[Madame Cholet]

I'm on top of the hill get the wind but better drainage those to the bottom got flooded last. Hope the boundary hedge will help in acouple of seasons when its thicker. We all seem to suffer with pigeons.
i also find slugs like different parts of myplot more than others.?

[Flowertot]

Our site is completely flat and appears to be exactly the same across all 276 plots...except that some people who have plots along the middle path do not need to net anything - cabbages etc are all exposed and look perfect.  Down my path on the edge of the site (next to a railway line) we have extremely cunning and violent wood pigeons which even crawled under my neighbour's gooseberry bushes to get round his net and decimate his PSB seedlings  I cannot even imagine why there is such a difference 

[Ema]

I noticed some of my unstated peas that were fine yesterday had been nibbled over night! I quickly netted them!

Then I had a good wander across the site to find peas growing like their taking over the world with no netting or even string on nearly everyone else's plots

[angelavdavis]

We are a sea-facing site.  Some plots have to fight against the salt-ridden winds which dessicate stuff super-quick if unprotected.  Others have more shelter from trees, etc.  My plot is next to the site shop, so is sheltered also. 

The plots on one side of the site flood in winter.  The plots at the top of the slope suffer drought!

One side of our site consists of a very thin top soil layer (one spit deep) over a slab of sandstone.  The other is clay.

Some plots on one side of the main path suffer from marestail, but other side don't.

The whole site suffers with couch, bindweed and pigeons, and also from white onion rot as it was used as an onion field for 20 years! 

[seaside]

Very true Angela. Some of our plots have been quarrantined and closed due to japanese knotweed.

I have a little onion white rot in places.  What are your strategies in combatting it, and do you just accept there will be losses ?

[angelavdavis]

Very true Angela. Some of our plots have been quarrantined and closed due to japanese knotweed.

I have a little onion white rot in places.  What are your strategies in combatting it, and do you just accept there will be losses ?

I tried an experiment, which failed, this year  .  I planted the onions onto raised rows of soil, mixed with sand to try to provide better drainage over winter.  The onions are still affected.  This was a new plot I had only just taken over and not added as much compost material to in the past.  The other plot has fared better with less losses as the soil is lighter, but we haven't harvested yet!

I am going to try to lure out the white rot sclerotia by watering in garlic-infused water late summer a few weeks before I plant the overwintering onions.  I am hoping the sclerotia will die before infecting any of the onion setts.  We will see if it works 

[seaside]

Thanks for that. Being new to white rot this season, and having done a bit of internet furtling, there seems no other option open to us allotmenteers. I believe some do a bit of dodgy sterilising that is not my scene and commercial growers have other chemical options open to them.
I hoped someone from here has actually tried the garlic extract thing, but try as I may, I can't see any trace of anyone who has actually tried it with a modicum of success and reported back. Is there anyone on this forum that has ? The idea has been around for some time.
Looks like soil temperature is important, water when between 60 and 70 degrees, so there's no way it could be carried out in the Spring.
So good luck to you Angela, and I shall be trying the same .... there is a little scientific evidence out there to make it worth a shot
I guess the garlic is just crushed and infused into watering cans. I saw somewhere that just a pound of garlic could treat almost an acre. Hmmmm, think I might use a bit more than that for the plot.

[mumofstig]

Onion waste is used on organic onion farms, in the way you propose to use garlic and has measurable success.

Onion waste compost materials have reduced sclerotia viability and disease incidence as effective as Folicur fungicide in field trials. These likely work by acting as sclerotia germination stimulants.

http://sustainingfarminguf.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/organic-farm-calls-white-rot-on-garlic.html