Tomato Update

As usual, I've grown a range of tomato varieties this year, all lined up across my patio. They're barely ripe yet - I'm still waiting on four out of the five varieties to redden - but it's looking like a pretty good crop on the way!

The first variety, nearest my door, is Skykomish, an open-pollinated variety from Real Seeds that is supposed to be blight resistant. Unfortunately it's the least vigorous of the lot, hasn't grown very tall, and has the least fruit on it (fruit set seems poor) - and it's always had a few sickly-looking yellowy leaves! The fruits are a real mix of sizes, but there are a few nice big ones so hopefully it will be worthwhile in the end...

The next is Indigo Rose, the black tomato bred to be very high in antioxidants (anthocyanins, like in blueberries). The dark leaves and black fruits look rather dramatic and prompted lots of questions when I had friends round for a barbecue, but the plants have always looked rather stressed, with curled leaves, no matter how I've cared for them!

Whatever the problem is, it hasn't stopped the plant producing an abundance of fruit on looong trusses. They look black from any distance, but if you peek underneath, where the sun don't shine, they have green patches, and it's these I'm watching to check for ripeness - they should turn red eventually...

In the middle is Angelle, my trusty favourite from seeds saved from hybrid supermarket toms. I used to save the seed from year to year but they got more and more susceptible to blight with each generation, so I've started again from the hybrid this year. They're performing as well as before and are the most vigorous (and tallest) of the bunch, with huge trusses of small plum-shaped toms - and they've been the first to ripen!

We have a few Angelle plants in a plastic greenhouse on the allotment too, and under cover they ripened even quicker - we've had a few harvests from them now while we're only just about to start picking the ones at home.

Next in line is heirloom Amish Paste, a great tom for cooking (though I like it sliced as well), with vigorous plants and huuuge fruits!

I've had my first-ever experience of blossom-end rot this year with these - my watering habit must have slipped! - but thankfully only lost one truss of fruits, and I've been extra careful to water well since to prevent it from happening again. Blossom-end rot is caused by a lack of calcium, but it's rarely actually a shortage of calcium in the soil; more often lack of good transport through the plant's system, due to a shortage of water.

Finally, Dr Carolyn, another Real Seeds heirloom which I love, and they're doing really well. They're not as productive as some other varieties, but they're delicious!

I had the dreaded notification from Blightwatch at the weekend that my area was experiencing a 'Smith period' - perfect conditions for blight to develop - so I'm watching them carefully now for any signs. I'm disappointed that we've reached this stage already and I've harvested so few ripe toms so far - I think I need to choose an early variety or two next year so I can start picking sooner. In the meantime, I've cut a lot of the leaves off these plants to try to speed ripening - really I should have started this sooner so that air circulation around the plants was better when the conditions for blight struck. I've taken off everything below the first truss and leaves which crossed over and touched each other a lot, and I've taken off leaves which shaded the fruits a lot.

It's only been a day since I did it and I'm sure I can see new tinges of colour appearing already, so hopefully it's working! But when blight does strike, I'll be ready to pick lots of the toms green and use them in chutney, green chilli and whatever other green tomato recipes I can drag up!

Stevia and Oysterleaf

After my chillies, peppers, aubergines and leeks, next on the list to sow this month were two unusual leaf crops; stevia and oysterleaf.

Stevia (stevia rebaudiana) is an extremely sweet-tasting leaf that can be used as a natural sweetener, 150 times sweeter than sugar. I was given some seeds last year but failed to get any to germinate - but ended up buying a small plant at a nursery later on in the summer. It didn't get very big and I didn't harvest more than a few leaves from it, but after its tiny white flowers faded I made sure to save some seeds for another attempt this year.

(Whole stevia leaf isn't approved by the Food Standards Agency as a food for human consumption - even though it's been eaten for centuries in South America and in Asia since the seventies - so it can't be marketed as food in its natural form. You can buy approved stevia extracts (you might have noticed the new Coca Cola 'Life' is part sweetened with a stevia derivative) but watch out for their purity. Truvia, the 'big brand' option marketed as a natural stevia-derived sweetener, has as its main component erythritol, a sugar alcohol similar to sorbitol, mannitol and xylitol, which is fermented from dextrose, a sugar made from corn.)

