Tomato Tactics

To say it has been a disappointing harvest would be a bit of an understatement!  My peas were eaten by snails, my runner beans seem to think they are in a marathon rather than a sprint and my courgette plants were hit by some white mouldy thing.  I blame the weather plus the fact that I probably planted everything a bit late but such is life.  My lettuce bed was a complete triumph though with enough lettuce and spinach to feed  half the county.  

My tomatoes, "Gardeners Delight", have been a complete mixed bag.  I have never grown such bushy tomato plants in my life and they were at least 8 feet tall!  I purchased a tomato frame for them this year to give support and tied the vines to the frame, which really seemed to make a difference.

The only problem I have had is that I still haven't managed to harvest a ripe tomato yet and it is nearly mid October!  Whilst the plants were happily spreading skywards and there are a lot of green tomatoes on the vines, nothing was ripening.

Whilst visiting the in laws a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that my mother-in-law had stripped her tomato plants of leaves, leaving just the tomatoes on the bare vines.  She told me that at this time of year you need to stop the plants putting their energy into growing to allow the fruit to ripen.  Thinking about it, it did make sense.  Also, as the nights are drawing in and the sun is losing its strength, the tomatoes need all the light exposure they can get to ripen, so being shaded behind foliage doesn't help.

When I got home, I cut the tops out of my plants to stop any further growth upwards and stripped the leaves.  The plants do look really odd now but 10 days on, I have actually got a few ripe tomatoes.  Finally!

Another tip mother-in-law gave me for ripening tomatoes is to place the green ones in a drawer with a ripe one.  For some reason the ripe one encourages the others to ripen.  Very strange.  Not sure how that works, particularly in darkness.  I wonder if some gas is given off by the ripe one which then ripens the others.  Bit like bananas having an effect on other fruit nearby. Apparently it does work, so I shall have to give it a go.

Instant Vegetable Garden

Following the success of last year's vegetables supplied by Rocket Gardens (see my blog post "Plants by Post"), I leafed through the spring catalogue back in early April, looking for my next purchase.  When I reached the patio container garden, I left the catalogue open on my desk at that page, as a reminder to place my order.  If I had only turned the page over, I would have spotted a photo of my garden last year.  I had submitted to photo to Rocket Garden's Facebook page, as they had asked to see customer gardens.

I was completely unaware the photo was in the catalogue until I received an email from Rocket Gardens thanking me for the use of the photo.  As a thank you they were offering me a garden of my choice, a free wooden planter worth £30 plus two bags of potatoes worth £8 and free delivery.  Who was I to say no?  Thrilled didn't even begin to cover it!

As I had already decided on the patio container garden, that is the one I chose.  Priced at a very reasonable £36.99, it consisted of:

5 x rainbow chard
20 x wild rocket
12 x garden peas
6 x strawberries
10 x spinach
5 x tomatoes
4 x courgettes
30 x mixed lettuce (3 varieties)
10 x dwarf French beans
5 x runner beans
20 x mizuna (an Oriental salad leaf)

Partly due to the weather, lack of time to prepare and going on holiday, I finally arranged for my delivery to be made a couple of weeks ago.  The plants and wooden crate arrived 7pm on a Friday evening by courier.  As usual the plants were packed with care in a large cardboard box in layers of straw and more cardboard.  Each set of plants was clearly labelled and planting instructions were also included.  To be honest, you can't go wrong really.

I had a frantic Friday evening and then Saturday morning madly planting all of my new arrivals.  After a quick trip to the garden centre for canes and compost, I had a healthy looking, instant vegetable plot.  That's definitely my kind of gardening!

Two weeks on, the plants are all thriving, the peas are flowering and already have some pea pods and the strawberries are also fruiting.  I plan to cut my first lettuce tomorrow as they have really shot up over the last week.  I am really pleased with the wooden crate too, it makes a perfect home for the lettuces and looks quite attractive too.


What more can I say apart from thank you very much Rocket Gardens!

An Unexpected Visitor

The other day I was happily weeding a flower bed, when I very nearly weeded a frog who was lurking there.  I'm not sure who was more shocked to be honest, me or the frog.  I jumped, he jumped, I jumped even more!

