Tag Archives: Tomatoes

Dub gardeners of the world unite!

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Image22Garden of the week: Doctor Strangedub’s plot in Minnesota.
Well, going into the second week of October and Dr. Strangedub still hasn’t taken his garden down. Most years we have had a killer frost by now here in Minnesota. Looks like it will be pretty cool tonight (around 45 F/7 C), but still safe for a bit. In the photos are: some green tomatoes still on the vine; some weeds up to my knees; and some very healthy basil plants. Looks like it’s time to make some Italian pesto with me basil….but the tomatoes must ripen in a box before I can make some salsa.

Doctor Strangedub and DJ Baby Swiss present the excellent radio show “The Echo Chamber” on KFAI weekly.

Emperor Tomato Ketchup

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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

If you go down to the worms today…

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The worm bucket’s been sitting at the bottom of the garden for nearly four months now. I’ve been visiting it on a regular basis, opening the lid away from me to stop getting a mouthful of fruit flies (thanks for the tip, Scarlett!) and putting in my kitchen waste as and when. There’s slugs and mouldy bread on the top but at the bottom is the beginnings of some nice old rich worm compost and more worm liquid in the bucket below. That’s great you know, as all you have to do is pop down once a week and wait, no money’s involved, how good is that?

The rest of the garden is starting to perk up now. The weather has been a bit of a pain of late with only the odd dry hour here and there you can work in. The other week I was fed up as a mate at Tai Chi had been telling us how well his garden was doing (a lot better then mine was!) so I went out and got a bottle of Miracle-Gro in despair (as the worm and the comfrey liquid still need a bit more time) and an evening it weren’t raining I gave the garden a good feed. Now there’s flowers on the the Tomatoes where there weren’t (see “where’s the buds bud?”), there’s even a couple of Courgettes forming, and the third attempt of the heap is looking a bit colourful too. I’m sure If I’d waited, it all would have happened naturally but sometimes I get very impatient! What difference a week makes eh?

Where’s the buds, bud?

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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!