My Tiny Plot

I harvested my Coriander plants at the end of the Summer and hung them up in the shed window to dry. They have been there ever since and are currently providing a nice little home for my resident shed spiders – of which there are many.

About a week ago I decided to harvest some of the seed and started to pop them off the plant and collect them on the bench. I was amassing quite a little pile when, oh I don’t know, something happened to distract me. Could have been a waking baby, that’s mostly what distracts me these days. Anyway, I went back into the house and forgot to put the seeds in my seed box. Huge mistake.

I went back the next day and the seed were, you guessed it, gone! Only slightly gnawed at seed casing had been left behind. I could also hear the mice groaning from the weight of their full bellies. Darn it.

Well, at least the mice are happy. And at least I have more back-up seed hanging in the window. Contingency seed, that’s the key.

This year I grew some Sweetpea Currant Tomatoes, a not-so-little bush variety that produces Tomatoes no bigger than a pea. They were beautiful. Not only did they taste very, very sweet but their tiny jewel-like fruits looked amazing on the plants and produced bucket-loads of Tomatoes. They were a real hit. The only problem is that the seed is quite expensive. If my memory serves me well they were £2.45 for ooh… about 15 seeds. In seed terms that’s quite a bit. So I have determined to save my own seed, since I have so many Tomatoes I might as well!

The first thing to do is to pick some nice, ripe Tomatoes (check). Cut them in half and scoop out the seeds. Put these into a jar and place in a warm cupboard to ferment – or get mouldy in plain terms. After about a week the jelly-like substance will have err.. rotted off. Nice huh?

Next fill the jar with water and skim off any bad seeds that float to the top. Wash the remaining seeds with fresh water.

Finally, turn them out onto a towel to dry thoroughly and store in a dry, frost free place until next year.

As I understand it you can save seed from any Tomato in this way. But, you have to be careful which Tomatoes you save seed from as some will cross pollinate in certain situations.

Tomatoes are self-fertile which means they don’t need insects or wind to pollinate them. But… some are pollinated by insects if the anthers on their flowers open up and allow insects inside. Or if the stigma sticks out beyond the anthers and insects can get to it. This can happen on the first flowers that beefsteak Tomatoes produce and currant varieties.

Aha, you say, but you have just saved the seed from a currant variety. Yes, you can do that if you are only growing one currant variety. Also if you discard any plants that do not produce Tomatoes that are true to type in the future.

So, if you have a bunch of ripe Tomatoes still hanging on for dear life, don’t bin them. Save yourself some money by saving the seed.

This year I’m growing a new variety of Tomato (for me at least) called Sweet Pea Currant. The shops were full of the tiny pea-sized Tomatoes last year and they were all the rage in mum’s circles because toddlers loved them.

I hadn’t seen the seed for sale until this year and I’ve even seen small plants for sale at some garden centres too – finally they veer away from racks and racks of Gardeners Delight, Shirley and Alicante (nothing wrong with those varieties but it’s nice to see something new).

Anyway, I’m growing Sweet Pea Currant with some seed that I got from Victoriana Nursery. But there are other places to buy the seed.

Apparently the plant is a cordon type but you should treat it as a bush variety because if you pinch out all the side shoots then the yield will be too small. As I’ve never grown them before I’m not sure how big the plants will be but I’m guessing smaller than your average Tomato.

I can’t wait to harvest the sweet little Tomatoes and I’m sure that once Jackson finds them he will be picking them himself and I won’t get a look in.

Anyone else growing this type? What is your flagship Tomato this year?

I recently received my copy of Which? Gardening and there was a fascinating feature in it about the differences between heritage vegetables (ie those older varieties that would die out if not perserved) and newer hybrid varieties.

Which? are famed for their thorough testing and they certainly seemed to have tested some obvious varieties of each type of veg. The old and new varieties were grown under identical conditions, in the West Country and each were tested for yield, looks and taste. I won’t recount the whole feature here but the headline results were as follows:

Calabrese

Winner

Tomato
Old Variety – Brandywine
New Variety – Country Taste F1
Winner = Old variety, for flavour

Parsnip
Old Variety – Tender and True
New Variety – Picador F1
Winner = New variety, for all round quality

Carrot
Old Variety – St Valery
New Variety – Infinity
Winner = Old variety, for flavour

Lettuce
Old Variety – Parris Island
New Variety – Chartwell
Winner = Old variety, for taste

Dwarf French Beans
Old Variety – Triomphe de Farcy
New Variety – Speedy
Winner = New variety, for supermarket-quality beans (not sure what that means, straight?)

Beetroot
Old Variety – Detroit Globe
New Variety – Pablo F1
Winner = Old variety, for taste and yield, New variety for looks

Sweetcorn
Old Variety – Golden Bantam
New Variety – Lark F1
Winner = New variety for sweetness

Courgette
Old Variety – All Green Bush
New Variety – Endurance F1
Winner = New variety for taste and good looks

Whether you agree with using F1 hybrid varieties or not, it’s useful to see where their strengths are and where you really don’t need to use them. Especially, since F1′s tend to be very expensive. For my part I’ll always be choosing to grow something called, ‘Triomphe de Farcy’ over its F1 rival ‘Speedy’. I mean, who wouldn’t?

