Terry is the author of the definitive Tomato book (Tomatoes by Terry Marshall published by Whittet Books) and has achieved the ultimate -a growing methodology which allows him to munch home grown tomatoes for 10 of our 12 ( mostly tomato unfriendly) months!

So what did I take away from his article :

Choose your variety for what you can offer your tomato. Greenhouse or not/ heated or not/outside in a sunny spot. I admit I heed this principle only if it suits me; labelling my waywardness under the grander sounding title of ‘experimentation.

The time of year dictates the period from seed sowing to planting out. In winter allow 3 months, early spring 2 months; late spring it’s down to 6 weeks.
Which explains why things, even if sown later, often ‘catch up’.

Variety influences the length of time from flower fertilization through to that delicious first fruit moment. If they are modern cultivars, Cherry tomatoes will take 7 – 8 weeks, Standards 8 weeks but for beefsteak and large heritage, patience is required for the 12-14 week wait.

Truss Timing. A new one every 10-14 days is what we should be gunning for. Armed with that knowledge, a bit of forward counting allows you to work how many your plant can deliver, before Danny & Sandy style, summer ends.

Stringing up in greenhouses – soft jute fillis rather than string; easy to use; gentle on plants (and sounds all lovely and French).

Easy tying for all situations; Velcro plant ties.

Or do away with string completely and use metal spirals – quick, easy and support even the heaviest of plants. Having used these last year they do save time and faff; so if you have only a few (cordon) plants, worth the investment (mine came from Wilko).

In the meantime I could afford more spirals if the weather would get to grips with turning over its calendar and realising it’s May! Yesterday after several hours spent outside I couldn’t  get warm so on went the heating, which apart from the compost-drying-out consequences of forgetting I’d propped light hungry tomato pots on a couple of underwindow radiators, seemed a ridiculous but necessary indulgence.

An article on edible hanging baskets recommends Tumbling Tom Red and Garden Pearl.

An article of general interest but featuring tomatoes covers disease resistance. Charting the journey from wild plant, where resistance means survival or not, onto what becomes more important when a plant is ‘cultivated’, which is crop reliability and yield. 

In this context garden chemicals took on the fight against pests and diseases but now the preference for organic home produce plus the decrease in chemical options available is thowing the focus back onto the plant’s ability for self-defence. This time around with input from plant breeders.

A spokesperson from Sutton’s Seeds states that ‘67% of the British Tomato Crop is now grafted’ – and gives the reason for this as – ‘their natural vigour and ability to grow at lower temperatures, early and late in the season’. 

This % is commercial not home grown. But this grafting know-how is now available to the home grower.

I wondered if the commercial starting point will make these plants greenhouse only. Checking the Suttons Catalogue it describes them as  ‘five leading commercial varieties’ which will ‘perform well outside but are particularly recommended for greenhouse growing’.

So in the interests of experimentation (and due to the interrupted/delayed start my own sowing had gotten off to as a Plan B ) I’ve taken the plunge and ordered some Sutton’s grafted tomato plants. Conchita, Elegance, Santorange, Belriccio and Dasher. They’re pot ready and should arrive some time early in May. 

A satisfied customer from last year is quoted as saying he picked 50 kilos from 6 grafted plants. So provided the plants do adjust to open air living I’m going to be fascinated to see what happens.

Whilst the weather offers up a smorgasbord of seasons, gardening magazines are full steam ahead to early summer. Today between squally rain and sunshine shots I sat with a cup of tea and read what Grow it! thinks May will be all about.

Terrific tomatoes declares the cover and inside, plenty of tomatoey know-how.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about gardeners (especially the veg growing ones) it’s that they like nothing better than ‘repurposing’. Here it’s polystyrene fish boxes (the big ones presumably courtesy of a white wellied fishmonger). Once emptied of fish, they can be taken off to the unheated greenhouse to provide protection for young tomato plants with the bonus of being good light reflectors.

