I was in the library the other day when I had one of those lightning bolt moments of clarity.
This might seem basic to you – as it did to me afterwards, seeing I’m a girl of (occasional) reasonable intelligence – but I was standing there thinking about my diseased chilli bush and wondering what was wrong with it …
… when I went, “Hang on – go to the gardening section poste-haste!”
And so I did. Within minutes of finding a book about growing vegetables I was able to make the differential diagnosis (which you are welcome to contest if you feel I’m wrong – we can begin a ‘Burkes’ Backyard meets House’ kind of discussion) of Botrytis cinerea (or grey mould).
Unfortunately, the book I had says there’s not a whole lot to be done except pick off the affected areas. In the case of the chilli bush, that’s the whole thing. It still fruits, it wants to live. I keep imagining its roots screaming like those baby mandrakes in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets if go to pull it out. Yet, I must, for the safety of my new plants if nothing else, as grey mould can spread.
In the future, in similar situations, I shall always bear this in mind:
Source: Keep Calm, Harry Potter
Lesson learned.
