Features
Battered But Not Broken
Who would have expected it – a third season in a row of persistent rain – a deluge much of the time! July and August here in Kerry hardly produced two or three consecutive dry days, making it extremely difficult to keep successful sowings up, and hoeing wet ground is tough. September into October brought some respite and we finally cut and saved some hay and produced some nice tunnel salads to wind up our season.
Blight Resistance
So what varieties did we grow and how did they perform? We grew Maris Bard early potatoes under cover and outside using organic seed and were pleased with tuber quality – a nice floury potato. With the change in our climate becoming more pronounced, blight is now a real problem for outdoor earlies.
In the past, early July would have been considered the start of the spraying season. A Beaumont period of warm and humid weather and this dreaded disease would take hold. These days, blight warnings can come as early as May when stalks are just up so any blight resistance in a cultivar is a big bonus.
Organic growers will spray with copper sulphate (permission needs to be sought) as a preventative when blight weather arrives. There is a restriction on the amount of copper per hectare that can be used1.
There are good blight-resistant main crop varieties available, especially the Hungarian Sarpo Mira and Sarpo Axona. We grew the former and didn’t spray at all and the haulms stayed green into late October. The crop was good but a lot of slug damage was a disappointment despite using Nemaslug to control underground slugs. We also grew a small amount of a Tibetan potato which seems completely resistant and has small leaves and beautiful purple flowers.
Good Results under Cover
We grew onions from seed, multi-sown in blocks – Balaton for standard and Red Baron for red. Both did well. We grew our usual cherry tomato, Sakura, and trialled a plum cherry, Goccia F1, both of which were a great success despite the lack of sunshine. We get them in early which is half the battle and mulched heavily with grass mowings.
Cucumber Phoenix F1 performed well enough and we had a decent tunnel of basil, Sweet Genovese, after a disappointing previous season. Careful watering is important here. Courgette Defender F1, resistant to mosaic virus which posed problems the previous season, performed reasonably given the surfeit of wind and rain during its entire outside season. Curly parsley, Moss Curled, was excellent. It was covered with fleece after transplanting to keep off carrot root fly and the fleece was removed once established.
Mixed Salads
Once again lettuce varieties showing a broad resistance to diseases (e.g. Bremia) were the order of the day. The fastest green oakleaf was Hardy and Solix red oakleaf had good leaf shape and colour but struggled during the worst of the season in August. Caterpillar damage caused some problems and showed the importance of growing extra to allow for losses.
The small caterpillars in question were probably larvae of moths from the June dry spell. Butterhead, Matilda, was good outdoors and in the polytunnel Fenston produced a beautiful autumn crop for harvesting in October. Zindane, a très fine frisee endive, was good and Lollo Rossa Feska was adequate. Most seasons I like to try something from the new cultivars in the catalogues. For winter baby leaf colour try Bulls Blood Beet, regardless of its ferocious name, alongside Lambs Lettuce and Winter Purslane with some baby spinach for an interesting mix.
Poor Flowers
Leeks did well as did Purple Top Milan turnips. Jason Horner sent me some Tipperary Turnip seed, a Seedsavers salvage job, which tastes very good for our kitchen.
French bean variety Aiguillon was grown to harvest small as a filet type and was good despite the hostile weather it had to endure. Chervil performed poorly outside but Coriander did quite well. It’s worth having a few clumps in a tunnel for backup to maintain supply if required. Once again it was a very poor season for cut flower production. Another bad year and I will probably give up on these.
Well known organic goat’s cheese makers, Inagh Farmhouse, have launched two new products in the St. Tola range. Named ‘Divine’ and...