Plenty of recommendations on varieties ( Pink Brandywine, Gardeners Delight, Cosmonaut Volkov, Sun Cherry, Manitoba, Green Zebra, Sioux, Golden Sunrise, Czech’s Excellent Yellow, Stupice, Harbinger and Tamina with special mention going to those whose country of origin is characterised by short summers (Eastern Europe and Mid West US) and so should fruit and crop before the arrival of blight. Other recommended earlies include Glacier and Sub Artic.

And whilst that’s a lot of varieties to choose from it’s a pip in the tomato juice ocean compared to the 10,000 the magazine quotes as existing (which of itself is 2,000 more than quoted elsewhere).

Grafted tomatoes get another mention. This time ‘Elegance’ from Suttons. Again the main advantage is seen as vigorous disease resistant rootstock, especially useful for greenhouses where border soil may harbour soil borne disease.

Greenhouse tomatoes get an in-depth article on Ring Culture in the context of growbags.
Points of especial interest were:

• Make sure both growbag compost and the extra used to top up the bottomless pots (the rings) is warm
• A bottomless pot can add 8-10 litres of compost, which addresses the frequently voiced concern re growbags – too little compost
• First truss should be 30 cm above compost level. Something else to add to my things to be measured list!
• Advice on how to make a grow bag frame to get round the unsatisfactory process of staking growbag plants.

Tips for TL’s who are going to buy plants – look for sturdy plants with dark green foliage. Reject if tips curling or leaves blackened. This means they were not tucked up warmly on cold nights and will have suffered accordingly.

And then a couple of final tips. As well as upending growbags, consider keeping them horizontal but double stacked, with the middle polythene layers cut out. What I like about that idea is it should also help with staking.
And to ensure plants don’t go thirsty on hot summer’s day make watering last longer by mixing water retaining gel into the compost.

And this month’s mouthwatering kitchen garden visit - where I suspect no growbag, double stacked, upended or otherwise, sullies the planting perfection – is Aberglasney Gardens in Wales.

Where it all begins – sowing:

Recommendations: use a tray, sow 2.5 cm apart, cover lightly with compost and keep the surface of the compost moist.
A quick and inexpensive seed tray can be had from using the bottom half of supermarket fruit and veg packaging and transparent tops used as a ‘mini greenhouse’ or the surface of the tray covered with cling film, remove the cling film when the first shoots show through.

Hello Seedlings:

Within the first few days of the 1st leaves appearing (plant not seed leaves, seed leaves are only ever 2 in number and the easiest way to describe them is like propeller blades) prick out the seedlings into 13-18 cm pots filled with potting compost. Where they can stay until being transplanted to their Cropping position.

My initial reaction to those pot dimensions …. they’re large…the seedlings are going to look very lost ! On the other hand by starting off large, it reduces the number of times a plant will need to be moved into a new pot. And like us, plants find moving stressful!

Cropping position:

But the time will come when needs must. Tomato plants are ready for their Cropping position when 15cm in height (5cm shorter than KG) and flowers are just appearing on the 1st truss. Cropping position can be in a large pot, a grow bag or border soil.
Use garden canes as support and tie the plant loosely to them.

I’m a star – look after me (the care regime):

Pinch out the side shoots when 2-3cm in length.
When fruits form on the lower trusses, it’s feeding time. Delight your tomatoes with a potash rich tomato food once a week.

I found the dilution rate for tomato feed made it tricky to do only once a week without over watering on that day (in fact I think the bottle instructions were every 2 weeks which also made remembering difficult). So this year I’m going to experiment with dividing the amount of food into smaller amounts and then feeding more frequently. (I’ll write this up when I’ve worked it out.)

When the plants reach 1.2 meters in height remove the leaves before the 1st truss of fruit. There are two reasons for this recommendation; to improve air circulation round the plant and with some leaves gone, that means more energy to divert into leaf production.

I diverted a lot of my energy into removing leaves last year! If like me you can’t resist just a bit more snipping here and there then beware, there’s something very moreish about defoliating tomato plants!

Keep to a regular watering regime. Irregular leads to the fruits splitting (and potentially Blossom End Rot).

When the plant has produced 5 trusses, pinch out the growing tip. I don’t remember having this precise numeric approach last year. I think I kept hoping to squeeze in one more truss. The balance to get right is giving everything time to ripen before the end of the growing season.

