Look at the tips on that!

A week or so ago I started to notice that the tips on some of my shallot leaves were turning white and that the bulbs on those affected seemed quite soft. A couple got so bad that I had to chuck them. I mentioned this to 'He-who-thinks-he-knows-everything-about-veg-growing' aka. Dave Thornton at the weekend and he said it was white tip disease (Phytophthora porri).

To quote Google:

"This is another fungal infection which usually appears from late summer through the winter. Symptoms are a white die back of the leaf tips, white patches appearing on other parts of the leaf and stem, and stunted growth. Infected leaves look watery, thin and papery, eventually they rot away."

White tip can also affects leeks and onions so i've acquired a suitable fungicide that I'm told will stop the disease in its tracks and allow the plants to eventually recover. It smells like wazz. I've put all the affected shallots together and away from the healthy ones to stop the spread. The bad ones have been sprayed and do appear to have recovered in the last couple of days somewhat, so hopefully they will still make reasonable plants eventually.

Tonight I went to listen to Mark Roberts talk on growing his veg for the collection class. He looks at me as if I'm mental whenever I say it but Mark is my hero as he's just a normal fella who works full time but still managed to win the collection of 6 at the 2007 National after only 3 years of trying. His celery in that collection scored 18.5 points out of 20 and were the best I have ever seen. He's had a difficult few years but is now hopefully going to be back with a bang at the National in Llangollen, so Peter Clark, John Branham and Trevor Last need to be worried. He's invited me to see his very impressive set-up in June so I'm looking forward to that. And Yorkshire batty boys Unsworth and Bastow.....he's going to be entering the set of six single veg class at Harrogate so that's us tossers even further down the pecking order!