I haven't managed to find much out about how to sow the seeds, except that it's tricky and they need a lot of light. The seeds are very tiny, so I have sown some under a light sprinkling of soil and some on the surface. It's very easy for surface-sown seeds to dry out, so I've put the whole pot in a plastic bag to retain moisture, and I'm keeping them on a bright windowsill and crossing my fingers... If I have any success, I hope to experiment more with my harvest this year and find some good ways to use it! I'll also try to overwinter a plant (like I should have done last year!) to avoid the tricky germination game next year - I think they grow as perennials in warmer climates...

Oysterleaf (mertensia maritima) or 'sea bluebells' is another edible leaf crop, with round, blueish, fleshy leaves supposed to taste like - you guessed it - oysters. It's not to be confused with salsify - a root crop sometimes known as oysterplant! It's a perennial (you know I'm a sucker for perennial edibles!) and it has really pretty edible purple and blue flowers, similar to borage - it's in the same family. Again, I was given some seeds last year but failed to grow them successfully (I think a snail got them!) so it's round two this year, with seeds purchased from Pennard Plants. There were only five seeds in the pack, so again I'm having to be careful with them! The seeds are relatively big so I've sown them a few millimetres deep and I'm keeping a close eye on them to make sure they don't dry out. They're not going in a plastic bag, as they grow wild in the Hebrides so I don't think they want to be too warm. But I will be keeping them safely indoors, away from snails, this time! (Until they're bigger, anyway.)

In other seedy news, I've also now sown some stock and snapdragon seeds for my new flower patch, and my first aubergine seedlings popped up on Thursday, just five days after sowing, closely followed by the chillies and the leeks after seven days. It's all go!

An Exception

I've always tried to avoid growing F1 hybrids - well, mostly. If I'm sent free seeds with an order or magazine it seems rather churlish to reject them, and a few others have slipped through the net over the years for one reason or another. It's not that there's anything 'wrong' with hybrids, but you have to support the things that you want to thrive. It's a bit like buying British or local. I want to see biodiversity and food security thriving, and hybrids undermine these by drastically reducing demand for traditional open-pollinated varieties, and because they're not genetically stable and can't reproduce to create another generation the same. I also like to think I can save the seeds of all my crops, although my seed-saving operation has a long way to go yet... And F1 seeds can be pretty expensive too!

But this year I'm making one deliberate exception, and it's this:

Aubergines are a luxury vegetable for us - something that we could easily do without, but something I'd love to eat more. I rarely buy them, simply because I'm buying less and less veg anyway - my priority is to eat what I grow and I'm far too busy eating all the courgettes and French beans and tomatoes and peppers and leafy greens coming out of the garden when they're in season. So the only way I'm gonna get to eat them is if I grow them myself!

But aubergines, lets face it, are just not really suited to the British climate - they need lots and lots of warmth and sunshine - yet I know many gardeners have moderate success with them, especially under cover. Not me; I've managed to grow just two small aubergines in five or six years of trying, and one of them went bad on the plant. There are only really two open-pollinated varieties of aubergines widely available (not counting fancy-coloured ones or mini ones, which I'm less interested in for now) and I've tried them both, without success. So when I read a recommendation for this variety, Bonica F1, on Nicky Kyle's great blog I thought well, why not have one last bash? Better to grow an F1 hybrid than not to grow them at all! Hybridisation brings the best traits together from other varieties to create new varieties that are (generally) more productive or earlier, more consistent and more reliable - the easier (though pricier) choice for any gardener, and in theory they will crop more readily where traditional varieties have failed. The plastic greenhouse we're putting on the allotment this year means we'll be able to provide them with a bit more protection than at home, too, so I'm crossing my fingers and looking forward to a bountiful aubergine harvest for once!

URGENT: Save Our Seeds

On May 6th, the EU will vote on new legislation governing plant varieties, proposed by the Directorate-General for Health and Consumers in response to hard lobbying by the globalised agricultural seed industry - Monsanto and its buddies. This legislation will mean that no seed (or other plant reproductive material) can be sold, swapped or given for free to anyone anywhere in the EU unless it is registered on the EU Plant List as an 'approved' variety.

