Week 28 (2018) Update

Firstly an update on the stocks downy mildew trial at  FERA.   Phil Jennings has successfully inoculated seedlings with spores from a number of column stock downy mildew samples from growers and are now bulking up the second round of seedling in order to provide enough inoculum to start the actual sensitivity testing in the near future.  Many thanks to Pan American Seeds (Ball) and Global Plants who along with Florensis have now all agreed to financially contribute to the trial.

The Scabious are now in full crop and the bucket of stems in the left hand photo are on their way to the Tatton Park Flower show for Jonathan Moseley to use in one of his floral demonstrations.

At last we have some good germination of larkspur in the larkspur weed control trial although the weeds germinated a few weeks ago.  There has been very variable control of the weeds but it does look like a couple of treatments may be promising.  More details will be presented at the Open Day on the 8th of August.

The hot weather has certainly brought out the Fusarium in the stock variety trial but it is looking so severe that it will be hard to determine any varietal differences in Fusarium susceptibility.   However the lisianthus, while still very small have not yet shown any signs of Fusarium infection hence demonstrating the specific nature of Fusarium oxysporum (see left hand photo).