How depressing!

[Kimby]

Having discovered rust on my broccoli I then found leaf miners on my spinach. Having monitored both since discovering I thought I was winning. Today I discovered some kind of aphid rapidly infesting my broccoli (found some on all 9 plants) and blackfly on my spinach, as well as a few whitefly. Utterly depressing.

Have squished whatever it was on the broccoli, pulled off all dead leaves and sprayed the rest with organic insecticide.

Harvested as much spinach as I could carry and squished the blackfly on leaves (which I discarded and composted). Sprayed the rest with insecticide too.

Something's eaten my best strawberry (found ants inside it finishing off the rest). Not sure what it was that took a bite out of it since the strawb patch is netted.

Bit fed up right now!

[Hollie the Wollie]

Oh no Im so sorry, what sad news! I guess this is the downside to veg growing!

[Kimby]

Yup. The strawb next to that one has got a hole in it too and got loads of others that I'll be watching til they turn red and harvest immediately! Gonna take another good look at the spinach and broccoli tomorrow and see what I can find. This was the side of growing I didn't prepare for in my urgency to get things planted and trying to be organic ain't easy either!

[stupo74]

Hi Kimby,
Sorry to hear about "All" your hard work being slowly munched away by pests & disease
As you have already pointed out, these are the things that you did not prepare for.
I remember a couple of seasons ago, losing "ALL" my tomato plants to the dreaded "Blight", All that effort, for Nothing?? I Remember the feeling well,, "Gutted"
There is one thing you can take from this disapointment, that being, you will certainly be prepared for next time,,,,,,
However, no matter what precautions we all take, there are some pests/diseases we will always find hard to control

Keep your chin up Put that smile back on your face, Have a good slurp and get back to your lovely plants, tis a "New Day"

cheers stupo,,, (been up for ages trying to catch sight of badgers

[ginger]

Aye, what stupo said, cheer up!

I had troubles with pestilence last year (and expect more again this)...

I had a fatal case of powdery mildew on my pumpkins (even after trying the organic 'treat it with milk' option...), the slugs ate every courgette plant (and all my artichokes), so they never even flowered, flea beetles savaged my chinese cabbage and other brassicas (no sprouts for Xmas dinner ).

On the plus side, this year I have plumped for 'powdery mildew resistant' pumpkins and courgettes, I'll get the slug traps out sooner, and I'll have very stern words with the flea beetles (I'll also look out for signs of them sooner).

Some stuff just grows really well. Some stuff (and I'm trying other new stuff this year) doesn't, but learning about what works, and what can work, is half the fun!

Chin up!

[Kimby]

Yeah - ok. Just fed up with everything I grow being infested with something (it's my first year and everything's driving me nuts!) Courgettes have got blackfly. Broccoli full of caterpillars (despite covering them with net it's not managed to keep the cabbage whites out). Peppers have greenfly, red spider mite AND caterpillars. Fed up fed up fed up!