If the legislation passes, it will kill off innumerable heirloom, heritage and amateur varieties. It won't (I believe) impact the varieties already licensed for commercial use, but it will impact the huge number of 'amateur' varieties, all those that breed plants on a small scale at home, all those that forage seed and propagate wild plants, and all the rare seeds being preserved and brought back to cultivation by small businesses. It will mean high costs for seed merchants to put their varieties through rigorous tests to get them on the list - and since the tests are designed around high-output industrial varieties, many are unlikely to be approved anyway. Once a variety is approved, the seller will have to pay an annual fee to keep it that way. Heirloom varieties and other less-popular varieties will undoubtedly be lost. Small seed merchants preserving and supplying rare varieties will undoubtedly not be able to continue. Biodiversity will fall dramatically. Consumer choice will be reduced. Food security will be damaged. With every variety that dies out, the pool of genetic material for breeding future varieties will be diminished. That unique heirloom bean your grandfather gave you will be outlawed - it will be illegal to pass it on to anyone else. There'll be no seeking out local varieties when you move to a new area. There'll be none of the seed-saving and -swapping and -sharing that we growers enjoy so much - unless they're on the EU Plant List. And all this so that agricultural giants can make more money and take yet more control of our food supply.

This legislation flies in the face of nature, which propagates, adapts and evolves freely, constantly creating sub-species and sub-sub-species. It's an attempt by corporations to claim ownership of the plant world, and it's an assault on our right as earth-dwellers to enjoy and interact with the earth's natural world.

I personally grow many unusual and heritage varieties which are at risk; seeds I've saved myself and seeds I've bought from Real Seeds and others - many listed as 'amateur' varieties 'not for commercial exploitation', which Real Seeds must get round by charging 1p per year to join their 'club'. Many of these are my favourite varieties. I have a Caucasian vining spinach plant which I've only ever seen shared informally and sold by one-woman company Backyard Larder. I suspect most of these varieties would quickly become endangered if the legislation passes, and next year I'd have to grow a dramatically different selection.

I'd like to think there's no way this insane law would pass when put to the vote, but Monsanto seems to have ways to get anything it wants. I have had no replies so far to my letters to MEPs and it's simply too important an issue to just wait and see without expressing my opposition.

Whether or not you grow food yourself, this legislation has implications for your food security, the natural world all around you, and thus the future of the planet. PLEASE inform yourselves about this issue and TAKE ACTION.

Here are some links to help you:

• I recommend reading Real Seeds' excellent article for more information, including a link to the full proposal and some important notes on the text. 
• The Soil Association's comment is brief, to the point and well worth a read.
• Garden Organic has a good article on the subject and a sample letter you can send to the EU's UK Commissioner Catherine Ashton.
• You can also write to your local Members of European Parliament at Write To Them.
• It doesn't hurt to write, too, to international MEPs - you can find their addresses and some more sample letters in this article from Open Source Seeds.
• The international Campaign for Seed Sovereignty has a petition here you can sign, there is one at 38 Degrees and there are two at Avaaz: one here which I have to say I'm concerned is worded rather shoddily but has the most support so far, and one which carries the message "We Will Not Comply!"

Please share this post. We must not let this happen.

Survival Gardening - Twelve Vital Principles

I've had a funny feeling about 2012 ever since the new year hangover wore off. I'm not one to worry about ancient prophecies, and I dunno, maybe I've just got too much time on my hands, but with the next great depression predicted, potentially disruptive solar activity about to peak, and the US/Israel/Iran conflict threatening anything from a fuel crisis to world war three, everything seems to be spiralling deeper and deeper into turmoil, and I've been thinking a little about taking a few extra precautions to make sure we could get through a crisis. It doesn't take much, after all, to stock up on a few extra dried/tinned goods and some bottled water, and think a little about how you might get by without utilities or if you were forced to leave your home. Failing to plan is planning to fail and all that. And I know what you're thinking - nothing bad ever happens here in the UK (except the occasional crippling snowfall, and the odd mindless riot, and devastating floods in some areas...), but our food supply chain is more fragile than we'd like to think, as the petrol crisis in 2000 showed when supermarkets warned they were running out of food, schools were closed, and public transport, the Royal Mail and other services were threatening to shut down - all within just a few days - and if the brown stuff hits the fan on anything more than a local level, do you really think we can rely on the government to provide? When was the last time you securely relied upon the government for anything?

