help with veg

Hiya all

From your 1000 member lol

Ive joined as i am new to gardening and havent had much success with my veg this year. Cabbages are splitting caulies are purple and i know you can get a variety this colour but they are that kind and my spuds (kerrs pink and golden wonders) are tiny and the stalks didnt grow very high this year

 

Hi LW.
Welcome.This a great site and your questions will be answered,no problem.
There are good folk in here

 

Hi LW, I'm a newbie gardener too so 'fraid I cant help with your veggies.

But there's plenty of friendly and helpful folk here to help get you sorted!

 

Welcome LW, your cabbages, in summer the usual cause is rain after a long dry spell. in winter the cause is a sudden sharp frost.your caulies, I do not understand your problem. potatoes,I do not know what type of soil you have, but generaly potatoes like plenty of muck under them. I plant this way, dig a trench out the width of your spade and the depth of the spade (10 inches). fill the trench with 3 inches from compost heap,then 3 inches of horse manureplant the potatoes on the horse manure and back fill with soil. I normally get 50 lbs of potatoes of 16 tubers.

 

Sounds good, LesH, but how do you avoid/control wire worm?

 

Oh, sorry - meant to say welcome to our 1,000th member - you were eagerly awaited!

 

When I grew spuds I treated the soil at planting time with granules of..diazion or diazinon,something like that,good for cutworms and rootfly grubs too.

 

For Michaelmasdaisy, sorry about your wire worm, but the EU have banned all chemicals that control wire worm for the amateur gardener. one answer I have heard of, is to get a tin with a reusable lid. Make a 3mm hole in the lid. Fill the tin with potatoe peelings. Bury the tin 80 to 100mm deep. the wire worm go thro the hole after the peelings. In a month dig the tin up, check for w/w if any present throw the contents of the tin into the dustbin and start again.

 

:D Well I did say"when",that was about 12years ago

 

Has anyone heard of Nematodes for wireworm? I don't know how successful they would be or if they even exist. Has anyone tried them for slugs for example? Do they work?

I all my potato growing attemps have been ruined by wire worms and I'm getting sick of it. I reckon I must have a massive infestation or something... Tried the tin can and peelings method but that didn't work at all.

I was going to try using a hay bale as raised bed (I found a good article about that which I put on my own site) but I haven't tried it yet.

Anyone tried a hay bale raised bed for spuds?

Cheers for any help.

Andy