Things are certainly up and down in the garden at the moment with the mad mix of weather continuing into July. One thing I have noticed is that the two tomato plants in the raised bed behind the salad patch are looking well healthy with strong growth and lots of green, too much green in fact as there’s no sign of any flowers yet!

I am more than certain it’s to do with the fertility of the soil (it mentions in one of my gardening books that a high nitrogen content causes more leaf than flowers). The raised bed was supposed to be filled with a good mixture of top soil with compost from the heap. I think I must have overdone it on the compost as the Tomato plants in other parts of the garden are doing well with flower trusses forming. Ah well, you win some you lose some and with this gardening lark it’s all about learning isn’t it?

Also here’s how the root veg bed is looking (with another couple of Tomato plants at the rear). There’s a few spaces here and there where the sowing earlier in the year didn’t take but I’ll resow and fill in the gaps on the next root day.

On the subject of Tomato plants, I was down the Walworth Road on Sunday and visited East Street market looking for old records and passed a road off the main drag (about half-way down towards the Old Kent Rd) where there were plant stalls. There was a mixture of veg and bedding quite cheap and at the end of the row an old man was selling what looked like rejected plants even cheaper. The plants looked a bit past their sell-by date and were parched to say the least and I don’t think I would have taken a chance as the plants on the other stalls were a bargain anyway.

Incidentally, I spent a whacking £1.80 on a pile of pop/reggae singles from the 70’s (including Bob and Marcia’s Young Gifted and Black, Harry J All Star’s Liquidator and the Detroit Emerald’s Ghetto Child) from a stall where they were playing the latest pop hits from Jim Reeves and Wizzard. Brilliant!