Which? don’t seem to have put the article online yet, otherwise I would link to it.

I harvested all of my Bell Peppers today (Capsicum). I didn’t realise that the three plants I had were so laden with fruit. I’ve harvested about 15 Peppers – not bad!

The only problem is that they are a bit bitter. Too bitter to eat raw at least. It’s disappointing, especially since they look so gorgeous. I’ve grown Peppers before and not had this problem. But as you know, there is always one crop that doesn’t go to plan each year, even if you think you have it nailed. So I turned to my books for an answer.

After some research I think my problem is that we had a dry summer, I planted them against a sunny wall and they didn’t get enough water. I should have off-set the dry summer with regular watering. And although I did give the garden extra water I just don’t think the Peppers got enough. Apparently, if they don’t get enough water the result is bitter Peppers.

I should say that the Red Peppers are bitter too, although not as bad as the Green ones. Does anyone have any tips on what I can make with these? Or are they seed fodder?

Some of my Borlotti beans had naturally started to dry on the wigwam so I decided to put some aside for seed next year (I’m definitely growing Borlotti Beans again!). Just a few tips for saving Borlotti Bean seed:

Leave them on the plant as long as you can
Ideally wait to pick the pod until it’s gone dry and crispy
If you have to pick them, dry them at room temperature inside
Pop open the pods and extract the beans
Place in a breathable container, like a brown paper envelope
Label and store in a frost-free, damp-free place

Roll on next year! What are you saving? And any tips for doing it?

The Balcony Gardener send me these seeds last week. I just love the way they are packaged. The designs on the front of the seeds are lovely and they make me feel good about being a gardener in the 21st Century.

I think traditional seed packers could learn a thing or two from this type of design. My hunch is that the kind of people who used to buy seeds are being replaced by a different kind of buyer but the seed packet design really hasn’t changed much has it?

Does anyone else have examples of simple, lovely seed packet design?

The Balcony Gardener seeds are available here.

I’m just packing up the first of my books and I’m busy putting together my seed packets to put inside each box. This entails a lot of cutting, sticking, filling and pressing. It’s all a bit Blue Peter and I love it! The seeds I’m using are a Lettuce mix kindly packaged by Victoriana Nursery.

It seems like the most simple and obvious thing in the world; to put some free seeds in with a children’s book about growing vegetables. But actually it has been one of the more complicated areas of producing Jackson’s Garden. I thought you might like to know what I learned.

Firstly, you can’t just package up seed willy-nilly and sent it all over the world. This much I had already guessed but I didn’t know how tight the guidelines were. You cannot send seed outside the EU, fullstop. Inside, the EU you must be a registered seed packer with Defra in order to distribute seeds. Each packer ensures that his or her seeds comply with EEC rules on seed quality.

So…this all means that me, little ole me with my tiny plot, is not really Defra’s idea of a bona-fide seed packer. But so long as I know someone who is (enter Victoriana Nursery) then I can send the children some seed – hooray! So it all worked out in the end.

Since discovering all this I have been noticing other non-seed distributors and how they do it. Example, Cath Kidston’s new range of seeds is packed by Thompson and Morgan.

And this gorgeous little box of Culinary Quirks seed by Hen & Hammock, uses seed provided by heritage seed supplier Thomas Etty esq.

Interesting huh? How does this all work in America, or Canada or elsewhere. I’d be interested to know.

I’ve started to chit my Potatoes. As you can see I’ve got a small clutch of a standard variety of first earlies (Rocket) and two rather unusual varieties (Congo and Highland Burgundy Red). The smaller seed Potatoes were given to me while I was on a pruning course last year.

I put them in an airtight container and placed them in the potting shed all winter. They’ve saved well so I’m hoping to have some really unusual Potatoes in this year’s harvest.

The problem is, I was a bit worried that they might cross-pollinate and I would end up with a large batch of darkish or purply-red Potatoes instead of ones that are true to one variety. So I did some research.

It turns out that Potato flowers have both male and female parts and so are very likely to pollinate themselves. I watched a video on how to create a new Potato variety by cross-pollination and it looked like it was pretty difficult to do actually. So the likelihood of the bees managing it for me is very slim. Plus, I suppose people plant three, four, sometimes five varieties of Potato on one allotment sometimes and you don’t necessarily get cross-pollination, do you?

So, I’m resolved to give all three varieties a go. I might plant them separately, away from each other just to be on the safe side. But I think I should be okay.

Does anyone have any more data on this? Is there a definitive yes or no answer?

While I was on a pruning course a few weeks ago I met a very interesting guy called Bill Whitehead. He knew tons and tons about Potatoes and their history in the UK. He showed me an example of the oldest known variety of Potato still grown in the UK – The Yam. It dates from 1771.

He also gave me two Potatoes to save and plant next year. They were a black variety called Congo and a red variety called Highland Burgundy Red. I’ve always understood that it’s risky to save your own Potato seed because you risk building up disease and that it’s better to buy disease-free seed from a merchant – which I normally do. However, since I’ve been given these interesting varieties I thought I would have a go at saving them for next year.

It seems you need to keep a few things in mind: