Tomato blight is weather-dependent and can be devastating during wet summers. Watch out for signs on outdoor tomatoes, which are most at risk; glasshouse tomatoes are less likely to become infected though the spores are carried in the wind and will enter through open windows and doors.

Tomato blight on leaf

Early Blight can affect the foliage, stems and fruit of tomatoes.

Symptoms: Dark spots with concentric rings develop on older leaves first. The surrounding leaf area may turn yellow. Affected leaves may die prematurely, exposing the fruits to sun scorching.
Management: Early Blight fungus overwinters in plant residue and is soil-borne. It can also come in on transplants. Remove affected plants and thoroughly clean fall garden debris. Wet weather and weak stressed plants increase the likelihood of attack. Copper and/or sulfur sprays can prevent further development of the fungus
Late Blight is caused by a fungus, Phytophthora infestans. It’s the same disease that led to the Irish potato famine almost 150 years ago.

The disease is not directly harmful to people as it only infects potatoes, tomatoes, and some related weeds, but it is not advised to eat the infected fruit or tubers.
It is important to catch any tomato disease early, before it spreads to all of your tomato plants and possibly other plants in the same family, such as potatoes, eggplants and peppers.
Look for brown, rapidly spreading patches on leaves and stems. The fruit, too, may show firm, quickly spreading brown patches followed by rotting. Infected parts die rapidly.
Destroy infected plants; but do not compost them as the plant residue is soil-borne and will spread the disease to your next years crop.
Late blight needs living plant tissue to survive, so infected tomato plants should be destroyed as soon as the disease is identified. In small gardens, this means removing plants in trash bags and sending them to the landfill;

By Time-lapse by Neil Bromhall www.complete-gardens.co.uk

Aphids are attracted to the tender new growth. Here is a time-lapse of rose leaf bud growing and as it does becomes infested with aphids.

At the end of the sequence, one of the natural aphid preditors the hoverfly larva comes in and eats most if not all of the aphids.

This shows just how efficient hoverfly larvae are at controlling aphids.

The sequence was filmed over a period of 24 hrs.

Leaf cutter bee damage to leaves

Bees are vital for pollination. You can buy leafcutter bee houses to attract the bees to your garden. The leaf-cutter bees are solitary and unlike honey bees do not swarm like honey bees so they are little or no danger to humans or pets.

Bees are vital for pollination.

Leaf-cutter bee house

You can buy leafcutter bee houses to attract the bees to your garden.

 Leafcutter bee house. Leaf cutter bees like hollow tubes and bamboo are ideal. They also excavate tunnels in flower pots where light gritty compost is used.  

Leaf-cutter bee chambers

Here I’ve cut open a bamboo cane to reveal the leaf-cutter bee nest chambers. Row of leaf-cutter bee chambers lined with cut leaves. The male will be nearest the exit

The female has used the circular cuts to seal off the ends of the chamber, whereas the longer cuts are wrapped around the sides. The adult bee will provision the chamber with pollen and lay an egg. The larva feeds of the pollen.

The female larva are the first to be layed and are deepest in the line. This means that if the nest is predated by a woodpecker, the feamles have a better chance of avoiding being eaten. The male larva is nearst the exit and will be the first to be eaten.

Leaf-cutter bee larva inside chamber, eating the pollen provided by the bee

Although this larva will probably die, I carefully replaced the bamboo and sealed it with wax to keep the chambers intact and dry.

Leaf-cutterbee damage to a rose

Leaf damage on rose by leaf cutter bees

Narcissus grub larva. 10mm long

Narcissus grub eating daffodil

If you’re digging the garden or planting bulbs, it’s worth checking on your daffodil bulbs for the Narcissus grubs.

Narcissus grub eating a daffodil bulb

These pests eat the inside of your daffodil bulbs.

Discard the bulb as they probably won’t recover.

Narcissus bulbs. healthy and narcissus grub infected

It is easy to see which bulbs are healthy and which ones are infected. At the base of an infected bulb will be black and unhealthy looking

Garden spiders like this Orb-spider Araneus diadematus can be beneficial if you don’t like wasps.

This one is tucking into a wasp, so spiders can be added to the natural pest control list.

These garden spiders are common around houses and hedges September – October

Tulip and daffodil bulbs have already started to shoot underground.

Tulip and Daffodil bulbs in September

If you’re digging your borders, be careful not to cut into and damage your bulbs.

Gently pull Daffodil bulbs apart

 

Gently pull the bulbs apart

If you haven’t already done so, it’s a good time to split your bulbs by gently prising them apart, beging careful not to damage the delicate roots.

Plant the the bulbs in the ground about three times the length of the bulb and about 10 cm apart.

Narcissus grub infected daffodil bulb

If the daffodils have blackened ends near the roots and the shoot have not begun to grow then check for the narcissus grub. These pests eat the centre of the bulbs. Throw the bulb away as it won’t really recover properly.

Complete Gardens advice CD-ROM

Wasp killed in trap

Wasps can be a pest, especially if you’re eating or drinking in the garden and the wasps want to join in.

