Gardeners Tips » Fruit, Vegetables & Herbs

Forced Rhubarb Growing in Yorkshire

hortoris — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:44:06 +0000

What can you say about Gods Own County supplying Gods own fruit-pie-filling in the form of early forced Rhubarb?

Most definitely your own rhubarb grown in your garden, with a bit of horse muck for added flavour, will far exceed the watery stuff you can buy at supermarkets.
Forced in the Yorkshire Rhubarb triangle and picked by candle light you will also experience that acidic tang of this remarkable herb (not a fruit).

Other Tips Related to Rhubarb

Tips for growing Rhubarb
Rhubarb growing tips
Buy Rhubarb from Thompson & Morgan
Yorkshire Rhubarb Good Enough to Eat

Juniper – Root and Branch Review

hortoris — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 12:59:24 +0000

Key Features of the Juniper .

Latin name Juniperus communis other common names Rocky mountain juniper
Height up to 20 feet old trees can have a wide spread
Type of tree – evergreen conifer
Leaves – Short prickly blue-green needles growing in whorls of three
Flowers male yellow and female green on separate trees
Fruit spherical fleshy berries taking 3 years to ripen from green to black
Bark grey-brown
Family Cypress family

Origins and Distribution of the Juniper .

Wide geographic spread in the northern hemisphere.
Prominent in USA, Canada, Europe and Japan.

Uses and Attributes of the Juniper .

The berries are used in cooking and to flavour gin.
The wood and branches give off a nice scent when burnt and are used in some smokeries to preserve meat.
As dwarf conifers and small shrubs they are very popular in gardens.
There are many documented medicinal uses. Tradition says the berries were used to end pregnancies.

Gardeners Tips for the Juniper .

Often confused with trees from the cedar family. The Red Cedar is a juniper virginiana but junipers are not from the Cedar family.
Junipers are very useful evergreens for use in rockeries and in providing winter interest in the garden.
Berries take 3 years and trees need a male and female so do not expect a big crop in the garden.

Other types of Juniper and key species

There are over 50 species of Juniper with varying habits.
Juniper chinensis, Juniper virginiana Juniper squamata are available as many cultivars.
Juniperus chinensis the Chinese juniper variety ‘Blue Point’ has silvery-blue leaves
Creeping Juniper is low growing prostrate form of Juniper with gray-green foliage.

Juniper comments from elsewhere

In North America, the Micmac and Malecite Indians, native to the maritime provinces of Canada, used Juniperus communis for sprains, wounds, tuberculosis, ulcers both internal and external, consumption, and rheumatism. Their general belief was that the juniper hardened the body and made it better at fighting off illness. read more on planet botanica.
Juniper, an important understorey shrub or small tree in the Caledonian Forest, has declined recently and is now the subject of conservation concern. Common juniper has the largest geographic range of any woody plant in the world. It is circumboreal in distribution. Trees for Life
Juniper is often the first bonsai ever owned by a novice, due to its massive success in the mallsai market. The Juniper is well known and appreciated by all bonsai growers. Art of Bonsai

Credits
Juniper Tree, Valley of Fires by vambo25 CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Common Juniper by bottomdollar99730 CC BY 2.0

Pineberry – The White Strawberry

hortoris — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 12:11:00 +0000

Suttons Seeds and some supermarkets like Waitrose want us to experiment with white strawberries. A contradiction in terms as strawberries are strawberry coloured. I am not usually keen when a retailer pushes a product in my direction and it will be sometime before I consider growing white strawberries deliberately.

White Strawberry or Pineberry

White strawberries are a special breed of strawberry that taste a bit like pineapple. For differentiation they are now called Pineberries but they are a hybrid of Fragaria chiloensis and Fragaria virginiana.
Pineberries start off green, gradually turning paler as they ripen. By the time the deeply set seeds turn deep red, the white fruit is ripe.
When the fruit is almost totally white but studded with red seeds it should be sweet and juicy enough to eat. The fruit is normally ready in May.
The colouring is the reverse of the usual strawberry with white seeds on a red fruit. Flowers and plants are similar in appearance
Pineberries are slightly smaller than most commercially grown strawberries a bit less than an inch in diameter.
Best grown in a greenhouse with fruit lifted from the compost with straw or coir.

