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The weather is always with us to grouse about, and 1945 was on
the whole a poor year. In the first place we got away to a bad start. The
Januarys of 1940 and 1945 were among the coldest of the last half century,
and those o f us who put off doing things before Christmas were less
inclined to do anything for a long time afterwards. The beginning of
 the
year's offensive we far too long delayed on many allotments, with the result
that the "diggers" were for ever trying to catch up on the jobs to be done
and seldom succeeded, and the soil lacked the weathering influence that
benefits land dug during winter.
Too much train, not enough sun—that was 1945. Tomatoes loomed large
in the minds of most of our gardeners. They were late in most places owing
to the lack of ripening sun, and numerous were the enquiries for hints on
speeding up ripening. Some people had trouble with their runners : the
flowers would not set. In built-up areas there were no bees to do the job of
pollination and some allotment holders were unable to give the flowers the
fine misty spraying that could have helped. Or it may have been that
watering, where possible, was irregular and the land dried out too quickly,
which was a trouble on the Ministry's own demonstration allotments in Hyde
Park. On some plots marrows suddenly died off and there was little that
could be done about that.
No doubt owing to the American "invasion" of this country many
gardeners became much interested in sweet corn, and there were complaints
about delayed ripening. On the Ministry's own plots, however, which are by
no means ideal, the variety "John Innes Hybrid," which is early maturing,
did well and aroused much interest. The various herbs grown there also came
in for attention and later on there is a note on this subject. |
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But perhaps the subject that was most often raised by visitors
to the Ministry's plots was pests and diseases. Greenfly and blackfly, of
course, are nearly always with us and occasioned many enquiries, but the
"cabbage White" butterfly came in for the most vituperation. The Ministry's
woman demonstrator reports that one Sunday morning in a Sussex cottage she
picked about fifty caterpillars off the walls upstairs and downstairs, and
that a cabbage filed nearby was "skeletonised" in groups. We read that
ninety-nine years ago passengers on a cross-Channel boat found the sun
obscured for hundreds of yards by a cloud of this pest flying from France to
England. This year their descendants must have come in even greater numbers,
and only those gardeners who took prompt action by spraying and hand-picking
managed to save their green crops, especially the Brussels, from being
turned into skeletons. |
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