Recommended Varieties:

Alicante: cordon, ideal for beginners. Last year was my first year and I grew Alicante but didn’t find it (or Moneymaker) the easiest to grow. Maybe this was linked to the sturdiness of my plants. I found cherry varieties such as Sungold and Tumbler easier. Although you have to keep an eye on Sungold – it’s definitely the little tomato plant that grew….

Beefeater: cordon, beefsteak, full of flavour.

Gardeners Delight: cordon and top home growers choice, yields lots of small, flavour filled, colourful (red) tomatoes. This really does come up time and time again as people’s favourite (them being gardeners ‘n all). For me, it didn’t outshine Sungold (though the colour’s prettier) but if I find a GD sitting on a trestle table at a plant sale, I’ll grow it again.

Tumbling Tom: bush and destined for patio pots and hanging baskets from where it’ll deliver cherry sized fruits all summer long.

Other tips I came across through out the magazine were to start feeding young tomato plants with a dilute liquid seaweed feed once a fortnight.

 Then picking up on the advice in KG to initially fill a pot only 2/3rd full with compost and top up later. In GYO I came across advice to cut a grow bag in half and grow a plant a piece, in the upturned ends. I’ve done this and it works well but what I didn’t do was as the magazine advises which is to top up the halves with multipurpose compost after a few weeks and sprinkle with blood, fish and bone. So again something to think about doing.

And if this is all too much and you want to get away from your own gardening responsibilities then GYO has a feature on the UK’s best Kitchen Gardens. Audley End, Essex with its organic Victorian methods and period varieties is on my list. For long distance escapes –Culross Palace, Fife , a reconstruction of a 17th century garden sounds wonderful as do the resident ‘Scots Dumpy Hens’ which have the run of the place or indeed palace!

A report commissioned by B&Q, set out to identify home growers’ favourite crops. Up there, at number 1, with 47% of plots growing them: Tomatoes.
And whilst lettuce and potatoes came 2nd the  % of plots growing them dropped to 23%.

So how should we look after our home-grown stars ?

April is all about Greenhouse Tomatoes:

If the soil is warm enough and cover provided when needed for late frosts, tomatoes can be planted out towards the end of the month. This sounds like good advice which builds on KG advice. 

Although there’s been no frost for a few days here in a mild part of the UK, it’s been a cold wind that blows and difficult to imagine tomatoes flourishing in an unheated environment in just a few weeks time. So I think the advice on end of the month planting and providing protection is worth making.

Border soil gets addressed. The conclusion being, planting directly into the greenhouse border is once more becoming popular due to the option of using plants grafted onto soil borne pests and disease resistant rootstock. I’ve seen reviews and reports on grafted tomatoes but hadn’t made the direct connection to that type of plant bringing border soil back into vogue as planting medium.

Advice on knowing when plants are ready for planting out, is they should be stocky, thick stemmed and the gaps, between the leaves, up the stem, small. This is in contrast to thin weak plants on which the 1st truss of flowers higher on the stem. (Having the truss weight higher up affects the plants ability to support itself).

And guess which better describes my plants last year…I really want to work on seeing if stocky not leggy can be my watch word this year.

So a piece of advice to help me achieve that is to keep the root system slightly dry as this will result in sturdier plants which will be more likely to flower while young….

Was there ever a subject more vexed than watering and how much is too little and how much too much !?

I’m also pleased to pick up a handy term of reference… ‘Cropping position’. Previously I’d not settled on a single term for that final transplant. Now I’ve found one that descriptively  fits the bill!

Advice given on how to transplant into the Cropping position is to plant deeper than in the pots the tomatoes are being moved on. This enables the plants to grow a larger root system as new roots will grow from the buried portion of stem. I did this last year, partly to overcome the legginess and it did work. Although it won’t over come the first truss having developed higher up the stem than is ideal.

The bottomless pots get another name check (see also tomato rings or ring culture). Last year I didn’t do this but will.  As a method it gets too many mentions to ignore!

When the tomatoes are transplanted into their Cropping position they’ll need a good water to make them feel at home. Like us all, when they feel at home, they’ll spread out and establish roots.