Gardeners Tips
See out other article Growing Juicy Red Strawberries

credits
Photo kingdesmond1337 CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Great Tips for Growing Mint

hortoris — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:30:32 +0000

Mint Cultivation and Growing Tips

Mints grow in shade, partial sun and full sun although they prefer cool, damp, shady locations. They like poor soil.
Mint’s strong scent wards off insects and can be quite effective if planted with cabbage and tomatoes.
Mint attracts few pests or disease and doesn’t need fertilizer. If you get brown spot on the leaves destroy the plant.
Mint has the best flavor if trimmed every two or three weeks.
Use the newest young leaves for the kitchen.
Pot up some mint into a pot and grow in doors.

Containing and Controlling Mint Roots

Mint is a notorious spreader that has roots that will run underground. The plant can become a right proper nuisance. Not surprisingly it can be propagated by root cutting or division.
One favourite trick is to grow it in sections of sewage or drainage pipe. Cut a piece of pipe obtained from a builders merchant in to various lengths and bury at least a third of the pipe in the ground. The sections can be filled with compost and planted up with mint and other herbs at different heights.
Grow the mint in a bottomless bucket or a grow bag.

Varieties of Mint to Grow

There are several varieties of mint (25 at my last count) some of which are quite showy with green and yellow, green and white and purple tinged leaves.
I like ginger mint which grows bushy and about 2′ tall.
Moroccan mint makes a good mint tea and peppermint is always popular
Apple mint with rounded leaves, also known as ‘Bowles Mint’ has a better flavour than common mint Mentha spitaca.
Most leaves fall in winter but can be dried or preserved in vinegar
Eau de Cologne mint or Mentha piperata citrata has a purple leaf. Pennyroyal or Mentha pulegium is different in appearance to other mints such as Spearmint and Peppermint.

Growing Mint from Cuttings

Take cuttings in spring and you’ll have young mint plants that are ripe for picking before August. The plants are deciduous but perennial so you will have leaves for future years.
Cuttings should be taken from the top growth of your mint plant about 3″ in length. Remove lower leaves and cut the stem just below the leaf node
Remove the growing tip on the stem.
Insert into a pot of compost containing some perlite for drainage. Firm down but take care not to crush the stem.

Read Grow Bouquet garni Herbs.
Companion Planting Mint

Mint is a great plant for companion planting. It aids in the growth of at least sixteen different vegetables but makes a bad companion for Parsley. see Mint Companion

Photo by Edsel L Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Grafted Tomato a Turbo Veg for 2012

hortoris — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 07:27:23 +0000

What are Grafted Tomatoes

Grafting produces growth and fruiting of one plant on the rootstock of another.
Currently over half of tomatoes grown commercially in the UK have been produced on grafted stock
Grafted veg will grow when the days are shorter and the weather is cooler so they are easier to grow outdoors
Tomatoes are very tender perennial plants and stand up well to grafting

Suttons and Dobies

Suttons of seed fame are contacting all there trade customers with a new product offering for sale in 2012. ‘ Turbo veg’ are claiming up to 75% more crop from the Grafted Tomato plants that they will be offering for sale.
4 varieties including ‘Elegance’ and ‘Zebrino’ will be available using a new process that grafts above the first true leaf not below the cotyledons as most currently available grafts are.
Suttons have identified a rootstock that has vigor and disease resistance missing from the scion (graftee). It claims to have greater vigour, higher yield, longer cropping and better disease and pest resistance.
Following success with tomatoes you may want to try grafted Sweet and Chilli Peppers, Cucumbers, Melons and Aubergines
Two plum-fruited varieties ‘Dasher’ and ‘Sunorange’ are available on one plant! Not my cup of tea!

You can learn to graft your own tomatoes from watching this you tube video (but why would you want too?)

MAIN PHOTOGRAPH Tomato by photon_de, on Flickr under creative commons license 2.0

Help with Garlic Growing

hortoris — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:05:13 +0000

You will not need a lot of help growing Garlic if you select UK Garlic bulbs that are appropriate for our climate. Buy from seed merchants rather than use the greengrocers supply which may be a tender overseas variety. Plant separate cloves in rich soil from now until January but sooner the better.

There are two main types of Garlic with either hard necks or soft necks both are fine with many varieties and flavours.

