This week in the Kitchen Garden, we will be digging up our main crop potatoes. We would not normally expect to be doing this for at least another month, but our crop has been struck by blight following the wet summer. It certainly wasn’t a surprise that our plants were attacked by blight. With the amount of rainfall we have had, it was something that we were fully expecting. The haulms of the potaotes have been cut down to the ground too stop the blight affecting the tubers. Without foliage, the tubers wiill now stop growing so we will lift them and leave them in the sun to dry before they are stored in vegetable sacks in the pantry.
Our blackberries have now begun to crop and are bearing lots of fruit. We are still picking lots of blueberries and our apples are also starting to ripen. We are not the only ones to notice the fruit becoming available and the first wasps have put in an appearance in the garden, as they do every year at this time. We have had our traps in place for a good few weeks now and have already caught quite a few. It’s important to pick fruits as soon as they ripen, as if they are left on the plants, they will become a lure. Similarly, fruit that has fallen to the ground needs to be cleared away quickly. Last year’s wasp infestation was a bad one, and is not an event we would like to repeat this year!
