It makes us laugh, we’ve got some cardoons at the bottom of the garden we bought in Shannon’s a couple of years ago, they were only a few quid and they didn’t come with any claims about them being giants or anything, all we got were a couple of unassuming healthy plants with a plant label in each pot. We’re on the second year now and both plants are near on seven and a half feet tall and there may be more growth left in them!

Now compare those cardoons to the giant sunflower we got on ebay. In the ad for the seeds there were all sorts of claims of massive, large, tall and the like and there even may have been mentions of it being the actual plant in Jack and the Beanstalk. Use the small cabbage on the left of it as an indicator of scale. That is no giant cabbage!

And here’s an oddity (pic below) from one of our raised beds. The lime green fruit towards the top of the pic is a tomato. The dark green one towards the bottom, just behind the poppy bud is the fruit of a potato. Eat that and you’ll regret it!

As it says on wikipedia: “After flowering, potato plants produce small green fruits that resemble green cherry tomatoes. Like all other parts of the plant except the tubers, the fruit contain the toxic alkaloid solanine and are therefore unsuitable for consumption.” Now we know!