Category Archives: Tomatoes

Eats, shoots and leaves

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I heard two great gardening tips this week. The first was from Penny Golightly (of the great Golightly Gardens website) who mentioned the free tomato seed offer from Heinz. It’s only a limited thing but have a look at their Facebook page here and see if you’re lucky!

Also on last week’s Gardening with Tim & Joe show on BBC Radio Leeds, Joe Maiden mentioned rather than buying a pack of seeds especially for pea shoots from the major seed sellers (around £2.50), go to the supermarket and buy a packet of dried peas which are the same thing and a whole lot cheaper!Bulbs in the greenI had a day off Thursday and managed to do a little bit of gardening before the rain came and it was so nice to be back out there. I cleared the bed next to the pond (Pic above – fish courtesy of Lewisham pet shop, bought a few years ago and they’ve multiplied a bit since then. God knows how they survive in a rusty old water tank!)

The reason I was out there was I bought a load of bluebells a fortnight ago which were bought “in the green” (as I missed the proper bulb planting time in the autumn) so when the postlady delivered them on Thursday morning they were live (with roots and shoots and all) so they had to go in. Let’s hope the birds or the squirrels don’t pull them up!

onions under glassThings are on the move, the onion sets, garlic and parsley under the top half of the old kitchen door are starting to show signs of life and the tomato and pepper seeds I stuck in a few weeks ago indoors are on their way. It won’t be long now, roll on the warm weather!

Tray of seedlings

On a tomato tip

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Radikal Dub Soundsystem – Tomato Jungle/rajčice dub – Kingston

This morning I had a look at the excellent vertical veg website (run by Mark Ridsdill Smith who picked out that corker of a tune from Bessie Banks on The Dirt the other week) and found some great tips for growing tomatoes. I’ve a few plants in the ground, one in a well overcrowded hanging basket (plonked inside another hanging basket, novel eh?) and others in reused ready-mix cement buckets up near the house.Hanging basket within a hanging basketI’ve staked them up with bamboo canes, give them a regular water, a weekly feed and take off any sideshoots so all the plants energy goes into making the fruit. When the plant has formed about 4 or 5 trusses I nip out the top except the hanging basket one which I’ll leave. Most have been raised from seed except the ones kindly given to us from Dig This Nursery, who will be having their annual tomato festival on the 9th of August and know a thing or two about toms!Tasty tomOn vertical veg, Mark speaks to a guy called Nick Chenhall who runs the website Tomato Growing about growing the ‘umble tom in growbags and containers. Some brilliant tips on the video (see it here) like feeding them little and often (dilute the feed more than you usually would) and one mad one I’ve never heard before, adding a cup of used washing up water to your watering can once every couple of weeks which acts as a wetting agent, and helps bring back moisture to areas that have dried out.

Even better, at the end of the video the guy from Tomato Growing is seen serenading the toms in his polytunnel with a classical guitar. It’s that old music/gardening connection again, brilliant! Me, I will be playing mine some happy hardcore and see if that gets results!