Voyage Award

One thing I have learned during this challenge about my Rhubarb crop is that I have a pest in the garden which is responsible for damaging it.  Every year my Rhubarb comes up in February or March looking healthy, but by May it starts looking as if it is too dry or not well-fed. I had been blaming my poor cultivation practices. However, by researching online I discovered that there is a weevil called a Rhubarb Curculio Beetle, which sucks the sap from the stems and is responsible for a jelly-like substance.  Other surface damage on the stem could be from slugs, but that is not so serious. Damage from Curculio Weevil - 2024 The host plant for these weevils is the Dock, predominantly Curled Dock, which I have in plenty around the garden. Impossible to rid our large garden of them all.  They don't actually lay eggs successfully in Rhubarb, but they try to.As an experiment, I dug up several plants and put them in pots.  They started to grow well, as the pest was not damag...

Well, after all my efforts, the overall harvest has been disappointing in quantity (see below), but it has been interesting renovating the garden, taking cuttings and discovering which types of soft fruit I actually have in the garden.  I can certainly move around the Fruit Garden now and can keep the paths mown. I have also taken some Brown Turkey Fig cuttings from my potted Fig tree, which produced 5 ripe figs this year. Some of the varieties are unknown, so I have named them after the place they came from, for example, 'Red Gooseberry Dolton' or 'Blackcurrant Slees'.  All of the existing bushes produced a little fruit. I used net curtains to protect some bushes. I have the following varieties already planted: Gooseberry Careless (pre-1858) (Green-Transparent) Gooseberry Leveller (pre-1858) (Green) Gooseberry May Duke (Red) (1890) Gooseberry Lynden (smooth fruit flushed red) Gooseberry Dolton (Red) Worcesterberry (Native North American) Whitecurrant White Versailles (...