Tomato diseases, millipedes v centipedes, crop updates, cabbage white caterpillars.
The other day I was browsing the BBC’s gardening site and my eye was caught by the problem solving homepage on Tomato leaf mould… doubts tormented me about some yellow spots I had seen on the tomatoes in the greenhouse. Confirmed today: leaves wilted, and a couple of brownish tomatoes: I had been so happy that the greenhouse was doing well… 🙁
Although pretty dejected, I have cleared everything suspicious, including the brownish tomatoes, and we will see. In clearing, I spotted a black millipede: I got rid of it, remembering that my book says millipedes bad (two pairs of legs per segment), centipedes good (one pair of legs per segment). How comes I find it so difficult to kill most insects?!?
After that, thought it better to dig my sorrows in, so I finally dealt with the strawberries’ runners. Now some are planted and the others are in a pot with water to stimulate roots’ growth (it has worked before).
The transplanted fennel was doing ok, so I thinned out another row.
No sign of barbe di frate yet, but phacelia is already germinating and so is cime di rapa – finger crossed, as brassicas have not been one of my most successful crops so far. That said, the turnips (Rapa bianca lodigiana) – which I had dispared of given their genus’s destiny – are finally forming underneath the hole-riddled leaves.
Creature-wise, this is most definitely the season of cabbage white caterpillars: alive or dead they are everywhere (they seem to have a masochistic tendency to drowning in water butts and tanks, when they are not eaten from the inside by the parasite Apanteles glomeratus).