Now, I have nothing against frogs on the whole, as long as they are kept at about a hundred paces.  I certainly wouldn't want to pick one up, so to nearly grab one when weeding nearly gave me palpitations.  I'm really not sure what would have happened if I had been a centimetre nearer but the back of my hand definitely touched frog.  I was actually quite surprised to find it was actually quite soft and warm, not at all what I had expected.  I still wouldn't want to hold one.

I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised to find a frog in a flower bed, I have found one under my bed before, still alive, courtesy of one of my cats.  I left the room in a hurry and called for reinforcements to deal with it.  So why all these frogs in my garden?  I have no idea, as I don't have a pond and there are no public ponds, rivers or streams for quite some distance.  I can only assume that other people in the vicinity have got ponds in there gardens, although I have no idea of the hopping range of a frog.

Having had a quick on the internet, I have discovered that my frog was a Common Frog.  I was slightly disappointed for him.  I thought he would have been slightly more exotic than common.  Who knows, he may have been a bewitched prince.  I wasn't going to kiss him to find out though, trust me!

From Glass to Glasshouses

If you have an interest in art glass, then you may have heard of the glass artist Dale Chihuly.  I have always had a love of coloured glass, although I am usually terrified I will break it!  Last autumn, I visited a small gallery in Las Vegas that had an exhibition of some of Dale Chihuly's work, including some of his naturalistic forms. The Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas also has a permanent installation of Dale Chihuly's glass flowers on the ceiling of the reception area which is well worth seeing.
 

As well as the clusters of flowers, I also love the huge, bright green cactus like sculptures that he creates.   I find it remarkable that something so fragile as glass is put on display outside in public gardens, with sculptures sprouting from the middle of water features or placed amongst the specimen plants.  Some exhibitions have also been staged in public conservatories, one of which was the glass houses at Kew Gardens, London in 2005.  I really wish I had known about his work then, as I would have loved to have seen the exhibition.

More details of Dale Chihuly, his work, permanent display pieces and forthcoming exhibitions are available on his website .... http://www.chihuly.com/home.aspx.  I really recommend you take a look!

 

Spring Is In The Air

Now the evenings are getting lighter again and the temperatures are warming up (well slightly), I am starting to think about actually going into the garden again.  I have to admit for the last 5 months all I have managed is a quick sprint to the compost heap.  Even that was under duress, when  I couldn't shut the lid on the kitchen compost bin any more!

It seems like the winter went on for ages and if it wasn't snowing, it was raining.  Or it was just plain freezing cold.  The daffodils came up a few weeks ago and have stayed the same height since.  They obviously had second thoughts.

Having ventured out the other day, for a half hour tidy, I was quite surprised at how much damage had been done by the frosts.  Pots that I have had for years have taken a real battering and will definitely need to be replaced.  Surprisingly my cabbages and rainbow chard seem to be thriving with new leaves appearing.  I may even manage to eat some this time before the caterpillars appear.

I must admit, I was a bit bored with the lack of colour in the garden now, so I decided to do a bit of instant gardening and plant some red and yellow polyanthus in the metal planters on the fence.  The splash of colour has made a huge difference to the garden.  They are definitely a welcome sight from the kitchen window.  Hopefully the daffodils and tulips won't be long now as well.

  

The Problem With Plastic

Like a lot of people, I am a conscientious recycler.  I always put the paper, cardboard, food tins, plastic bottles and glass out for the recycling collection every week and take my batteries, aluminium foil, biscuit tins, rags and other recyclable items to the local Council waste site.  I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination though and a whole host of food packaging that can't be recycled ends up in the dustbin without too much more thought.  Let's face it, out of sight, out of mind.

