Sunday 11 October 2015

Zapotec Pleated Please

The bucketing rains and the great plague of slugs have proved too much for our tomatoes so they are not looking their best.

The Costoluto Genovese are delicious and have a rich, vibrant colour all the way through which looks good on the plate. Though we didn't get many on the vine, we would grow these again but probably not next year.

The Tigerella are nearly over, the plant was high yielding and no trouble at all. We're glad we tried them, they're good looking though their striping was more subtle than we anticipated. The fruit was tasty but not remarkably so, perhaps this was down to the amount of rain and their relatively small size.

We are finally picking the ♥ Zapotec Pleated ♥, the slugs love them however we love them more so we'll be growing them again next year. We love eating them in great doorstep slices, sprinkled with a little sea salt and cracked Kampot pepper. Next year we'll take the time to construct a trussed frame support, the fruit are heavy and the plant sprawling, our futile single cane supports snapped in the winds - a lesson learnt.

Saturday 10 October 2015

Sorry Spuds

We stripped out the potato plants and prospected for tubers, there were little to none. The shady reaches at the bottom of garden proved too gloomy for a good outcome. The pumpkins flopped and failed too.

Nevermind.

Stow Apple Day

We stopped by the Vestry House, filled up on homemade apple cake and bought home a bag of beauties including the Walthamstow Pink.

♥ The Populuxe Seed Bank ♥

We found out about the Populuxe Seed Bank by listening to the inspirational What’cha Growin? Podcast Episode #4 Kelly Gilliam by Gayla Trail of You Grow Girl.

We followed Kelly, It Means Tomato, @xitomatl on Twitter. Her tweets prompted us to follow up on our curiosity about her selfless and proactive, forward-thinking policy of distributing free seed, of glorious, curious heritage varieties, to growers world-wide as strategy to ensure the cultivation, propagation and preservation of her heritage seed collection. This augments the work done by the volunteer growers who collect seed for the library to preserve and distribute. All Kelly requests in return is that the seeds be grown out and distributed amongst green-fingered friends and the stories of the seeds passed on. We received sufficient seed (and a ♥ hand-written letter ♥) to share with a handful of friends before we'd even begun. Be sure to give a donation as well as covering the postage cost, because the the project is self-funded.

You can also purchase seed from the Populuxe Etsy shop, all monies raised support the running of the seed bank.

Sunday 4 October 2015

Salad Days

Saturday 3 October 2015

♥ Freckles♥

Our freckly Tricyrtis Toad Lily

Bricklane Bugle: The Barbaric Butchering of Brocks

They are having their pound of flesh... and more. 'Tis theirs and they will have it they say - despite the science. Why do we pay the subsidies?

The Badger Trust