Help Growing Garlic

Garlic should be planted in a sunny spot during October or November so that they form a good root system before winter.
Garlic will stand at least 10 degrees of frost and needs cold weather to help it form cloves next year.
Garlic needs plenty of phosphate for root growth before planting, a little nitrogen in March to develop the leaves and help it photosynthesise and plenty of potash to harden off.
Break up the bulb into cloves and plant each one 1-2″ deep ‘nose up roots down’.
Leave 5-6″ between each planted clove.
When planting use the outer cloves with one rounded and one flat side from each head. The inner cloves, which are square or triangular should be used in the kitchen.
The best crops will be produced on light well drained soil.

Help Gathering Garlic

Water the plants regularly from spring. Stop watering a month before harvesting
Gather the crop in June or July.
The garlic with soft necks will bend over like an onion when raedy to be cropped. Hardnecked garlic should be picked when the leaves start to change colour.
Snap off any flower spikes as soon as you see them. Eat them in stir fries as revenge for taking energy from your plants.
Store Garlic in the dry. They are fine in platted ropes like the old French onion sellers.

Help Am I too Late to Plant Garlic

You can plant Garlic in frost free soil until January.
If you need to plant them later than January then, according to the National Vegetable Society, ‘the early root system can be enhanced by a form of chitting. Half fill a cardboard toilet roll tube with damp compost and set a clove on top. Stand the tubes indoors on capillary matting for a week or two, so that the roots start into growth. Once the roots emerge from the bottom plant the clove, tube and all, as soon as soil conditions permit.’

Help Selecting Garlic Varieties for the UK

Solent Wight – a heavy cropper with large cloves
Albigensian Wight – spring or autumn planting good keeper
Purple Wight a ‘hard neck’ best used fresh as it is a poor storer
Long Keeper large white bulbs to harvest in July from autumn planting.
Early Wightanother ‘hard neck variety’ with AGM in purple variety
Luatrec Wight fat pink cloves with white outer skin and a good keeper.
White Pearl autumn planted will store reasonalble well.
Pink Lady a pink skinned bulbs and gloves that can be eaten raw.
Germidore softneck variety that is well adapted to British conditions. Produces large, white bulbs with a mild but rich flavour.
Chesnok Red a hardneck variety from Georgia with attractive purple striping and a lovely, full-bodied flavour. Lovely choice for baking as it has a lovely creamy texture. Great for garlic bread!

Elephant Garlic would be in many best top ten lists but is closely related to the Leek side of the allium family see Gardeners tips

Note Bulbs of various varieties are from available from Thompson & Morgan

Credit photo ‘Garlic, food, roadside market, farmer’s market, culinary, cooking’ by mullica, on Flickr

Help Growing Globe Artichokes

hortoris — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 09:34:23 +0000

Globe Artichoke Cynara cardunculus is a perennial thistle with an edible flowerhead. It grows 6-10 feet tall and has arching, deeply cut, silvery green leaves. It crops in the second year after sowing.

Growing and Cultivation Tips

The globe artichoke requires a rich sandy well manured soil. It prefers a warm sunny site.
Seeds should be started off inside and transferred outside once the soil is warm. Alternatively sow seeds outdoors in free draining soil in mid spring when the soil has warmed up.
The globe should be planted in rows three feet apart with two feet between each plant.
After harvesting the main head, secondary heads will appear and these too can be used.
In cold areas, cover the plant with a mulch of straw, compost or bracken to protect it through the winter.

‘Green Globe and other seeds available from Thompson & Morgan
Globe Artichokes grown from seed,can take a long time to mature and it’s far easier to buy ready-rooted suckers to plant in the spring.

Globe Artichokes are architectural plants growing 5 feet tall and make big clumps of arching, jagged silvery leaves that are at home in the border or veg patch.

Cynara scolymus blown open

BBC Tips on Growing Globe Artichokes
‘In the first year, plants need to put all their energy into making growth.
Remove any flowerheads as they form.
In the second year, allow the edible heads to develop for harvesting in summer.
Pick the bud at the top first, when it’s large and swollen, but before the scales have started to open. ‘

Giant Pumpkin Growing

hortoris — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 08:57:59 +0000

The British record for the heaviest pumpkin weighing 1,725 pounds can be beaten and you can win local shows next year by striving for this level of achievement.