And finally, whilst not yet featuring in top ten home grown crops, I enjoyed the article on growing your own peanuts. Start either by cracking the shell of a shop bought monkey nut and sowing it (nut inside cracked shell) or the serious grower can ‘shell out’ for a specific variety ‘ Jimmy’s Pride’ !

With so much in April’s Gardening Magazines, I’m going to cover each in turn. Starting with Kitchen Garden; Beetroot on the cover but plenty of tomato titbits in-between.

Handy Tips for Making Life Easier:

• Soft Tie, flexible tie for tying in stems to supports, a quick alternative to cutting length of string and figure of 8 knots.
• Reusable Grow Bags; 23 cm deep, holding 90 litres of compost, an upgrade on the amount held by the ready-mades and your own choice of compost.

Recommended Tomato Varieties:

• Readers Top Choices: Sungold, Gardeners Delight and Tropical Ruby
• Grown by regular contributors, Stream Cottage: Amish Paste, Pink Oxheart, San Marzano.

Greenhouse Tomatoes in April:

If you and your tomatoes dwell in the milder parts of the UK, and have an unheated greenhouse, come April, as long as the temperatures undercover, don’t drop below 10 -15C, (they can cope if they go below but only for a short period) tomatoes can go into their final growing position. 

They’re ready for the big move when they reach 20cm high, are sturdy looking and the 1st flower truss is beginning to open. (I didn’t do this last year. I was planting outdoors but they’d been in their final positions quite a while before 1st flowers appeared. I’m going to need to research – did I unknowingly broke a golden rule ?!)

If planting in rows, plant Cordons 45-60cm apart, allowing more room between them if it’s a very vigorous variety being planted. An additional 30 cm, which added to the stated range, would space them somewhere between 75cm and 90cm apart.

Growing in the greenhouse offers 3 options for where to plant: 

• The border, directly into border soil
• Grow Bags
• Pots

Different things can be said of each:

• The volume and depth of soil in the border will mean less feeding and less watering are required than with bags or pots. But putting tomatoes in the same border space each year results in soil borne diseases.
• Grow Bags on the other hand mean fresh, clean growing medium every year. The problem of shallow compost can be addressed by the use of  compost filled, bottomless pots which sit on top of the bag compost . However what can’t be changed is bag length. And even limiting planting to two per bag won’t allow for the ideal spacing in-between plants.
• Pots: Big is best, a volume of 15 litres and diameter of 25-30 cms. A tip which I’d not come across before was to fill the pot only 2/3rds with potting compost which allows room for top dressing with fresh compost when extra nutrients are needed. I’m not sure how this sits with the fact you start feeding the plants with a potash feed anyway….. I feel more research coming on to see if this method is standard, recommended practice.

More from the April issues tomorrow …

This month, tomatoes storm the cover of both Grow it ! and Kitchen Garden.

Grow Your Own:

General articles on sowing, successional sowing and a glossary of sowing terms.

Although as tomatoes, even if planted at different times, seem to catch up with each other and are more dependent on the number of days, different varieties take to ripen I’m not sure how applicable successional sowing  would be.

Recommendations for heirloom tomatoes to try:

• Brandywine
• Black Prince
• Costoluto Genovese

And a great idea to plant up a cook’s hanging basket of tumbling tomatoes, chillies and basil.

If you’re interested in more unusual propagators there’s a review of 6 different models including a super capacity one for £385.

Grow it !

An article on compost making with the focus on utilizing it as part of a homemade potting compost mix.
The mix for potting up young tomato plants would be:

• 1 part loamy soil
• 2 parts sieved homemade compost
• 1 part vermiculite

An article on Italian vegetables recommending San Marzano for sauces and passata and Costoluto Fiorentino as a beef steak.

I’m less sure about the recommendation for Garden Pearl as compact/making an attractive and edible centrepiece. The fruit itself is a cherry but if my plants last year were anything to go by, it would need to be a sizeable table.

Its ‘in pot’ habit was relaxed, bordering on sprawl. As were those at  Hampton Court.

Kitchen Garden

A glut of good articles.

101 ways to a slug free garden – surely some of them must work ?