Even if you think I'm being dramatic and all that's a bit unlikely, one thing's certain - I ain't earning too much money right now, so for me at least, taking steps to be more self-reliant makes perfect sense. Being a veg-grower already and having the allotment is a great advantage, but we're not nearly as self-sufficient as I'd like to be. Of course, veg-growing advice for beginners is to focus on luxury crops - those that you really enjoy and save a lot of money on by not buying them at the supermarket, such as tomatoes, runner beans, aubergines, peppers, purple sprouting broccoli and asparagus - and that's a really great start. But you can't live on those things, and with a bit more time, experience and space, the goals get bigger... While I'm hardly about to start growing enough wheat to keep us in bread and pasta all year round, there's plenty more that I can do to improve things - and if we ever did have to grow food to survive then we'd need to follow the very same principles:

1) Grow as much as you can. Yeah, like I needed an excuse. The allotment is fully in use and another one is out of the question, but I'm planning to grow more in the home garden this year, utilising lots of my smaller pots that don't often get used - for individual chard and spinach plants - and some large growbag-style planters. If you think you haven't got room to grow food, remember you can still grow a significant amount on windowsills, indoors and out - explore Vertical Veg for some amazing inspiration and tips! Also think about nurturing edible plants in public places. Get to know your native wild edibles, find out how to use them, and nurture them in your local area. Some people have even grown-their-own in public places by sprinkling seeds out of the way here and there (but remember it's illegal to dig plants up without the landowner's permission).

2) Save seeds from one year to the next, and always keep a good supply. This ensures you always have free seeds to grow, develops micro-varieties adapted to conditions in your growing space, and means you're not relying on seed companies every year. Popular f1 hybrids don't reproduce true-to-type - that is, if you save the seed and sow it next year the results will be unpredictable and not the same as the parent plant - so use only heirloom and open-pollinated seeds. Some seeds are trickier to save than others, so it pays to know exactly what you're doing, and I don't know a better place to learn than Real Seeds - take a look. Seeds need to be kept dry and cool to remain useful - keep them safe.

3) Extend the growing season as much as possible, by starting early under protection, sowing successionally for repeat crops, and making late sowings under protection too. A big greenhouse or polytunnel would be ideal, but a cheap plastic greenhouse and a roll or two of horticultural fleece are a great start. 

4) Get the most out of what you grow. This means saving extra seeds to sprout indoors for winter greens too - brassicas are especially good for this - and looking out for opportunities to get second crops from plants. Broccoli, calabrese, cauliflower and even cabbages will give you new shoots if you cut the heads and leave the plants in the ground. Radish seed pods can be added to stir-fries. Lettuces will produce new leaves after cutting. Pea pods can be made into soup (or wine!) Pumpkin leaves are great edible greens! (Don't eat the tomato-like fruit of potato plants though - they're poisonous.) I must get better at doing this kind of stuff!

5) Grow more substantial vegetables. Since grains are pretty much out of the question for me, that means more potatoes (spacing several sowings throughout the growing season), more starchy root veg, and more beans for drying. (Once dry, freeze beans in an airtight container for three days before storing, to kill any bean weevil eggs and avoid results like those below. Ugh.)

6) 'Three sisters' planting is ideal sustenance gardening. This traditional Native American method means growing sweetcorn, beans and squash together. The beans climb the corn and add nitrogen to its soil, and the low-growing squash leaves shade out weeds, slow moisture loss from the soil, and even deter rodents with their prickly stems. All three store well and are excellent nutritional staples, with corn high in starchy carbs, beans full of protein and fibre, and squashes packed with vitamins. Again, I'm not about to grow a meaningful amount of dried maize on my little plots, but this planting method is one I've always wanted to try, and this could be the year.

7) Preserve more. Pickles and jams are the most obvious examples, along with dried beans and peas. But you can dry pretty much any fruit or vegetable with just a little bit of knowhow, and I know I could be making much better use of my freezer too. Most veg can be frozen after blanching, and of course you can freeze sauces, pestos and herbs too. If things go to plan this year, I hope to have a freezer full of chopped tomatoes for cooking next winter, and I'm thinking about getting into dehydrating too...