You can make your own bee safe wasp trap without attracting and killing bees in the process.

An empty plastic container makes an excellent wasp trap

Cut the top off to make a funnel

Sweet and sour attractant attracts wasps but not bees

Add a mixture of vinegar, sugar and salt.  The wasps are attracted to the sweet and sour scent yet bees don’t seem to be attracted by this sour mixture whereas a honey mix would be a fatal attractant.

Keep the wasp trap out of the rain as it will quickly fill with rainwater.

The down-side of this wasp trap is it also attracts and traps beneficial insects such as lacewing and hoverflies which are a natural pest control of aphids

Wasps are fascinating eusocial insects with a queen and many infertile female workers. I think they are the tigers of the air. Some people consider wasps a pest because they eat the fruit and drink their beer whereas others consider them a welcome garden natural pest control.

As the season comes to an end, they prepare by producing Virgin Queens to carry the genes in to the next generation.

Queen wasp building a nest

Instead of only producing workers to tend the nest, the workers of colony decide to feed some the larva with protein to produce Queens. They want meat. Prey can be caterpillars, or insects, some they rade from spiders webs. They chop the caterpillars into manageable pieces and fly back to the nest where they are chewed up and fed to the larger queen larva. It’s only the larvae that can eat meat, Wasps can’t. The larvae regurgitate a sugary meal in return for being fed by the adult wasps.

Wasps are very useful as natural garden pest control because they eat a large number of garden pests such as caterpillars, aphids, queen ants.

Wasp nest in lawn can be dangerous to humans and pets Wasps excavating a mouse hole in lawn

Wasps excavating a mouse hole in a lawn

Wasps will often make their nests in our loft space, where it is dry and out of the way of danger or under tree roots and sometimes they will excave underground mouse holes. These can be more of a problem because if they are disturbed by people walking on the lawn near the nest or disturbed by the vibrations from a lawn mower, they are more likely to go and defend their nest and sting whatever they consider a danger.

A powder can be sprayed in to the nest – best to do this at night when it’s dark and all the wasps are inside the nest and less able to come out in defence of the nest.  If the colony is causing no danger to humans or pets then best to leave them alone.

In the northern hemisphere only the Queens survive the winter by hibernating and emerge the following spring to start a new colony. All the workers and drones will die.

In New Zealand however, the weather allows the wasp colony to survive all year round and our European or German wasps are causing havoc to their native wildlife.

Photography Neil Bromhall. Complete Garden plant advice CD-ROM

Plant your sweet corn 2cm deep, in a frost-fee, well drained, fertile soil and sunny position in your allotment or garden. Ideally the pH should be around 6.0 – 6.5

I first soaked the dried corn seeds over night to allow them to absorb water. Then kept the corn in damp kitchen paper for a few days to see which were viable then selected the ones that had started to germinate.

Ideally your plants needs at least eight hours of sunlight a day.
To germinate the soil temperature should be about 60 degrees. You can start planting in pots in the greenhouse then transplanting the seedlings when the soil is warm enough.

Don’t mix up different varieties together as you’ll get cross pollination. Plant the same variety of corn in a block 30cm apart and rows about 60cm apart. The plants need to be close enough together to ensure wind pollination and to ensure they fertilise each other to produce corn on the cob.

Water well throughout the growing season and don’t let the sol dry out.
If our British weather ever gets too hot, water more frequently. The sweet corn will not grow well if it becomes to dry for long periods.

Milky liquid indicates when the sweet corn is ripe

The time to harvest your sweet corn is when the ’silks’ are brown and dry and you can pierce the kernels with a finger nail. If the liquid is clear it’s not quite ripe. When you get a milky liquid then it’s the time to pick your corn on the cob by twisting the ears of corn which should snap off the main stem.

Peel the husks off before boiling your corn on the cob.

The best time to harvest your corn is in the cooler hours of the morning.  Store them in cool temperatures, the cooler the better.

You will get the sweetest flavour if you eat your sweet corn on the cob as soon as possible. BBC prestenter Carol Klein suggests even taking a pan of boiling water to the plant and popping the cob in to the boiling water within seconds.
Boil for 6 minutes. Spread butter and a bit of salt to your taste. Delicious

The variety photographed is Butterscotch F1

Sweet corn mouse damage

Pests: Mice will eat your sweet corn as soon as they are ripe.

Photography Neil Bromhall. This blog is an extension to the Complete gardens planting advice CD-ROM

Pollinating courgette flower by hand

In wet weather conditions your courgettes might not get fertilised due to the lack of insects to pollinate the flowers.

Courgette blossom end rot with spores

If so, your courgette fruits won’t mature or worse develop blossom end rot.

Courgette flower male and female

It’s possible to hand pollinate the flowers by brushing the pollen from the male courgette flower on to the stigma of the female flower.

Photography Neil Bromhall. Complete garden planting advice database with 3,500 uk garden plants, vegetables and 9,000 photographs.