terrible season

[digger]

Well so far on this season has been very bad up here in Lancashire,at our allotment society nearly everyone has lost their potato crop all the top growth has wilted and withered away, i know from posts of other people that the picture is similar in other parts of the UK lots have lost tomato crops as well, at the moment my tomato crop is okay but bearing in mind i have a small crop of shirley tomatoes for the showbench and some are in a polytunnel and some in a greenhouse, the greenhouse ones are not as far on as the others? but they are okay i have this year had a massive crop of cucumbers they are extremely productive they are an all female variety "carmen" i think that all the humidity has helped them, I am looking at my potatoes this year i put some in potato sacks above ground and some in the ground they have all failed some were just sat in water but the above ground ones failed in the same way the last potatoes in were pink fir apple not for the showbench just for eating and even the tops of those have gone ? who else has had this bad season? i will try to sow a few more potatoes in tubs and containers which might get me some for the table i hope.

[Miranda]

Our tomatoes are okay but they are only just starting to ripen, and the chillies are looking a bit leggy from lack of light. Hopefully that will change if we get more decent weather. I know a few people, in the midlands and in northern France, who have lost all their tomatoes to blight. It seemed to happen just when the plants were full of fruit and must have been a real downer for them.

In the shops here, the prices of vegetables have already gone up. Morrison's put up cabbages by 25p over night last week and there will be no doubt be more price rises on the way. It's late in the season but I've started a load of veg seeds off to see what I can get from them in the time remaining. They're in the warmest and most sheltered part of the garden so it will be interesting to see what happens.

[Neil Bromhall]

My Potatoes have been very good this year but my outdoor tomatoes have all got blight.
And it's a bumper year for slugs.
I've just been down to the allotment and have a few photos of tomato blight & slug.
My sweet corm also look like they will be poor this year. I bought some seeds in Italy last year thinking I'd be cleaver and get a variety that would be drought tolerant. - big mistake.
Neil

[digger]

yes drought tolerant plants don't really seem to be an issue this year, the bad weather has had an expensive effect on the price of hay/haylege and straw due to so many losses of cereal crops and not being able to mow the grass due to the rain and now with a new outbreak of foot and mouth disease animal feed will become even more difficult to obtain, it is strange how one wet season can have a massive impact on all manner of things down the line, we have been lucky and managed to source some hay to get the animals through the winter but we had to pay £4 per bale which is about £1:50 more per bale than it was in spring we expect the price to rise sharply very soon. I had heard that farmers in Lincs where Miranda is have had heavy losses of crops due to the rain and this loss coupled with the new movement restrictions which were imposed last night will be the final straw (no pun intended) for many farms not just animal farms but arable as well.

[Miranda]

Yes, digger, a lot of land here is very flat and the flooding has ruined many crops. When you drive past the fields the smell is terrible - rotting crops. Sue said she noticed it too, on her way to Wragby. There are fewer farm vehicles rumbling past our house this summer, but still a few, so they're managing to harvest something, I think.

I was reading this morning that the rain has reduced the bee population even further. The early spring brought the rape crops into flower before the bees were ready, so much of it wasn't pollinated, and now a lot of them have died because of the rain so there's probably a whole load of other stuff that won't get pollinated.

[sue1002]

When you drive past the fields the smell is terrible - rotting crops. Sue said she noticed it too, on her way to Wragby.

That smell was really horrible, especially on a warm day and I had to drive with the window done up because it smelled so much. On the way home today the smell wasn't quite as bad and we noticed that lots of the fields have been ploughed over.