Articles on seed sowing in general along with reminders to sow tomato seeds now if they are to be planted undercover and that those sown last month will now be ready to be pricked out.

A Back to Basics article on tomatoes, covering everything from sowing to seedlings to planting and aftercare.

Recommended varieties:

• Britain’s Breakfast
• Sun Baby
• Sunbelle
• Shirley F1
• Gardeners Delight
• Venus
• Tumbler (with hanging baskets in mind)

And if eating home grown tomatoes doesn’t feel like prize enough, then for the show bench and hopefully a red card to take home:

• Classy
• Cederico

An article by a botanist looking into the tag of superfood that gets attached to the tomato – why is that and can it be justified ?

More variety recommendations from a grower who starts tomatoes off in shared 7.5cm pots on the window sill before pricking them out in to individual 7.5 cm pots.

• The Amateur
• Chadwick
• Golden Cherry
• Red Brandywine
• Pink Brandywine

And then a really interesting article by tomato guru, Terry Marshall on grafting. In this years’ bigger seed catalogues, grafted tomato plants have made a high profile appearance.

 This article explains the benefits of this technique along with a step-by-step guide on how to grow you own rootstock from He-Man F1 seeds and how to then make a graft, from that and your chosen variety.

So a month heavy with tomato promise and lovely to see photos of the small, soft, green plants which hold so much of summer’s promise.

After the subdued pages of cookery books past, the zingy saturated colour of Februarys’ Gardening Magazines dazzles.

The theme this month: Preparation with a capital P.

Digging over beds, preparing new ones, making raised ones, planning what’s going to go in which one and lots of seeds, sowing and propagators.

And packets of seeds as giveaways. Tomato varieties on offer – Moneymaker from Grow it!  Costoluto Fiorentino, Roma VF and Gardenpearl from Grow Your Own.

Grow You Own

Last summer (started off in a propagator in February and transferred mid May) the editor dedicated her greenhouse to tomatoes. A woman after my own heart!  Also growing 13 varieties, 2 in common – Gardenpearl and Black Cherry (which her team decided had the best flavour of the cherry tomatoes ).

The other 11 were Venus, Essex Wonder, Cuore di Bue, Cherrola F1, Rosada F1, Costoluto Fiorentino, Super Marmande, Orange Banana, Gold Currant Rush and Suncherry Premium.

And one tomatillo – De Milpa Purple.

On a smaller scale ( I don’t think they’ll fit many fully grown plants, which as the majority cost £150 plus is a pity ) there’s a useful comparison of Lean To’s and Mini Greenhouses.

Or for saving money, an article on how to build your own heated propagator.

Grow it !

Raring to go!  Lots and lots of practical how-to-articles for getting started on fruit and veg growing.

A couple of readers letters on last years’ tomatoes:

One, on the success of growing tumbling cherry tomatoes in hanging baskets outside the kitchen door. With the twist of a basil plant, added to the back of the basket. Perfect for deterring flies from entering the kitchen and for partnering with the tomatoes, sneaky snacking not withstanding, that do make it in.

Another, a query on what causes tomato leaves to curl on greenhouse tomato plants. Well one thing’s for sure – the reader was in esteemed company. All the greenhouse tomato plants I saw at Wisley were very curly (and I think the outdoor ones?)
The explanation could be fluctuation between extremes in temperature from day to night; for which light shading for the greenhouse was recommended and in addition, to be sure only to start feeding high potash when the fruit has actually set.

And something else I learnt – the Bokashi system of composting uses Active Bran as its ‘converter’. Dry bran, mixed with bacteria, yeast and fungi gets to work ‘pickling’ kitchen waste. More all powerful even than All Bran!

Grow it ! always finds interesting ‘Real Growers’ to go and meet. This month features Peter and Myra Grant who have, over the past decade, created a model Victorian kitchen garden . It photographs beautifully and I’m sure looks even better in real life. And as it looks like the pictures were taken late last spring, feasting eyes on all the emerging green is treat enough!

Kitchen Garden

Is thinking about early sowings for tomato plants, choosing Tumbling Tom Red and Tumbling Tom Yellow as hanging basket varieties.

