Life, the Universe and Everything

This is a 'black' cherry tomato that's well worth growing outdoors in the UK. It's  sweet and when cooked has a superb rich flavour. However, it's tricky to harvest at the right time so I've written this guide to make it easier. Most tomatoes start green and stay that way for quite a few weeks as they grow towards harvest size. Not this one! It quickly turns from green into a very dark blue/black cherry. An easy mistake is to harvest at this stage. It's still really a green tomato .  Here's three pictures of the same (unripe) tomato  A casual view Underside shows some green Inside is green and not nice Here's a truly ripe fruit Has a red patch and no green Inside, red and delicious 

 This hardy* Fuchsia isn't rare - lots of garden centres have them. At fist sight, they look quite good with cream/grey/green leaves and decent red flowers but in late May/early June, they have a lot of red on the leaves like this!  Catch it even earlier and the new shoots are a dark chocolate red. So, to summarise, it offers the standard hardy Fuchsia characteristics,  in leaf and flower from around June to December plus a couple of months of  chocolate, red and purple foliage before that. *Yes, it is hardy in Gloucestershire, UK but not quite as hardy as some. I lost one out of three plants last Winter.

This is a one off gardening "discovery".  Take a look at these two Fuchsia 'Genii" plants photographed today...     The one on the left has been planted in a sunny bed for several years.  The other one was in a pot in a fairly shady location for a similar period - until about a month ago when I moved the container into the sun. As one might expect, the "shady" plant has mainly green leaves rather than the yellow-green in the sun.  It didn't have many flowers either.  Now that the previously shaded plant is in the sun, this seems to have triggered lots of flowering. This suggests that the way to get a great floral display from a Fuchsia is to keep it fairly shady and then expose it to bright sunshine when you want a display? Of course, the display may be short-lived!

 I've been amused by a recent news item, "Eat turnips during vegetable shortage, suggests Therese Coffey"   as I've been eating very nice turnips for years. Sure, the standard turnip, often sold as part of a "stew pack" in supermarkets can be pretty ordinary. Growing a similar crop in your garden may get you a better standard of vegetable but going a bit further can get you something fantastic! Two sorts of Turnips Maincrop/Winter Turnips This is the standard turnip. Fairly large and capable of being stored, the flavour is fairly mild. Typical colours are yellow and green. You sow seeds July/August and harvest in October or later. They're decent eating. But instead, consider (drum roll) Early/Spring Turnips These varieties are far less commonly seen. Ideally you  pull them out of the garden at golf-ball size and  eat them raw or lightly boiled. They're typically cream/purple. You sow seed February - June and harvest May - September. They have much mo...

I've grown tomatoes from seed for about 10 years now but this year, the seedlings have started dying :-( Aisla Craig It look a bit like slug damage but I've never know the local slugs eat tomato plants. I've not noticed any slime either. When not posing for the camera, the plants are in a mini-greenhouse so cold weather damage is unlikely. Especially since some other more sensitive seedling such as Physalis are unaffected. Hessayon  suggests woodlice. Might be the answer because take a look at this monster grafted plant and in particular the area in the red box. The damage on this lower branch looks like something ate it. So it's probably not a cultural problem. Answers, as they say, on a postcard.

Ivy is a foliage plant, right? It does flower and like many gardeners, I have never thought about it much. Then I saw some of mine being mobbed by bees and even a butterfly. I think I've seen pigeons eating the berries too so maybe it ticks the "wildlife friendly" box.  Its flowering habit is interesting in its own right. Normally, it lurks around near the ground, climbs a few things and doesn't flower. However, it it reaches the top of something such as a wall, it has "nowhere to go" and so it flowers.

The rules are reversed in gardening. We are positively encouraged to root out migrants such as Spanish  Bluebells because they breed with our native Bluebells. Chemical warfare is still very much allowed although the list of allowable toxins is cut every year. Instead, we are offered nice biological weapons such as nematodes that carry bacteria into the bodies of slugs and kill them. But, dear gardener, come out of the garden and try any of that in the rest of the world and you're in trouble!

I've been to Dundry Nurseries before - especially each January because of their seed potatoes. This year, they'd expanded the seed potato department to cover about a third of their large shed near the Airport. Their web site claims 162 varieties which makes Heinz a poor second at 57. All these varieties are set out in sections for first earlies, second earlies and maincrops with growing and tasting notes. There's a handy chart showing which varieties have some resistance to Phytophthora infestans (known to its many enemies as Potato Blight - the one that caused the Great Famine in Ireland) They've got a flexible attitude on quantity, Here we have racks of very plain 3Kg bags but they offer to supply any quantity including single tubers for 20p. For these smaller quantities there's a pile of  brown paper bags and a biro. (so you can write the variety name on the bag) Perhaps the most pretentious aspect of the place is that they seem to have put the gro...