A few days ago, I came across an article about the Plastiki Expedition.  The Plastiki is a boat made from 12,000 plastic bottles which is sailing the oceans raising awareness about plastic pollution, particularly in the seas.  Unfortunately, plastic does not biodegrade, once plastic is manufactured, it will always exist - somewhere.  It may crack into small pieces but it will be there, in land fill sites and in the seas.  Apparently there is an area of ocean near Hawaii that has an area polluted with plastic from all over the world that is twice the size of France!  Small pieces of plastic are suspended in the sea and are referred to as mermaid's tears.  Sadly these plastic fragments are being ingested by the marine life.  Needless to say, it is not doing them much good.  A lot of the plastic is tipped overboard from ships but lets face it, we are all guilty of plastic pollution.

So where does this fit into a gardening blog?  Well, plastic was obviously on my mind when I glanced out of my kitchen window.  It suddenly struck me how much plastic waste gardening creates, from plastic plant pots, labels and garden ties to plastic bags the compost comes in.  Whilst I am sure keen gardeners will clean and reuse their plastic pots, most households will no doubt throw them away.  Plastic plant ties are great and can be used again and again, until they snap.  Then what?  They get thrown away.

Brown or black plastic pots really aren't attractive, so it is not surprising that people transfer their newly purchased plants into ceramic pots.  Maybe if the plastic pots came in bright colours they would be more acceptable.  I have got some Thyme growing in a purple plastic pot which I don't mind too much.  We really do need to get away from plastic altogether though and don't even get me started on polystyrene seed trays.

I completely understand the use of plastic.  It is no doubt cheap and certainly convenient, as well as practical.  If plants were sold in ceramic pots there is far more scope for breakage.  Paper labels would be useless as they could tear and would certainly go soggy when wet.  With more packaging being made from corn starch perhaps there is some possibilities there.

Unfortunately, I don't have the answers.  I know one thing though, in future I will try to be far more careful about the garden products I buy and use.  Why use plastic plant ties after all when you can use a piece of string or a old pair of nylon tights cut into strips?

http://www.theplastiki.com
http://recycleplasticflowerpotsandplantseedtrays.com/

Plants By Post

Back in June, my husband gave me a gift voucher for a company called Rocket Gardens.  The voucher entitled me to a compact herb garden mini plant pack.  I didn't really know what it was all about, so just followed the instructions to redeem the voucher on their website and thought no more of it.

A couple of days later, I arrived home to find a cardboard box on the doorstep which said "Plant me, grow me, eat me" on the side.  There's nothing quite like coming home to a parcel, it's a bit like your birthday or Christmas, you can't wait to open it and see what's inside.  Quickly opening the box, I was met by a whole array of baby plants, all neatly  packed for transit.

As I carefully unpacked the plants, I could not believe the variety I had been sent.  I had expected some herbs and herbs I got, rosemary, chives, thyme, parsley, mint, sage, basil and marjoram to be precise.  Not only that, I got various types of lettuce, calabrese, cabbages and rainbow chard.  It was an absolute feast!  Well it would be when they had all grown.

I have to admit it did take a while to plant them all.  As there was far more than I was expecting, I had quite a job scouring the garden shed for pots.  The lettuces ended up sharing but I don't think they were bothered.  As well as the plants, which were all clearly labelled, there was also clear instructions for planting and care of the various plants.  You couldn't really go wrong.

I did wonder how well the plants would do, particularly with my tendency to forget to water for days on end in the summer.  The plants were really healthy though and all thrived, in spite of me.  The only problems I encountered were with the caterpillars which I have already mentioned in a previous blog entry.  Even now in the depths of winter, with a foot of snow recently, the herbs, cabbages and rainbow chard are all still flourishing in there pots on the patio.  The cabbages have made an amazing comeback having been stripped bare by the caterpillars.  Even the calabrese managed a small head despite having hardly any leaves.  I haven't had the heart to eat it!

Looking on Rocket Garden's website, www.rocketgardens.co.uk, you will see that they offer a whole range of plant packs suitable for the window box gardener to allotment gardeners.  All of the packs clearly show the number and variety of plants in the pack, as well as the space required for planting.

The pricing seems to me to be very reasonable for the number of plants and the quality.  Obviously it would be cheaper to by packets of seeds and grow your own from scratch but if you don't have the time or a greenhouse, Rocket Gardens offer the perfect solution.  I will certainly be using them again next year, so roll on the spring!