When I got off the train this evening, there was a whole “flower” bed of dandelions, on the station platform, gone to seed. Given that commuting is the ultimate in habit forming behavoirs, I must have walked past this little edged bed many times before but paid it no attention. But today, preoccupied by thoughts of how nature schedules things (nearly as capriciously as a train company but perhaps with a greater intelligence behind the design), I wondered at the fact that nearly all the dandelions were now seedheads. So if the seeds are now dispersing – when will the new plants appear? ( And yes I know this is a weed but when a little further on in my walk I came across a strolling dad and toddler duo – with the little boy being taught to huff and puff to blow off the dandelion seeds it seemed even more portent!)

Answers on the wind please!

However the one thing you can be sure about nature is that she’s in sync. Unlike the random factor that human nurture introduces. Here I am referring to myself.

With no windowsills to speak of, I thought wedging the plant pots into the gap/ledge between the sides of a double radiator (the radiators being under the window) would be the perfect place to put them to get lots of light. Which was all very well until with this unseasonable weather – I flicked the switch on the heating to warm myself up. Much later I remembered the tomato plants. There’s gentle bottom heat from a propagator. This was not that heat. Thinking what I would like on a hot summer’s day, I plunged them into a dish of cooling water. I swear I heard them gently sizzle as they hit the water!

Still, I did very much like the trusses of tomatoes hung out to ripen. If mistletoe is the winter bough under which all things kissing are ordained to happen  – then I think tomatoes make the perfect bough of love for the summer season!

It’s a little bit of anarchy but there are tomatoes. The only thing that prevents this low lying arrangement from working is that all those delicious tomatoes are at  the perfect height for a passing, hungry slug.

So I think I’m going to “win” but only just!

Whilst there didn’t seem to be a discernable order to which flower was next – he was quick to move on if a particular flower had nothing to offer. But if there was pollen to be collected, a high pitched excavation noise started up. Very enjoyable to stand and watch something I’d grown be harvested and utilised by this lovely rugger-jerseyed powder-puff.

However if you are good at growing chillis from seed (I’m not) then the varieties they had on display and which they do sell seeds for – which looked especially good – were Stumper, Fairy Lights and Sparkler. More details can be found on their Chillies ( spice types) page.

Marshalls had planted up some portable growing bags and nicely underplanted the tomatoes with marigolds and basil.

Suttons were showcasing F1 Lizzano – a semi-determinate patio plant which keeps producing over a longer period of time than the usual determinate patios will – and is also blight tolerant. They also had the grafted range on show again – but whereas last year there were some beautiful ripe trusses to admire – this year most fruit – with the exception of this double cordon plant – were still green. However I was really impressed by the stems of the grafted plants – I think it would be more appropriate to refer to them as trunks!

So not the best year for tomatoes – but at least the Dorset Blueberry company were still selling their delicious fruit-packed, homemade blueberry pies!

Whether it was that strange school time addiction of sticking a Vick Stick up your nose (and worse I’m sure we all shared them which would have spread germs far faster than the Vick vapours could have warded them off!) or the practice which seemed to apply only to the bedridden children of storybooks – coughty chests rubbed with Vicks ointment and then wrapped in brown paper? But whatever the delivery method – the smell was always the distinctive same…

And having not smelt it for years it all came back to me with one deep inhalation of the Plectranthus Amboinicus plant – Vicks in a leaf!

And apparently it’s not a smell loved by whitefly. So for those with greenhouses, this is an option for having them take one sniff and be off.

In Charles Maisey’s Tomato dvd for the NVS, he mentions “the smelly plant” and how it can be put to use as a whitefly repeller but I couldn’t quite catch the proper name  -  apparently this is it. Some how from his description I though smelly would be akin to stinky – but actually it is medicinally very pleasant. Just not if you are a whitefly.