Growing Tips for Giant Pumpkins

Start in February with a large hole filled with up to a ton of well rotted horse manure
Buy ‘giant seed’ via the internet or use Atlantic Giant seed.
In March sow the flat seeds, edge downwards not flat, in good sized pots in the greenhouse.
Plant out on top of the compost or manure pile when the risk of frost has gone. Keep a cardboard box to cover the plant on nights when frost is a danger.
Remove all but one (the chosen one) of the pumpkin fruits. If there are several, choose one that is about 8 feet from the roots.
Cull all further fruit regularly.
When your pumpkin is the size of a football set it on a bed of straw to protect the skin and spread the weight.
Bend the stem so the fruit has room to grow.
No surprise that Giant Pumkins need lots of space plus they are gross feeders and drinkers.

Watering and Feeding Tips

Keeping the roots hydrated is the key to Pumpkin growing
During dry weather the leaves can syphon water back out of the fruit!
Drip water alongside the main stem or use a soaker hose. Water for at least an hour a day and more in hot weather.
Avoid wetting the leaves which can get powdery mildew.
A balanced diet is what you aim for. Feed with nitrogen rich chicken pellets or similar, in spring, to encourage leafy growth.
From July you can change to a high potash feed to help the fruit develop.
A can of Tomato feed every other day and an occasional seaweed feed with all the trace elements will provide a bit more of a boost
Pumpkins get most food from the soil and root at intersections where stems and side shoots join. Cover with compost and bonemeal.

Pumpkin Protection

Pumpkin skin is thin, soft and delicate when growing. Take care not to damage the skin.
If the skin is damaged and the pumpkin starts to bleed sprinkle the wound with sulphur fungicide to cauterise and prevent infection.
Shade the skin from hot sun during the day.
Trap as much warmth around the pumpkin during the night when growth is fastest.
A polytunnel will give added protection but is not essential.

Swiss Chard a Vegetable Show Stopper

hortoris — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:42:06 +0000

Autumn sunshine sets off the traffic lights in the vegetable plot. A low angle for the rays of sunshine creates an extra opportunity to appreciate this vegetable. I like the leaf texture and think Chard can look so colourful that I will grow some amongst the flowers for next year.

Swiss Chard Varieties

Ruby Red has stunning deep veins and can be picked young.
Bright Lights is a seed mixture ready within a month.
Lucullus with a clean white stem.
Bright Yellow as it says on the label
Leaf Beet Rhubarb Chard is deep red burgundy coloured.
Leaf Beet Bulls Blood is used as a salad leaf.

available from Thompson & Morgan

Eating Swiss Chard

Also called Leaf Beet, Swiss Chard is similar to spinach with a slightly bitter flavour.
Swiss Chard is pungent and tastes slightly salty.
It contains an exceptionally impressive list of health promoting nutrients and is definately one of your five a day.
Both the leaves and stalk of chard are edible, although the stems vary in texture with the white ones being the most tender.

Swiss Chard HC

Although Swiss Chard is available throughout the year, its main season as a vegetable in the UK runs from June through August when it is at its best.

From previous posts
* Swiss Chard is a tall leafy green vegetable with a thick, crunchy stalk that comes in white, red or yellow with wide fan-like green leaves.
* It is ornamental enough to grow in the border.
* Chard is easy to grow from seed and grows upto 18 inches tall and spread.
* Eat and cook Chards like spinach.
* Organic seed is available and if growing it organically watch out for slugs

Top Ten Round Courgette Varieties

hortoris — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 13:03:28 +0000

Curcurbita pepo may have been cultivated for upwards of 5,000 years but I bet they have not always been called Courgettes. We already call them Courgettes, Zucchini, Squash or Marrows.
Below are some of the named varieties of round or ball shaped courgettes now available in the UK and elsewhere.

Top Ten Round or Ball Shaped Courgettes

De Nice a Fruit Rondo – pick from golf ball size upwards.
Tondo Chiaro di Nizza
Florido a yellow fruit
Summer Ball
One Ball another yellow round variety, grow with Eightball.
Tondo di Piacenza a dark green italian variety
Brice a light green skinned ball shaped courgette
Eight Ball is a snooker ball sized courgette OK as a marrow
Zucca Marina sweet skin, yellow flesh and upto 20lbs in weight.
Tricolour F1 hybrid round Courgettes available from Thompson & Morgan

Other sources Marrows – Watering, Pollinating and Harvesting
Seed suppliers list

Top photo Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) by adactio.
Second Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by marcusfrieze