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Saturday, May 15, 2010

Me and my useless fat gob!

I've had my first disaster of the season! After I'd visited Medwyns last week I took a quick detour to Dave Thornton's allotment to see how his shallots were faring. Bearing in mind we have a small wager going on depending on how we perform at 3 shows we both enter I was gratified to see his shallots weren't as good as mine appeared to be. His were fine but I don't think his foliage was as good as mine, as mine were all standing up dead straight and erect, with fresh long leaves and his showed a bit of die back on the tips which he reckoned was wind scorch. I subsequently gave him standard Smithyveg pisstaking fare.

Anyway, today I noticed one of my plants had completely collapsed. I gave Dan (Allotment Diary) some of my bulbs last year and he mentioned a few weeks ago that one of his plants had suddenly rotted off. I put it down to the fact that he's a useless northern idiot but now one of mine has gone the same way, so something more sinister is affoot. I don't usually have problems with my shallots in growth, losing one or two in store from time to time, so this is a first for me. I find that although shallots are alliums they don't suffer from white rot like onions as they're usually harvested earlier in the season.

If it's just the one clump then it's not so bad so I'll be keeping a close watch on the other plants. I will dig up the affected plantlets and dispose of them. The area of soil they were growing in will be disinfected.


5 comments:

Richard W. said...

If you add all the letters of "useless northern idiot" and "pretentious photographist" together, with very little change you get 'I'm a moronic midland w**ker and wish I'd bought my shallots from Tesco like that nice man in Kent, and as a penance I will arrange and pay for mains water supply to be installed on Dan's plot.'

Veg4Show said...

I have about 150 shallots growing in the allotment and I always lose the odd one to mold/rot. It doesn't seem to spread and infect any other shallots tho, so fingers crossed you will be ok.

Dan said...

Oh crap !!
If you've given me white rot I'm going to have to remove your testicles, regardless of whether or not I can find my tweezers!
I now know what that Old Gypsy Woman meant when she warned me last year "Beware a swarthy looking bald dwarf bearing free gifts"

Simon (Smithyveg) said...

All the other clumps look very healthy so I agree....just one of those things.

Bloody annoying.....got a gap in my row now!!!

Simon (Smithyveg) said...

Dan....you twat! LOL