touching another plant. This will stop the disease being transmitted to your other plants

2. Try and leave tending to plants with any sign of the disease to the last, especially when removing yellow leaves as described below.

3. Remove all yellowing or bronzed leaves and put them away for burning.

4. Make sure that infected plants are well watered and well fed but not overfed.

If you take the steps above, the plants will recover a lot of their vigour, the yellow leaves will slowly reduce and the danger of cross-infection will be minimal. Clear up all debris during the season and especially at the end of the season, no signs of infected leaves should be left on the soil.

Next season, definitely don’t plant tomatoes or cucumbers in the same area again. If you are using a greenhouse, remove all the top soil and replace it with new soil. Increasing the temperature in the greenhouse above 24°C (75°F) has been proven to reduce the effects of mosaic virus.

May so far has been taken up with nurturing seedlings, working on the greenhouse and getting things ready for the bean frame…

• Nearly all the seeds sown have germinated which is a great result. The runners, sweetcorn and french beans are all doing nicely in their paper pots, they are outside under a garden table hardening off. Took the cucumbers up to the greenhouse, they are looking healthy too and have started flowering. What I didn’t realise is that the burpless are outside cucumbers so I’m going to have to play God and make the boy flowers meet the girl flowers
• The greenhouse had an overhaul. Levelled the paving down the centre and put gravel around the borders – looks very posh! Found some old staging behind the container on site and repaired it, the greenhouse now has staging down all sides although I’m taking it out now to make room for the tomatoes and cucumbers.
• The first four poles for the ‘munty’ bean frame have been set in the ground, two back ones are 3ft and the two front ones are 6ft tall, there is a 5 foot gap between them which will give the runner and french beans 9ft to climb. Last year we had 3 6ft wigwams with 5 poles on each (90ft in total). The munty frame will have 21 or 22 9ft strings (189ft total) so we are doubling the amount of growing length and using up the same amount of space. In theory the frame should produce more crop, the beans will be easier to harvest and they will all have sun on them all day. Plus I can grow crops below the frame such as salad crops or a couple of courgettes, plus I’m going to grow butternut squash up the 6 ft front poles and maybe even a sunflower or two as well!

This week has been all about the greenhouse, even though it won’t be in use much this year it will give us some shelter and a chance to get some salad crops growing.

On Saturday morning we took a family visit to the allotment to start moving the green house onto our plot. The greenhouse is 6ftx6ft and was mounted on a wooden frame and spiked into a brick base. Initially I thought of keeping the wooden frame but it proved to difficult to remove from the brick base without breaking it. Getting the greenhouse off the wooden frame was also harder than I imagined, out of 11 screws holding it down only two could be undone with a screwdriver. 40 minutes with a junior hacksaw and the rest of the screws were beheaded – the greenhouse was now ready to move.

As we only need to go two plots up we lifted the greenhouse intact and staggered up the hill, it wasn’t heavy just a little awkward, two adults and 3 kids all going in different directions Placing the greenhouse on two scaffolding boards we were ready for the next stage of levelling an area of ground and making the greenhouse base.

Saturday afternoon was spent levelling the ground for the greenhouse. This was not a trivial task as our plot is incredibly uneven to say the least. The boys began watering the humps and bumps so we could get a spade into the hard ground, I think they ended up wetter than the ground. Using a chillington hoe to get the top cover of weeds off we then dug out the area and dragged soil from the top end to the bottom. Two hours later we were as level as we were going to get and called it a day.

On Tuesday I knocked up a square frame, for the greenhouse to sit on, from some old 4×2 pressure treated timer we had lying around for ages. This was just 4 lengths held together at the ends with two long nails in each end. We placed the frame on the ground and ‘traced’ round it with the blade of the spade so we knew where to did the trench for levelling it, this trench was roughly dug to about 3 inches deep and then filled with 1 inch of sharp sand for the frame to sit on. A few wiggles and whacks with the club hammer and the frame was just about level so we backfilled the trench with some soil to firm it in place. Next we picked up the greenhouse and lowered it on top of the wooden frame – amazing the frame was about 1mm to long at one corner but with a little persuasion the greenhouse slipped snugly onto the frame – hooray!

Wednesday evening was back to allotment to screw the greenhouse down and start glazing it. The boys enjoyed ‘washing’ the glass with the hose turned on to the jet setting, under very strict supervision from me.

Here is the greenhouse just before we screwed it to the base and gave it a quick clean before glazing…

Tonight’s visit to plot 5 was to clear the brambles out of the greenhouse Gerry had so kindly given us, with secateurs and some good gloves we (me, son 1 and son 3) started the attack. The greenhouse is about 6ftx6ft, I haven’t measured it properly yet, and absolutely jam packed with brambles. The boys wanted some of the cutting action so we spent the evening shuffling 2 pairs of gloves and one set of secateurs between the three of us.

Someone had strimmed around the greenhouse a while ago and managed to break at least 5 or 6 panes of glass so we had to be careful of broken glass on the ground. No idea who the strimmer was but they made a right mess. Yesterday I had de-glazed the greenhouse and removed as much of the broken glass as possible, we were just left with the glass buried in the brambles now.

After an hour we had got all of the brambles out and I made sure the boys got nowhere near the broken glass. A squirt of WD40 on the screws holding the base down and it was time to head back home. Luckily we had no puncture wounds from the brambles but son number one managed to get a blood blister when he was mucking about by tapping the frame with a piece of wood – maybe he will learn from that

Next job is to unscrew the greenhouse from it’s base and transport it intact up to plot 5.

Well, I had a very nice chat with Gerry two plots down from us on Monday, poor guy has a tonne of bindweed to contend with. He has two plots, not 10 rods, more like oversized half plots.

Due to time constraints Gerry is having to give up the second plot, it is just too much for him and is gradually being run over with weeds at the far end. As we were chatting I asked what happens to the old shed and greenhouse on the second plot, do they simply transfer to the next plot tenant? Gerry told me he had built them and are his property and will need to get rid of them. With incredible generosity he asked if I wanted them – trying not to bite his hand off I asked if he was sure, he said yes take them if you want them!

Fantastic, what a piece of luck, a greenhouse and a shed in one go, free of charge and only have to transport them a whopping two plots – I couldn’t be happier and owe Gerry a few favours which I’ll certainly be happy to do for him. Nice to have good neighbours. Many thanks Gerry.