Dealing with powdery mildew.

We get problems with powdery mildew on peas, courgettes, cucumbers etc this seems to happen (particularly with peas later in the season.  I have discovered a simple cure - a dilute solution of baking soda (about a teaspoon to a pint of water) sprayed on the leaves kills it off and seems to act as a deterrent.  We have courgette plants starting to flower in the poly tunnel (a late sowing experiment!) and they were coming down with mildew.  This treatment has stopped it in its tracks.
We had great fun harvesting our walnuts this weekend (no squirrel this year?) and had a bumper crop of 9 kilos.

Harvesting our beans, seeds amd fruit

Harvest time is here again;  This time its dry beans (4 different kinds as part of this years experiment) sun flower seeds (for the birds in the winter and us) and bottling and jamming fruit.   The beans shown are Canadian, purple climbing french and Canaletto.  We are bottling our fruit this year to save space in the freezers as well as drying fruit and making fruit leather.

New friends at the EcoDIY open weekend

I am happy to report that the weather was kind to us for our open weekend.  We had over 80 visitors and spent many hours talking to lots of interesting people.   As a result there were 14 people at the Tendring Eco Group meeting here last night and we are starting a wormery (to add to our list of livestock!)
Exhausted but happy - Chris

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Puffball fungus

I spotted this puffball across a field while walking the dog yesterday, we had it sliced and fried in (wicked!) butter - delicious!