Bob Flowerdew also makes his recommendations. For outdoors and mindful of blight – Legend, Histon Cropper and Ferline.
Outdoors for the joy of the tomato – Gardeners Delight, Marmande and San Marzaro, recommending growing under a plastic fly sheet, to keep off the rain, to keep away the blight.

In the greenhouse for disease resistance – Matina, Moravi and Matador and for early sowing Stupice.

For non-catalogue seeds, an article on seed swapping and just exactly what goes on, at a Seedy Sunday by the sea.

And for more conventional seed shopping, what’s new for 2010. I think most were covered last month but in case not:

• Marshall’ s: Premio (disease resistant) and Chocolate Cherry
• Simpson’s: Koralik (cherry) and Cherokee Purple (beefsteak)
• Medwyn Williams: Firebell (baby plum) and Tastyno (cherry)
• Moreveg.co.uk: Marglobe (early 1900s round red)
• Seeds of Italy: Scatolone di Bolsena

Lots to read and enjoy. Tomorrow I’ll be flicking through again to plan some days out based on recommended places.

Whoops ! These will soon be coming off the shelves to be replaced by the bright shiny newness of February …..

I bought the January issues right back at the beginning of December but turned into a calendar coward and couldn’t bear to type  January and 2010 before even the halls had been decked…..and then promptly forgot about them.

It’s probably no surprise that tomatoes, despite being as round and as red as Rudolph’s nose, don’t feature much at this time of year.  So we’ll make do with a quick flick . Also right now, the quicker the better.  Given UK temperatures – just think of a number and put a minus in front of it - I’m trying to keep myself permanently cocooned under my Lakeland heated throw.  Which makes typing tricky.

No – not a Slanket - this is like an electric blanket except it goes over you. Switch it on, crank up the heat, settle down on the sofa  and don’t move till Easter. Warmly (!) recommended .

Anyway enough about personal heated propagators – back to tomatoes.

Grow it !

Takes a look at the 2010 seed catalogues and highlights some new tomato choices .

From the Organic Gardening Catalogue, Koralik.  A Russian heritage bush variety bearing small bright red fruit. It crops early and so avoids the main August blight period.

Another choice in the context of blight  could be Premio . A disease resistant tomato from Marshalls.

Also featured are the 5 grafted tomato plant varieties avaliable from Suttons for March/April delivery.

• Elegance – a standard red
• Santorange – an orange plum
• Conchita – a red cherry
• Belriccio – a red beefsteak
• Dasher – a mini plum

Kitchen Garden

Also has a peek at the seed catalogues.

From Mr. Fothergill’s  Cherry Falls – an early maturing outdoor tumbling variety - good for hanging baskets .

From Kings Seeds a purple tomatillo -  described as extremely tasty and sweeter than green varieties.

From Plant World Seeds the new choices are :

• Red Dwarf (Romanian) – a heavy cropper of tiny pear shaped tomatoes
• Brown Berry – tomato or  Maltesers !
• Greenwich – an amber shade of beefsteak with zingy lime green insides

Grow Your Own

In which the impatient, with enough light and warmth to offer, are given encouragement to sow early varieties such as Vanessa at the end of January. Kitchen Garden’s view was that little is lost by waiting until February. And I have to say that much as I pamper my tomatoes, if there’s light and heat to be had right now I’m keeping it all to myself !

Its time for the December magazines and whilst I was thinking these would be thinner pickings they’re actually the most inspiring they’ve been for a couple of months.

And as an added bonus there’s not a piece of tinsel or glittery bauble in sight. Some seasonal ideas about making seed balls for birds but that’s as near to Christmas overkill as it gets.

So what caught my eye?

Grow it !

As if to demonstrate there’s no let up for the home grower even in December this issue includes 19 pages of practical advice on what to put on your to-do- this-month-list. Including greenhouse repairs to stem heat loss; accompanied by pictures of how to use and maintain paraffin heaters.

For anyone hoping Father Christmas will bring an allotment but forgot to specify dug over and weed free, there’s an encouraging, how-to-article on clearing an overgrown patch.

Philosophical, historical and practical all in one – an article on the Dig v No Dig. There is something of the romance of the dig I like – all pink earthworms and robins – but I suspect the charm of all that spadework might not last.