8) Grow for winter as well. This is something I've always slowly worked towards and this spring, for the first time, I have purple sprouting broccoli, kale and some salad greens which have made it through the winter - hurrah! But now it's time to up the ante and grow more cold-weather crops, earlier, so we can use them all winter long. Great winter crops include many brassicas (swedes, turnips, cabbages, broccoli, Brussels, kale), endives, chicory, celeriac, leeks, parsnips, and lots of leafy greens such as chard and spinach. Some lettuces and salad greens can be grown under cover during the winter too, as well as radishes, carrots and spring onions.

9) Feed the soil and the soil will feed you. I have a terrible confession to make: I've been tossing my kitchen and garden waste in a green wheelie bin for the council to take away for the last two or three years now. Enough! I've reinstated the compost bin at the bottom of the garden and ordered a replacement missing part for my bokashi bin. Buying fertility from the garden centre is expensive and makes no sense! Remember to include a good mix of 'wet' or 'green' waste (raw food scraps, teabags, leafy plant material) and 'dry' or 'brown' waste (cardboard, paper, shredded woody plant material).

10) Include animals in your garden! As well as providing another source of food, they add more fertility to the soil and put even uncompostable scraps to good use. (Vegans and veggies may disagree of course, but then I do wonder how a lot of vegans and veggies might get on if the deluge of exotic grains and fruits imported into this country ever dried up.) I'm not allowed to include animals in my garden... But if things do ever get tough enough to change that - or when I get my own patch - chickens or rabbits are first on my list!

11) A sustainable garden must be an organic garden. Ban chemicals, which harm beneficial insects as well as the pests, and instead nurture your garden's ecosystem by growing plenty of variety, adding nectar-rich flowers to attract pollinating insects, providing insects with places to hibernate over winter, always removing dead matter that may harbour disease, improving your soil's microbiological health by adding lots of healthy organic matter, strengthening crops with seaweed extract or nettle/comfrey tea or similar, and paying your plants plenty of attention to make sure you notice any pest/disease attack before it gets out of hand. No-dig gardening supports better soil health and worm activity - and is something I want to try this year if I can. When you must deal with pests, do so manually wherever possible.

12) Practise, practise, practise. Did you know you can buy (from America) canisters of 'survival seeds' - freeze dried and vacuum packed heirloom varieties certified for up to 25 years - to stash for emergencies? Sounds all very good, but do people that buy these things expect to just sprinkle them over some bare ground and get any measure of success? I'm always learning in the garden and on the allotment, and if my survival ever depends on my ability to grow things, at least I'll know what I'm doing. If you want to feed yourself and your family in the future, there's no time like the present to begin.

Bonus Principle No. 13) In real times of anarchy, it'd be best if your veg garden didn't look too much like a veg garden, since you probably wouldn't be the only one whose cupboards are bare (not saying you shouldn't share, of course, but no-one likes to share with looters and thieves). Three sisters planting would be quite good for this, as the whole thing looks like a bit of a jungle. Avoiding long obvious rows of veg is another strategy - go for a more random look with different vegetables dotted about. Too survivalist for you? Remember four- and six-legged pests will do more damage where lots of the same crop are grown together, and less where plants are intermingled! Fleece might help too. The best strategy of all is to have a back up plan: more seeds to grow, more plants elsewhere, food stored indoors.

So what do you think? How far along the way are you to being able to keep eating if the shops stop opening one day? (I still have plenty of work to do!) Or are you happy enough just to keep saying it'll never, ever happen?

Drying Seeds

After the awesome success of my Angelle tomatoes this year, I've started taking the whole seed-saving thing a bit more seriously. Sure, it's okay to casually dry seeds on a windowsill and use them next year, but if you want your seeds to last longer and get a really good germination rate - and I do - air-dry is not enough. I've been taking the advice of Real Seeds' seedsaving guide (here and here) and drying my saved tomato seeds the proper way.

It's very simple really - just bake dry rice in the oven for 45 minutes or so then put it in a jar (the jar should be about half full, and there should be at least twice as much rice as seed) and put the lid on while it cools. This makes the rice - and the air in the jar, really, really dry. When it's cold, you put your seeds in a breathable pouch made of muslin or old tights, secure it with a rubber band or piece of string, and pop them in the jar on top of the rice for a couple of weeks. The super-dry rice draws all the moisture out of the seeds, and you're left with super-dry seeds that can be sealed in an airtight packet without the risk of suffocating, rotting, or trying to germinate too soon. Super.

