Fruit Ideas, Tips & Guides

Would you like to maximise your cantaloupe harvest? This list of good companion plants for cantaloupe will help you give your plants the best chance of thriving and fruiting.

How to Grow Rhubarb Find must-know tips for growing rhubarb and getting your best harvest here! Rhubarb growing guide

The curly herb Parsley crispum is naturally slow to germinate. If the soil dries out it may never germinate.

The oldest anthology of Japanese poetry refers to ‘seven plants showing green through the cold earth as harbingers of spring’.

The Umbels family are far from humble when grown well. When grown badly like Hemlock (conium maculatum) they are poisonous, even fatal but many species such as carrots, parsnips and fennel are edible or even medicinal. The Greeks and Romans knew a thing or too (until Hemlock killed Socrates)

Rhubarb Forcing Pots Find out how to force rhubarb in your garden with rhubarb-forcing pots here! Did you know you can force rhubarb?

2024's Best New Garden Plants: Fruits and Vegetables Expand your palate and try growing these new fruit and vegetable introductions in your garden this year. New fruit and vegetable introductions for 2024

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ARE ANY OF YOUR houseplants edible? A new book by the owners of the beloved rare-plant nursery called Logee’s Greenhouses suggests that we make room for some delicious candidates among our potted indoor plants—including some of the many choices of citrus that are well-adapted to growing in containers.

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When I woke up yesterday morning, it was misty. We’re approaching the middle of October, which is the usual time for the first frosts of autumn in my part of the UK. People in different areas are already reporting the arrival of the frosts on Twitter. This means it’s time for me to pop out into the garden and bring in my lemon tree (which I grew from a pip, several years ago). It has been enjoying the summer weather in the garden, but it’s only really hardy down to -10°C. I’ve nearly lost it a couple of times, and it has died right back to nothing, but somehow it always manages to come back.

They may not look like much, but these little fellas could be the Holy Grail of growing citrus from seed – polyembryonic seedlings. What’s happening is that two seedlings are growing out of one seed (in other cases it can be three). One of these seedlings is a true seedling, formed via the normal process of fertilization. It will therefore have characteristics from both its parents.

Over the bank holiday weekend, Ryan and I came to the conclusion that the front gardens aren’t working for us as they are, and came up with a fairly drastic plan to annex one of them into the back garden, in order to provide us with an outdoor dining area. That plan is simmering away in the background, as we work out one or two niggly little details.

It used to be that a ripe strawberry was a red strawberry, but things have moved on and there’s a lot more variety in strawberries these days. White strawberries, in particular, are becoming more common, and they offer up a challenge in terms of deciding when they’re ripe.

I had a bit of time to do some garden things this morning, and finished my sowing list for the spring season, and sowed a batch of agretti seeds.

Last Sunday I wanted to buy some wooden planters for the vines, so that they can clamber up the arbour, so we set off on a bit of a garden centre ‘crawl’ to find what we wanted – for them to fix to the arbour they had to be within a certain size range. And to fit within the budget they had to be within a certain price range…

Today Blue Origin today successfully launched the New Shepard space vehicle’s Mission 9. The spacecraft is carrying payloads from private companies, universities and space agencies- including the world’s smelliest fruit.

Last autumn I started thinking about what I wanted to grow this year, and I decided that – given the current Brexit situation – it might be wise to have a garden of more traditional crops, ones that we enjoy eating, and which would give us fresh food in the event that all of the imports are stuck in a big parking lot in Kent awaiting customs checks. Since then I haven’t given it too much thought, mostly because I’ve been waiting for the government to get its act together and decide what’s happening.

I found some time (and a blackbird-free window!) to spend in the garden yesterday afternoon. After pottering around looking after my seedlings, and repotting my salmonberry, I had to do some watering. April has been uncharacteristically dry, I don’t think we’ve had any rain to speak of this month. Everything in a raised bed is doing OK, but things in containers were starting to wilt.

It started at the garden centre, where I was helping to put newly arrived plants out in the autumn/winter ‘tub and basket’ display. There’s a good range of ornamental plants on offer, all looking very cute in their youthful stages, in various colours and textures. They might not have the showy flowers of summer bedding, but they’re all interesting plants. The winter garden doesn’t have to look dull! The ones that caught my eye were Gaultheria ‘Very Berry’, cute little plants with dark green leaves, white bell-shaped flowers (they look exactly like little blueberry flowers, because they’re related), and quite large berries ripening from white to pink (ultimately they should go red).

The political weather has been stormy of late, and as the sun has come out to play at last, the garden seems the safest place to be. There’s a lot to be done to get it ready for the growing season, so time spent outside is never wasted. A lot of what I’m doing at the moment could best be termed ungardening, clearing out the contents from last year’s containers, and reusing the potting compost in the bottom of new pots, or as a soil improving mulch.

I spent an hour or so in the garden yesterday. What I went outside to do was take care of my ‘Ruby Beauty’ dwarf raspberries, which were planted together in one container (which is OK, they’re designed for relatively close planting). In 2015 they looked fine; in 2016 not so much. I think I forgot to prune back the fruited canes. So yesterday I pruned out all of the dead wood, transplanted one into a container on its own and repotted the remaining two in the same container, so they’ve got more space and some fresh compost underneath to lift them out of their ‘slump’.

I have always wanted a mulberry (Morus spp). I mean, not always, but the desire for a mulberry is so deeply ingrained in my gardening history that I can’t remember when, or why, it took root. My indispensable Evernote database has mulberry-related entries back to 2011, so let’s assume it was then.

THE TERM “food forest” from the permaculture world sounds big—like if I suggested you start one, you’d probably say, “I don’t have room for a forest of any kind.”

The last of my root vegetables and Leeks are now consumed and a distant gastronomic memory. New baby salad leaves have been available but I do not take enough care to be able to binge on them until later in the season. Rhubarb once again is prolific and abundant so that I and the neighbours are enjoying the fruit of my labours literally.

Homegrown  vegetables are definitely worth the time and effort and organics are even better. Growing vegetables will reward you with a fresh and tasty supply of your favourite vegetables. You can also have the reassurance of knowing how they were grown without the unnecessary spraying of countless chemicals.

Early Spring Rhubarb breaking Through

Great Runner Beans need plenty of water retentative and nutrient rich soil. That is why preparation is important but here are some more tips to rescue this years crop.

More exotics can be grown in the UK as we get hotter summers and temperate winters. Why not try a Pomegranate or Punica granatum a large shrub or small tree.

I am growing my early potatoes in various containers but these canvas sacks look to me to be a great idea.

Courgettes

Strawberry plants are cheap and easy to grow. Strawberries can be picked from spring to autumn if you choose the right varieties.

Get it right and you can grow bumper crops on straw bales.  It is clean, cheap and environmentally friendly. The principle is that decaying straw generates heat to form a ‘hot bed’encouraging healthy roots.

You don’t need to have muscles like Popeye to grow spinach. It is a simple leafy vegetable that is undemanding if given the right conditions.

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Suttons and Dobies