Joni Mitchell once sang about 'putting all the trees in a tree museum and charging everyone a dollar and a half just to see them' but at Westonbirt Arboretum they charge 9 quid and I pop back there every now and again to marvel at the autumn colours and to relive some of my gardening roots. For it was here I first saw a blue spruce, a larch and an Acer Palmatum - and I was inspired to plant specimens in the garden of the house where I was brought up. The Acer is still going strong 36 years later - I drive by it occasionally. The other notable tree, Calocedrus decurrens, I've not planted yet and don't know why it isn't seen more in parks and gardens. In its native California it grows big and wide but in the UK climate it goes for tall and very thin which means you get a lot of impact without taking up space and blocking the sun. More information Wikipedia RHS

Back in May, I visited the Giant Echium growers at Hidcote so yesterday, I popped along to see how they were doing as Winter approached. I couldn't find the growers themselves but I did find the plants. Here's the planting just south of the Hydrangea corner: They're under a metre high which isn't as big as I sometimes manage. The site is semi-woodland and what with that and the rainy summer we've just had it's understandable. (I have one plant in a very shaded site and it's only grown a foot this summer.) I found another one nearer a large west-facing wall in the "Fuchsia Garden". This is a sunnier spot and the plants were more bushy. The location by the wall is a lot better although I'd have planted even closer to the wall - that way you have an even better anti-frost-pocket and you can show off some smaller plants in front of it. However, it's even less tall so I'm not sure if it will flower next summer. I have a "pure...

Chiltern Seeds who sold me the seed are lyrical about these . Strangely enough they're pretty lyrical about just about all their thousands of seeds so is the praise justified? my answer has to be "Yes, in part". They certainly throw up  a good number of pink, blue and white flowers and some of them change colour as they age. They get quite bushy although definitely dwarf. If you look carefully, you;ll see a dandelion being smothered. They are inclined to wander - if you expect your plants to be self-tidy, don't grow this one - it's more a "cottage garden" sort of plant. Here's an example of an escape bid.  Flowering started in early June and hasn't stopped yet. The flowering "system" is a bit unusual - some plants work on what I call the firework rocket scheme - stems shoot up, explode and quietly fall back to earth. The Echium system is to grow a stem,open a pink flower, change it to blue and then grow a bit more of the s...

A friend was recently telling me about some research done on slimming and smoking cessation that showed that if  people got  an early "win" of some kind, they were more likely to continue (slimming, cessation, etc) This is just like me and growing tomatoes. I first grew them in 2003, the summer was very hot and sunny and I got a magnificent early and long lasting crop. I've been trying to repeat the success every year since.   Some of the plants in subsequent years were small and weedy possibly due to my poor sandy soil. Then, last autumn, I dug out an exhausted raspberry bed,  gave it plenty of manure, visited the physiotherapist several times and planted tomatoes in the spring. I got some really leafy plants that tried to take over the garden but the fruit is very late and sparse. It's been a dull wet and not especially warm summer which may be part of the reason. Sprawling plants on rich soil but fruit is green Some of the crop, I planted out in an ord...

Just round the corner from where I live is my favourite alley - a narrow tunnel under a bed room leads to a pedestrian shortcut between two streets Today, it was "guarded" by an impossibly fluffy white cat with pink ears  In the middle of the alley there are two ancient cottages with no road access but a garden full of Japanese Anemones. A tranquil spot less than 1/2 mile from the centre of town.

Late July is a good time to spot the Cabbage White Butterfly in my garden. As you can see from the picture, they move around pretty fast. They get their name because their children like cabbages. In fact, the feckless creatures lay their eggs on my Sea Kale, bugger off and leave the caterpillars to fend for themselves! That's why I do a tour of inspection every week and when I find the eggs, I crush them with a fingernail. Hint: Look on the underside of the leaves

A bee on my "Butterfly Bush" (Buddleja Lochinch) Another bee on my Echium vulgare 'Dwarf Hybrids

I first discovered these jolly flowers growing in a pot at Wallingford station on the Cholsey and Wallingford Railway- a preserved former Great Western Railway branchline . How quintessentially English you might think but they originate from the US and are named for M. Gaillard de Charentonneau, an 18th-century French magistrate. They cope well with poor, dry soil and don't need much attention - ideal for me! My first attempt was with Gaillardia aristata 'Goblin' which you can find in seed shops everywhere. It does grow rather tall (60cm) and flop so I'm trying a couple of remedies: In early May, I sheared the top off the plants reducing them to around 15cm I've got some seeds for a variety called 'Arizona Sun'. The flowers are very similar but the plant only grows to around 30cm You can buy them in Garden Centres but if like the idea of drift of them, that's a bit expensive.Growing your own from seed is medium difficult. Warmth is needed to ge...

One of the ladybirds that used to be there The first pest I encountered today was on my Broad Bean plants. The blackfly had arrived :-( . This was especially annoying since earlier in the season, there'd been lots of ladybirds patrolling the plants. So I had to use a pyrethrin spray which might be "organic" these days - it's difficult to keep track. The blackfly The next pest was indoors. My phone rang and the display said "Unavailable" - often a sign of trouble. Sure enough, when I answered there was initial silence before call-centre noises and a gentleman from the "Computer Maintenance Department - Windows Operating System". My usual response to these scammers is usually lacking in diplomacy. This time, I grabbed a recorder and played with his head....

The Fuchsia Garden and beyond, the bathing pool Since today looked like the first proper summer day, I took myself off  to Hidcote "an inspirational arts and crafts garden that's gradually been returned to its 1930's heyday" according to the leaflet. As I wandered around, I kept my eyes open for any Giant Echiums. I had seen some dead ones previous years and as regular readers will know, I grow them myself with some success Didn't see any though. Then I encountered a couple of the gardening staff and asked them if they had any giant echiums? "Somebody must have primed you with that question!" said the guy and pointed a little further along the path to where a fine young Echium Pininana was waiting patiently in a bucket! They were just about to plant it out in a sheltered area a little to the south of the "Hydrangea Corner". Naturally, we fell to comparing experiences.  They'd grown this specimen in a greenhouse and  hoped to get i...