First Sowings

I know, I know, I'm way behind. The good news is MOST of the things I'm about to tell you about were actually sown a few weeks ago - I just haven't had the time to tell you about it yet.

First, leeks. The past few years I've bought leek seedlings, because of some early catastrophic failures, but this year I decided to grow them from seed again and I'm pleased to report that so far, it's going well.

I've got three varieties on the go for maximum chances of success; Autumn Giant 3, Malabar, and Musselburgh. In the background above you may also be able to make out some very tiny Winter Gem lettuces.

This year I'm growing mostly Angelle tomatoes from the seeds I saved from a supermarket tomato last year. The plants are really compact (straight up, few leaves, not much support needed) so I figured I could grow a lot in a small space. However, they've been rather sickly from the word go and a lot have 'damped off', so now I only have half as many! I'm planning another sowing tomorrow...

I've sown a couple of Hundreds and Thousands (from saved seeds) and Sub Arctic Plenty too, and they're doing fine...

As always, I'm having terrible trouble geting any peppers to germinate - I just don't know what I'm doing wrong! The Jalapenos are okay...

...but my King of the North green peppers, Dedo de Mocha Sweet Aji peepers (smoky flavoured but heat-free, the packet says!), Kaibi no 2 sweet red peppers and Doux Tres Long Des Landes long sweet peppers are showing few signs of life (twenty seeds, one shoot so far...). Perhaps I'll have to invest in one of those heated propogator things after all... Anyone recommend one?

We've been busy sowing on the plot as well, with four rows of broad beans (Bunyards Exhibition and Aquadulce) just about ready to pop up I reckon. In our two raised beds, I've sown a mass of salady veg. In one, French Breakfast radishes, Giant Radishes, Boltardy beetroots, and assorted carrot seeds. (Am I the only one that accumulates bazillions of half-packets of carrot seeds, then still buys new ones each year just in case the old ones don't work? Well this year all the old ones have gone in, all mixed up, and even if half of them don't work I'll still have PLENTY of carrots.) In the other, three varieties of spinach, Bull's Blood beetroot (for leaves), land cress and some Little Gems. These are the beds the foxes like to dig in for some unknown reason, so we finished the job by covering one bed with a spare piece of plastic mesh, and the other one (rather hopefully) with zigzags of string. Fingers crossed...

Tomatoes - a summary

The tomato season has almost drawn to a close here, now blight has killed off all my plants but two, and those left are struggling to ripen fruit in the worsening weather. But having enjoyed the most successful tomato crop ever, and since I never told you the results of my seedsaving experiment, I thought I'd give a quick rundown of the varieties I grew.


From left to right we have 'Hundreds and Thousands' (self-sown), 'Red Cherry', 'Gardener's Delight', 'Angelle' (seeds saved), 'Moneymaker' and 'Sub-Arctic Plenty'.

The 'Hundreds and Thousands' have a slight tendency to be thick-skinned, but are so deliciously sweet, so productive and so easy to grow that I will certainly grow some more next year, if I can get them to self sow again.

The 'Red Cherry' have always been the quickest plants to grow for me, but having finally had a decent sample of the fruit this year, I don't think I'll bother with them again. The skins are very thick and they're not as tasty as some others.

The 'Gardener's Delight' again suffered from thick skins. Maybe it's my soil or something - does anyone else have this problem? They are delicious and have a touch more acid than any other variety I've grown, and so are good for salads or sandwiches where you don't want too much sweetness.

The 'Angelle' (also pictured below) are from the seeds I saved from a supermarket tomato. They have come pretty true to type and are absolutely delicious, not to mention incredibly easy to grow, with few leaves, and the last ones to go down with blight! The crop wasn't huge, but I could easily grow more plants in a small space since the foliage is so sparse. I will certainly be sowing the rest of my saved seeds next year!

'Moneymaker' were very pleasing, with thick flesh and a delicious flavour, and pretty productive, although they were the first to get the dreaded blight and I ended up putting most of the fruit - still green - in chutney. I'd like to give them another try, but if they are susceptible by nature to blight maybe it's not worth it outdoors...

'Sub-Arctic Plenty' were the biggest surprise. The plant always looked rather sickly but the fruits were huge - up to 100g each - and soooo tasty! They did not live up to their '45 days from seed to harvest' claim - far from it - but they're definitely another variety I will grow again next year.

Do you grow tomatoes outdoors? I'd love to hear what varieties work well for you.

Tomato Update

Last night I received my first email alert from the free 'Blightwatch' service, telling me that we were experiencing a 'full Smith period' situation - i.e. the temperature and the humidity in my area was just right for blight over two consecutive days - and out I rushed and sprayed my tomatoes with a 50% milk spray, which is supposed to help protect the plants. This is by far my most successful year for outdoor tomatoes yet - I'd hate to see them take a turn for the worse now. What a great service!

Remember when I saved seeds from my favourite supermarket tomatoes and planted some? Check these out:

They are looking pretty true to type so far - although the proof will be in the tasting... The plant is rather unusual - incredibly sparse and easy to manage!

Two years ago I grew a few 'Hundreds and Thousands' tomato plants which I bought from Suttons, and the following year I found a few had self-sown around the place in various pots. Since I didn't have a very good gardening year last year, I basically ignored the plants... And this year they were popping up everywhere in my garden! The sprawling plant below is one of these 'second generation' volunteers, and just like its grandparents it has literally hundreds of tiny tomatoes ripening, and hundreds more flowers on the way! I will have to make sure more self-seed for next year!

This 'Sub-Arctic' tomato plant has always looked rather sickly and has a lot of yellow leaves, but it is still bearing a couple of dozen good-sized fruits.

So much for 45 days from sowing to harvest though - this was sown way back in March!

We also have two 'Red Cherry' plants, two 'Moneymaker' and two 'Gardener's Delight'. I always go on about how Red Cherry seem to perform best for me (despite ultimate total tomato failure!), and sure enough they have been the first to ripen!

Red Cherry:

Moneymaker:

Gardener's Delight:

All right, I know; you know what tomatoes look like. But this is very exciting for me!

This is also the first year I've had any real success with chillies and peppers (fingers crossed - haven't actually eaten any yet). Here are my first green 'King of the North' peppers.

And here are my beautiful Jalapeno chillies.

Anyone know why they're turning black in some places?

Nome saves her first seeds

Seedsaving is something I always promise myself I'll get into someday; you know, after I've mastered everything else. It's certainly something I must get the hang of if I ever want to take self-sufficiency seriously, which I do.

My seed-saving exploits so far include planting an apple seed when I was... oooh, four? six? and growing a little apple tree in a tub; saving some salad seeds a couple of years back but then deciding not to plant them because I couldn't remember what they were; and harvesting some dried-out parsnip seed heads last year, which I was too nervous to plant this year in case they didn't germinate.

But two weeks ago I decided to take Daughter of the Soil's advice: "if you like the taste of it, scrape some seeds out of it". I've really been enjoying some plum-shaped 'Pomodorino' tomatoes which were on special offer at Sainsburys for a while, and so I thought I'd give it a go.

First I scraped the seeds out of the tomatoes and put them in a centimetre or so of water on a warm windowsill, with a loose cover so that air could get in and out. Every day I stirred it to keep things agitated.

After five days, when there was a thin layer of white mould on the surface and it smelled like some kind of weird tomato beer, I scraped the scummy stuff off the top and rinsed the seeds really well. (This five-day fermentation process gets all the gunk off the seeds so that you can save them and handle them easily.) Then I spread them out on a piece of paper to dry. They say you're supposed to use a coffee filter for this, so that the seeds don't stick, but I don't have such things so I just used a sheet out of a notebook, and pushed them around every now and then to try to stop them sticking. They also say to spread them out in a single layer. This is more difficult than you might think; wet seeds are extremely inclined to cling together!

It didn't take long for them to seem pretty dry - about 24 hours - and after that I left them in a glass dish in a warmish place for a few more days just to be sure.

And then, I planted some.

Bit late for tomatoes, I know, but I thought if I can get even just one truss of fruit, I'll know how true-to-type they come - or not - and I'll know whether to bother next year.

These seeds were in a fruit just 14 days ago!

Update: For a better way to dry seeds thoroughly, check out this post.