[phillisa]

Hi all,

Am getting very dispondant with my allotment, everything I plant seems to vanish.  Late potatoes started off nicely and then simply vanished, japenese onions, winter cabbages all gone.  And now my rhubarb!! All I have left from 2 healthly looking crowns (both were about 10" high) is one little leaf.

I'm thinking that they are getting eaten, by something.  Not sure what though. The adjoining plot has chickens and geese - if they get out could they do it?? We have planted loads of field beans as green manure, and these are (as yet) untouched.

Am not sure what would destroy rhubarb like that though...I thought they were pretty indestructible.

Has any one got any ideas/suggestions on what it could be and what I can do??

All help will be most gratefully received

[muntjac]

geese would clean the lot up .so would humans. taters would be sprouted so you would see damage to the stalks and the geese would try to eat down to the spuds .cabbages would leave stalks . bean manure would be of no interest to humans ,geese would eat it ..onions would get pulled up and some trace would be left ie foot prints etc

without seeing evidence of other things eating them
i would suspect someone is /has nobbled your crops  :roll:

[noshed]

Rhubarb does die down this time of year. Mine is virtually invisible - apart from a pinky/brown lump where the biggest crown is. I'vemarked it with canes so I don't dig it all up.
Don't know about the rest though - is there no trace of anything? Or are there spuds underground?

[DD.]

Surely the answer as far as rhubarb is concerned is 'a good frost'. One of those & it's had it.

It's not long until spring - you'll then have the nice tender shoots, much better than the stringy old ones.  You could try forcing one of the crowns by putting an old bucket on top of it, but that tends to knacker the crown for next year & it's half of what you've got!

[phillisa]

Thanks for the replies.

As far as the rhubarb goes, I wondered about frost...except we haven't had any, and if it had died back, there would be some dead foliage lying around wouldn't there? Am hoping that it will spring back to life in the spring.

Same goes with the potatoes....they are still there under the ground, we just lost all of the growth on top, so again hoping they survive the winter and sprout in the spring. Is just so annoying though...I was looking forward to having some lovely home grown spuds over Christmas! And of course, all these bits are costing us money!

Am leaning towards thinking that something has had a nibble on everything as we do have a few very sad stalks where my cabbages used to be.....and to be honest I think that there are much nicer plots  than mine for humans to nobble :shock:

[muntjac]

well rabbits wont eat taters .the leaves are poisonous to them tho deer will  ,and i would think that ur spuds will rot in the ground before they come through now if they already sprouted , cabbage plants eaten down to the leaf stems signal caterpillars

[muntjac]

and humans dont have to be picky when it comes to stealing rhubarb and damaging other folks plots , a spray with poison in passing can do that

[shaun]

when did you plant the spuds phillisa ?

[phillisa]

Shaun, they were lates that we planted middle of September.

[muntjac]

did your ground get very wet at any time philisa. ?

[bigtater]

sorry but i couldnt resist
have you seen wallace and gromit curse of the were rabbit

[shaun]

sorry phillisa your spuds were planted to late,when they say lates that means you pick them later ,the frost a few weeks ago has killed them off aswell as the rain and lack of light.

[phillisa]

Oh. the place where we ordered them from said they were for planting late(up until end of October) we planted as soon as we received them like they said too. Won't do that again then.

[milkman]

Hi phillisa, the usual growing season for potatoes is planting the tubers march - may, then harvesting from late june through to sep/oct depending on the type of potato.

if you're planting october time I guess its to try and get fresh spuds for Christmas time.  to get close to any sort of success, its not going to be any good just planting the tubers in the ground outside - they need much more cossetting ie preferably under cover in a snug greenhouse or polytunnel, in a tub which can be wrapped in bubble wrap and covered with fleece to keep it totally frost free.  unfortunately even then results can be more miss than hit.

i'm quite happy using my maincrop potatoes stored in the garage through autumn and winter, so have never attempted this.

[phillisa]

Thanks for the tip milkman. Still new to allotmenting so are definately learning as we go along!  We didn't get our plot until May so were very late getting going with most things...although not quite sure why a catalogue would be selling spuds in autumn to plant straight away???

Anyway I hope next yeat will be more productive, and I think we are just going to cover everything to try and deter anyhting that might like to help themselves to our crops!!

Thanks all