Seasonal and timely as the temperature drops and I relearn how many layers of fleece I can wear in one go and still bend at the joints, are tips on winter protection for the garden. Think fleece, cloches, cold frames and rubber tyres. But also windbreaks which don’t often get a mention as part of the protection process.

I haven’t looked out of the window tonight to check on the moon. But according to an article on the effects of the moon on plant development, if I’m going to plant by the lunar cycle I’ll need to know if it’s waxing, waning, rising , falling, at what distance from the earth and which constellation it’s in.

Whether it’s made out of cheese or can be asked for on a stick don’t seem relevant.

GYO

An article on sprouts but not a cracker or bronzed turkey in shot. If you want them for the big day, sow in March.

A short but good piece on Crop Rotation. Pots and Growbags don’t require this but understanding the principles provides a good insight into the cycle of nutrition/disease for different crops.

Growbags feature as an aside in an article on waterway gardening ( there was also an article on this back in August).  The view expressed: big consumers of time and water; bigger containers are a better option.
Growbags seem to divide people into ‘wouldn’t use anything else’ or ‘wouldn’t touch with a barge pole’ (!)

They worked for me this year. I used the jumbo ones or cut the smaller ones in half and upended them. I’ll use again interspersed with big pots. Pots are aesthetically more pleasing and can be positioned in a greater variety of places.

A good ideas page, a mix of unusual ‘giving’ gifts and ideas which would make good New Year resolutions.

If you’ve been popping by here for the past 3 Saturdays you probably feel you’ve heard enough about greenhouses but if you are toying/tempted GYO has a good article on how to make the right choice regarding size and structure.

You’d hate to find the wrong one, garlanded in red ribbon, when you open the curtains on Christmas morning.

Kitchen Garden

No seasonal cheer to kick things off here – straight into the war on blight. Potatoes rather than tomatoes but as allotments consider whether to ban the open growing of tomatoes, research and innovation is very much needed.

I’m always looking for places to add to my list for next year. If it has a kitchen garden with a mighty fine wall then count me in. Which means a long trip down to Cornwall to see the Walled Melon Yard and the ¾ span greenhouse at Heligan. Lovely article including confirmation that manure was used as a source of greenhouse heat.

I didn’t this year but I’m sure every tomato grower should adopt a chilli plant; so many good tomato recipes call for them. Looking at the photos illustrating an article on them, I’m struck that what appeals about tomatoes – different colours, shapes, sizes and quirky names, is common to chillies.

And then just when you thought points of difference were limited to growbag or no bag, dig or no dig there’s an article on biodynamics (which includes the influence of the moon and constellations) which refutes it has any influence on plants.

And then finally leaving the best to last an interview with Charles Maisey who is to tomatoes….well let me divert for a moment ……

In another life ( BT – that’s Before Tomatoes in case you’re thinking phones) I hosted a book signing with David Attenborough . The first (very early) person in the queue was a lady who proudly fished out her purse to show me a picture of the man himself, dressed all safari. In the opposite half of her purse sat her husband’s photo.

Mr Maisey should probably be in the purse of all tomato lovers. He’s grown, indulged and exhibited tomatoes for 40 years and I am guessing what he doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing.

A couple of points of resonance. He has a feed brew, the exact mix of which sounds as closely guarded as Coke or Lea and Perrins but amongst other things it does contain sheep droppings as recommended here earlier in the year .

The other was not spraying tomatoes against blight but instead cutting away leaves as soon as they showed signs of it. This is the approach I took and was really relieved that it seemed to work.

( …and looking at the pictures of his greenhouses….growbags with pots partially inserted into the top of the growbag.)

Last thought

On mad economics. The combined cost of the three magazines from WHS was £10.25. Each contains about 100 pages so around 300 pages in total ( % of which are ads) .

Also in my basket : Alan Titchmarsh ‘ The Kitchen Gardener ‘ . Hardback, illustrated book £ 6.  It’s on offer in WHS at 70% off . I love books and magazines, it  just strikes me as odd that page for page of actual information, books are so much cheaper.