The garden seems to be going mad of late. The courgettes and the spuds are doing well and we’re seeing a bit of action on the climbing french beans and tomatoes.

I know it’s a bit late, but here’s a couple of tips when it comes to those tomato plants. If you’ve got the cordon type ones (not the bush or tumbling varieties) make sure that the side-shoots are pinched out regularly so all the goodness can go into the plant and the production of the actual fruit. I’ve a couple of plants in the raised bed that I have forgotten to do that are now going wild and a bit uncontrollable. Also when my plants get to about four or five trusses (the sets of flowers that later turn into fruit) I nip the tops out, so again the energy will go back into the plant (but keep an eye on the side shoots a while after you do this as they will tend to go mad). I do give them a regular water but not too much and a feed every ten days. I’ve had to buy some plant feed in, as my home-made attempts are still not ready yet.

The wormery (image above not to be viewed on a full stomach!) is cracking on and there’s a build up of nice looking compost at the bottom and the liquid in the bucket below is starting filling up too. All for recycling kitchen scraps, plant waste etc!

Also I have started to leave a combination of comfrey, nettle and borage leaves to rot in a small amount of water in a bucket at the bottom of the garden. It’s funny as sometimes it’s a bit like groundhog day. I go down there every now and again to have a check, lift up the slab of concrete that is acting as a lid on the stuff and have a sniff as I’m sure it’s supposed to pong a bit. A microsecond later the vile stench hits me… bang! When will I ever learn. If only the image below had a scratch and sniff and then you’ll know what I mean!

Also I heard a good potato tip on a podcast called “Gardening with Tim & Joe” from a show on BBC Radio Leeds. It can be a bit like 1970’s Radio 2 at times (“what’s the recipe today Jim?” etc) but there’s some great tips to be learnt there. The other week they were talking about harvesting potatoes. It was said you should go in once with a fork to pull up what you think are all the spuds, then go in another three times and you’ll get all the spuds you’d have missed previously. Good stuff!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/gwtj