Sowing tomatoes

I got my tomato seeds sown on Friday. I sowed 27 pots of them, using the tall thin plastic pots from "Elmlea" cream-susbstitute which we have saved up over the last year:

I have made a point of sowing lots of different types, including many that have been sent to me by friends around the world (e.g. Eddy in Belgium, Tiffany in the USA and Trevor in Wales), so it was important to have them clearly labelled.

Several of the types are old favourites - like "Gardener's Delight", "Maskotka" and "Ferline", but I have also got some less well-known ones such as "Rumi Banjan", "Banana Legs", "Giant Syrian" and "Larisa". Where I am going to put them when they get bigger, Goodness only knows! I think I will have to give some of them away. I'll probably have space to grow about 18 or 20 at most, but I always find it hard not to go overboard because there are just so many interesting tomato varieties around.

The ones given to me by Eddy are (at my request) all big-fruited "Beefsteak" varieties, whereas Trevor has sent me two Cherry-sized ones. One is called "Tiger" and the other, which he bought from a local man while on holiday in Santorini, has been nicknamed "Yanni's".

My procedure is to sow two seeds in each pot, and to remove the weaker seedling if both germinate. Some people would say this is wasteful, but for me it is a way of boosting my chances of getting good plants. If I sowed 50 of each type I would not do it, but when you only have one or two pots of each I think it is justifiable.

The pots are now arranged in seed-trays covered with plastic bags, underneath the lights of my Growlight House. I expect them to germinate within a few days. 

For the record, here is the list of tomato varieties I have sown:

Ferline

Orkado

Cherokee Purple

Larisa

Dynnye

Giant Syrian

Fish Lake Oxheart

Noire Charbonneuse

Wild Thyme

Rumi Banjan

Lemon Boy

Banana Legs

Gardener's Delight

Maskotka

Tiger

Yanni's

Japanese Purple (not it's official name, but I can't read the Japanese writing on the packet!)

Transplanting the Sweet Peas

I have moved the first batch of Sweet Peas into their final homes now. I had 16 plants, so I distributed them evenly into two large plastic flowerpots filled with compost:

Each pot has 6 bamboo canes for the plants to grow up, secured at the top with these:

I'm not sure whether the peas will be able to grip the canes. I may have to give them some help with bits of soft string.

At present the pots are right next to the sliding door from our Living Room, but later on, when there is space to do so I plan to move them to the patio, where they will get more sun.

My plan is to pinch out the tips of the plants when they reach the tops of the canes, so that they become really bushy and hopefully produce lots of flower-stems. That's a few weeks away though.

As you can see, the little "Tete a Tete" daffodils are over now, though the "Soleils d'Or" have a few more days still. I have arranged the pots of Daffs as a sort of screen around the Sweet Peas, to hide them a bit from the marauding foxes who are bound to want to snuffle around in the fresh compost in the hope of finding some worms.

Birthday gifts

As many of you know, it was my birthday this week. In this post I want to show off some of my prezzies:

This first pic is of the card Jane made for me - it is a cross-stitched Chilli

So appropriate for me, don't you think? And so much nicer than a bought card.

This is the present that went with it...

My thanks to Sue from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments for the inspiration to get this! I shall try to take some photos as good as hers...

Here is what Fiona and Juan got me - a fabulous Asparagus plate in that delicate procelain called Faience de Gien. Hopefully it will soon be loaded with home-grown spears of real Asparagus!



Emma and Dave bought me a voucher for a meal at Atul Kochar's Michelin-starred restaurant "Benares" (in London), which sounds like just the thing for me. It serves food with a spicy / curry / Indian theme. To get me in the mood for this, their girls Lara and Holly made me birthday cards adorned with whole spices:

One of our long-time friends (Rosemary) also gave me a nice present - this blue Hydrangea plant.

This plant is a very welcome addition to my garden since I have been hankering after an Hydrangea for quite a while - especially after our visit to Cornwall last year, because in Cornwall they are everywhere.

So Thank You everyone for those lovely gifts. They are all very much appreciated. 

Harvesting the first PSB

Hooray! The moment has come to harvest my first Purple Sprouting Broccoli of the year. This is always an enjoyable moment for me, having waited so long for it. PSB is probably my favourite veg, so I consider it worth the wait.

This year the PSB plants are quite small, so I won't get a big crop, but the quality looks good. And PSB is so photogenic too!

I always cut the main head of the plant first. This stimulates the growth of the side-shoots. Today I took out the heads of three of my four plants, cutting them about 6 - 8 inches from the tip:

This is enough for a small serving for the two of us.

It feels so good to be harvesting something again, because the last few weeks have been a rather lean period for my garden. Other than the PSB I now have only herbs and a few chicories and endives to harvest. However, my Broad Beans are growing fast so it won't be a very long time before they produce a crop, and I have loads of tiny brassica seedlings coming on fast in my mini-greenhouses, and the leeks are showing through too. Spring is definitely here.



Markets: a difference of approach

Last weekend Jane and I were over in France visiting our daughter Fiona and her family. Whenever we go we make a point of visiting their local market, in Ferney Voltaire, which is only a couple of miles from where they live. When you are used to British markets, one like this is a real eye-opener. Most (though not all) markets in Britain seem to be geared towards selling produce at the cheapest price possible. Quality takes second place, and people mostly go to a market with the intention of getting a bargain.

The market in Ferney seems to adopt the opposite approach. Most of the items are not cheap, but the quality is very high. The market is not what we would call a Farmers' Market, because much of the produce is imported (at least from some other part of France, or even further afield), so it is not sold directly to the consumer by the producer. Nor is it totally seasonal: for instance this week there were lots of strawberries on sale, and these would not normally be in season in this part of France until late May / early June. As long as you are happy with this concept, then you are in Foodie Heaven. There is not much in the food line that you can NOT buy on this market. There is meat, fish, bread, cheese, preserves, flowers, herbs, spices, vegetables, fruit, sweets, pancakes, fruit juices, eggs, etc, etc, etc.

When I say "vegetables", I mean every type of vegetable known to man - and good specimens as well. Why is it that in Britain you have to hunt far and wide to buy an Endive of any description when in France there are loads to choose from? The display in the photo below is just one of many similar ones to be seen on Ferney market, and you can see that it includes red lettuce, green lettuce, curly endive, flat-leaved (or Batavian) endive, "Variegato di Castelfranco" chicory and (just at edge of photo at left) some "Pick and mix" salads.

We bought one of the curly endives and the four of us ate some of it at two mealtimes, yet there was still loads left - and the price was just 1 Euro 50. (You can see the label that says "Salade au choix" - basically "take your pick of these" for 1.50).

I am also aware that people in France take more time in choosing what to buy. They umm and ahh and dither, weighing up the pros and cons of a prospective purchase, discussing its merits with the stall-holder, yet no-one minds waiting. The queue for a popular stall may be very long, but no-one complains. Quality is worth the wait. You also get to choose exactly which produce you buy. None of this "I'll have a pound of plums please" and then being given the ratty old sub-standard ones from underneath the counter rather than the good-looking ones at the front. Furthermore many of the sellers offer free samples to tempt you to buy. There is one stall that sells particularly good Jambon Cru, and while you are waiting to be served you are often given several samples to try (without having to ask), despite the fact that this is a premium product and costs a lot.

Some of the items on sale this time were relatively obscure - like these:-

No, not the carrots! On the right the chalkboard advertises "Oca de Perou" (Peruvian Oca), "Capucine tubereuse" (Mashua) and "Cerfeuil tubereuse" (Turnip-rooted Chervil). I can't tell you much about these things, because I have no knowledge of them (though I have heard of Oca and seen it advertised), but it is evident that they are fairly specialist items since they are priced at 12 Euros per kilo. I think that all three are very roughly the equivalent of the Jerusalem Artichoke. Does anyone know / use them?

P.S. As you probably gathered, I didn't take my camera to the market (my focus was on food that day!), but Fiona took a couple of shots, so I am indebted to her for those (above).

Visiting family

We have just returned from a long weekend in France, visiting our daughter Fiona and her husband Juan - and their little baby, our third grand-daughter! Although Jane had been over to see them shortly after the baby was born, this was my first opportunity to see her. I had to agree that she is a real cutie...

Much as I would like to write about the joys of grand-parenting, this is not my aim today. Instead I want to write about garden-mentoring. Fiona is a very keen gardener, but she always seeks my advice on various gardening themes whenever I visit her. This time we jointly decided to shift her expanding herb collection to a different location. Up till now it has been in a bed conveniently situated right outside the kitchen door:

Unfortunately this location (despite the presence of that very attractive stone "menhir" - worthy of the famous Asterix the Gaul, I think) is sub-prime in that it is in the shade most of the day, and herbs like sun. So, we moved most of the herbs (and a few new ones) to a raised bed in a far sunnier spot:

The two Thyme plants in the foreground (One Common Thyme and one Lemon Thyme) are really nice specimens obtained at a great price (2 Euros 50) at the local Garden Centre - "Jardiland". I just hope Fiona's cat Voltaire will accord them due respect!

Meanwhile, I also checked-out the potato-patch where three types of potato we bought this weekend will eventually be planted. The 3 types are "Charlotte", "Roseval" and "Bintje" all currently laid out in the garage in egg-boxes, chitting.

Fiona and Juan have a garden which has hitherto been largely laid down to grass, and severely neglected by the former owners of their property, but they have lots of ideas about what to do with it. I am sure that in the months / years to come it will evolve dramatically (at a pace presumably dictated by the demands of the growing family...). I suspect that vegetables will figure quite prominently!

Meanwhile, there are some nice ornamentals too. It is encouraging to see that the Roses I pruned so drastically this time last year responded well and are looking a lot more promising this year. And amongst them Fiona has planted loads of bulbs - tulips, daffodils and crocus:



A task that gave me great pleasure this weekend was preparing a number of containers of "Daddy Salad" - a mix or many different types of salads (lettuce, endive, rocket, komatsuna, mache, mustard, mizuna etc) that are destined to be harvested at the Baby Leaf Salad stage. This was my "trademark" way of producing salad when Fiona and her sister were small - hence the name. If the cat leaves them alone, these containers should  produce a very nice varied harvest.

Fiona is already talking of getting her daughter out into the garden to "help Mummy with the gardening" (she is currently 3 months old!!), so all the signs are already there that another generation of veg-plotters has begun!

Ophiopogon

I'm currently "on" grasses, and grass-like plants, so when I saw this the other day on sale at my local Garden Centre, I couldn't resist buying it:

It's Ophiopogon Planiscapus "Niger". Unsurprisingly, in view of its name, the leaves are a beautiful dark purple, almost black colour. In this next photo I was experimenting with colours, seeing if the Ophiopogon would look nice in a pale-coloured pot.

In the end I decided against putting it in a pot of any sort, because I want it to spread (which by all accounts it will), so I have put it at the base of my new birdbath:



Following my usual procedure, while removing the plant from its pot I was on the lookout for offshoots or plantlets that could be separated from the main plant. I was lucky: there were two:

I'm hoping that before very long these plants will spread out all round the base of the birdbath. I'm rather pleased with the colour contrast too!

I want to finish today with an arty photo of another Ophiopogon, (probably not a "Niger"), taken last Summer in Trengwainton Gardens in Cornwall:

Caught in a shaft of sunlight, it looks as if it has been illuminated by a powerful searchlight!