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This week in your Kitchen Garden.

RubyToogood said:
That's not the correct treatment for cordon tomatoes, which is to pinch out any side shoots growing out of the angles between the leaf stalks and the stem.
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Cool, that's what I've been doing. I've staked it to a broom handle for now.
In terms of feeding, do I start to give it tomato feed now it's flowering, or once fruits start to form?
 
Reading this I need go manage my tomatoes. Did take the top out as I'm limited to 4ft in my mini poly and it's bushed out a bit.

Courgettes have produced one so far that's yellow and like 6 inches long. From 5 plants idk if that's early or the rest are doing badly lol. Plants look healthy to me tho.

Strawberries I'm up to about a dozen, lettuces are producing faster than I can eat so many salads up coming. The 3 different beans seem to be doing good but there's flowers now? Assuming that's good lol.

Got another small greenhouse type frame ready to go, need to get starters in etc. So many spare seeds to play with.
 
campanula said:
You can pinch out the top when you have 5 or so trusses of flowers...so the fruits ripen and it doesn't continue to grow skywards.
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Thanks - it seems to have stopped growing upwards of its own accord and I have 3 trusses that are all flowering - I am happy with that, this is the furthest I have got with growing indoor tomatoes and even if I don't get any fruit this year, it's given me confidence to try again next year - although with a smaller variety of plant :D
 
Sounds like you're doing well with your toms, Epona . Mine went outside rather late due to the cold spring (north London btw) and consequently had become a bit leggy. Then I damaged the stem of one while repotting it :facepalm: We have flowers though! One set on each of my two plants so far. Here's one <proud>
Tomato flowers 23 June.jpg
 
Ron Merlin said:
Sounds like you're doing well with your toms, Epona . Mine went outside rather late due to the cold spring (north London btw) and consequently had become a bit leggy. Then I damaged the stem of one while repotting it :facepalm: We have flowers though! One set on each of my two plants so far. Here's one <proud>
View attachment 430667
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Yep I think my problem was a) I got a mis-labelled plant that I thought was going to a bush type cherry tomato but it's a cordon/jack and the beanstalk type, and b) we had such a grey and overcast spring that it went leggy trying to get some sunlight, so I've ended up with a massively tall plant on my kitchen counter :D

It had about 9 or 10 flowers open when the sun was out this morning :)
 
Ron Merlin said:
campanula 's given the best advice about making it bushier I'd say, so you should do well with it now we have some proper sunshine. You might even have more than you can feasibly eat/freeze - I love having to give mine away. Family, neighbours, work colleagues, randoms behind the goal at footie, PLEASE TAKE SOME! :D
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Well I do hope that is the case, but there is always room for tomato based pasta sauce, and N does love his hot sauce experiments, so we'd have to have an awful lot of tomatoes to have too many :D
 
I
RubyToogood said:
I have harvested two big colanders full of blackcurrants and am only about halfway through.
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So satisfying - well done.
RubyToogood said:
They've done really well at surviving periods of neglect and propagating themselves on the quiet over the years.
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I miss my home-made Ribena (although I don't miss the hours of picking, boiling, moiling and toiling from a dozen bushes). They are very greedy shrubs though and would really reward you with up to 8 kilos yield on a mature bush, so if you did a spring fertilise with something like Osmacote slow release granules, or even basic Growmore...plus a final bump in August, you would see a noticeable difference in crop size and resilience. All my other currants and berries were grown under a regime of benign neglect...but after being knocked out by a trip to the Wisley fruit beds (whilst doing my hort.dip), I did make an effort with blackcurrants.
 
campanula said:
I

So satisfying - well done.

I miss my home-made Ribena (although I don't miss the hours of picking, boiling, moiling and toiling from a dozen bushes). They are very greedy shrubs though and would really reward you with up to 8 kilos yield on a mature bush, so if you did a spring fertilise with something like Osmacote slow release granules, or even basic Growmore...plus a final bump in August, you would see a noticeable difference in crop size and resilience. All my other currants and berries were grown under a regime of benign neglect...but after being knocked out by a trip to the Wisley fruit beds (whilst doing my hort.dip), I did make an effort with blackcurrants.
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Interesting. I've finished now and got 3 kilos from two bushes. I need to up my game!
 
As of Wednesday morning, had 20 flowers open on my triffid tomato plant - I've been tapping the main stem when it is sunny to pollinate, but have also taken to using a small paintbrush taped to the end of a chopstick for more precise pollination duties :D

Honestly if I get one small green tomato out of this I am going to be ecstatic, it will be the best I've ever done on indoor tomato growing :D

Now can someone tell me what is going on with my mint plant where it is getting very leggy but also only growing tiny leaves? I've had this problem with mint before and I wonder if I just need to move it or feed it with something.
 
Is
Epona said:
As of Wednesday morning, had 20 flowers open on my triffid tomato plant - I've been tapping the main stem when it is sunny to pollinate, but have also taken to using a small paintbrush taped to the end of a chopstick for more precise pollination duties :D

Honestly if I get one small green tomato out of this I am going to be ecstatic, it will be the best I've ever done on indoor tomato growing :D

Now can someone tell me what is going on with my mint plant where it is getting very leggy but also only growing tiny leaves? I've had this problem with mint before and I wonder if I just need to move it or feed it with something.
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Is it moroccan mint Epona? If so, a coupla thoughts. Light might be an issue causing it to etiolate...but always, the first formed leaves on m.mint tend to be really teeny, only expanding as the top of the plant stretches and newer leaves grow. Almost as if the plant is conserving energy. I am looking at mine now and it is really only the last couple of weeks that I have started to see larger, lusher leaves...all the basal leaves are really tiny and the stems have gone quite woody. Newer, softer growth should see an increase in size and vigour.
I don't really fertilise any of the herbs (apart from actual 'weed') but if yours is in a fairly small pot, potting up to a larger size can help. Also, although it will set the plant back a couple of weeks, in terms of size, nip it back quite hard to encourage bushier growth. You really don't want to end up with 2 or 3 long, floppy stems,
 
My tomato plant appears to have given up on reproductive efforts.
It's alive, it's not growing upwards any more, in fact very little is happening.
It got a whole load of flowers which I ensured were pollinated and then nothing.

Is it acceptable to blame the weather/lack of sunlight for this, rather than my poor horticultural skills?
 
I have courgettes getting bigger I know nothing about them except I don't like them. Says something about being a msrrow if left too long? Never trier one.

Parrots will eat it but not sure whether to do it now or later. By far the best crop by weght lol.
 
newme said:
I have courgettes getting bigger I know nothing about them except I don't like them. Says something about being a msrrow if left too long? Never trier one.

Parrots will eat it but not sure whether to do it now or later. By far the best crop by weght lol.
Click to expand...

Just imagine a much blander, much more watery and much larger courgette - I don't know many people who rave about marrows :D
 
Epona said:
My tomato plant appears to have given up on reproductive efforts.
It's alive, it's not growing upwards any more, in fact very little is happening.
It got a whole load of flowers which I ensured were pollinated and then nothing.

Is it acceptable to blame the weather/lack of sunlight for this, rather than my poor horticultural skills?
Click to expand...
Are they getting enough water? Have you fed them?
 
RubyToogood said:
My total goosegog harvest was 2. One per bush. They've been in a couple of years now. They're going to have to start earning their keep or they'll feel the sharp end of my spade :mad:
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It can take them a while to get going, they fruit best on two to three year old growth. They're generally happy with a fair bit of shade, if you're still wondering what to do with your shady corner...

Not sure if it originally started life as one bush or two, but the clump I've been picking from clearly hasn't been pruned in a few years and it's about seven foot tall now and fruiting like mad. Reckon I've had at least 5.5kg off it and there's probably close to another kg of unripe / hard to reach ones still. It's a nice sweet dessert type too, great to eat straight off the bush.

I'm going to give it a bit of a tidy up and take fuckloads of cuttings later in the year.
 
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