Diary from the Pandemic Day 19 - Kids' Activity: Cress Heads

I used to run the gardening club at the local primary school and one of the fun activities I would do every year with the children was "Cress Heads". These are fun little characters made out of empty eggshells, cotton wool and cress seeds.

It's been about 10 years since my daughters last made cress heads but we thought we would have a go today to set some up ready for the Easter weekend. It was good fun. Here are the instructions.

You will need:

Egg shells
Cotton wool
Toilet roll tubes
Craft bits - felt tips, Sharpies, coloured paper, glue, tape etc.
Seeds e.g. cress, mustard, grass.

Step 1 - Ideally, when you break the eggs to use them, try to crack them close to the top to give plenty of shell left to be the character's face. Also try to have a few spare because they can be broken when making them if handled a little roughly. Rinse them out ready for use.

Step 2 - Cut the toilet roll tubes into three rings. Check that the eggs rests nicely on the tube rings. If the rolls are a bit wide, cut them and use tape to tape them back together again a little smaller.

Step 3 - Use pens and craft materials to decorate the tubes to look like clothes for the egg characters.

Step 4 - If you want, cut hands and shoes out of coloured paper and tape/glue them onto the tubes.

Step 5 - Use permanent pens and googly eggs (if you have them) to make silly faces for the egg characters.

Step 6 - Very carefully put pieces of cotton wool inside the egg shells. You will need quite a lot because it shrinks down when you wet it. But don't ram it in or the shells will break!

Step 7 - Water the cotton wool and sprinkle seeds on it

Step 8 - Put the characters in a bright position and keep the cotton wool damp. In a few days the seeds should germinate and then grow into silly hair for your egg characters.

Diary from the Pandemic day 17 - Sweetcorn

My absolute favourite food in the entire world is corn on the cob - cooked simply and served with a knob of salty butter.

It is rather lovely that sweetcorn is something that you can grow in your own garden and you will never taste a better sweetcorn than one that was picked just minutes before you cooked it. You see, sweetcorn is full of sugars when it is growing and once it is picked, those sugars progressively get converted to starch. As such, the sweetness dwindles and the flouriness increases. As you can imagine, those "fresh" corn on the cobs you buy in the shops are along way away from the ones you can grow yourself. If you like sweetcorn, then please try to grow some so that you can experience this.

Sweetcorn is a member of the grass family and you will soon see that the plant looks like oversized grass plants. They are also wind pollinated, so the flowers on them are not pretty and you need to plant them close together so that the pollen will easily transfer from the male flowers of one plant to the femail flowers of another. Poor pollination will result in cobs with gaps in.

There are two main types of sweetcorn that you can grow - the normal corn on the cob sized ones, and the mini ones that you can eat whole or add to a stirfry. There isn't any significiant difference in the size of the plants, despite the different in the size of the crop, but the mini ones can be planted individually or in single lines because they are picked before the kernels develop so pollination success is irrelevent.

When planting out the full sized cob corn, it is necessary to plant them close together and it helps to plant them in blocks of plants so that pollination is more likely to be successful. So, I would recommend growing a minimum of nine or twelve plants and planting them out in tight rows of 3 or 4 plants.

Sweetcorn originates from South America so likes sunny, warm weather. It is not particularly hardy to cold weather so you should start your plants off indoors at this time of year or wait a month to plant them direct into the ground. Germination can be a bit patchy so I would recommend sowing more than you want to make up for that. Generally you will get one full sized cob from each plant and maybe a smaller second one. Therefore, I would normally sow between 60 and 90 seeds. That may sound ridiculous but we all love homegrown corn so the four of us eat it every day for 10 to 14 glorious days in the summer and then the crop is over for another year. You can freeze corn but it is never quite as good as fresh.

They say that sweetcorn doesn't like to have its roots disturbed so if you aren't sowing directly into the soil, I recommend growing them in toilet roll tubes filled with compost. This way, when you come to plant out, you just plant the seedling and paper tube together. By that point the tube will be going mouldy anyway and it will continue to break down in the soil and the plant will grow through it.

Sweetcorn doesn't suffer greatly from pests. Sometimes a little maggoty thing will eat it from underneath and you will see this as a kind of twisted looking plant that will go on to die. Slugs and snails will munch through small seedlings if they are unprotected. Last year we lost a few plants to squirrels and we had to net them, but that was the first time in over twenty years of growing sweetcorn. Now they have a taste for them I imagine they will be a problem every year. Badgers are also known to devastate a sweetcorn crop overnight but we don't get badgers, deer or rabbits on our site, thankfully.

Once in the ground, sweetcorn plants quickly grow away, broading their leaves, shooting up in height and establishing robust roots. They will flower and then the cobs will start to form. If they are mini corn you will need to keep a close eye on them at this point and squeeze the cobs to check on development. You want to harvest them when they feel like they are a centimeter or so in thickness. Any more than that and they will get tough and develop a hard core, which is not edible.

With the larger corn on the cob you need to allow them to continue to develop until the silk tassles have turned a dark brown. At this point is it worth splitting the outer greenery slightly so that you can see inside and see if it yellow yet. This isn't easy to judge and you may end up picking some when they aren't quite ripe and others when they have started to go a bit tough and chewy, but hopefully most of them will be just right!

To harvest, give the cob a good yank downwards to break it off. Earwigs like to lurk in this area and will probably drop out as you do this. Then in the kitchen, trim off the top and bottom and put the whole thing, still wrapped up, in the microwave for 3-4 minutes to cook. At this point, although hot, the greenery and silks can be easily pulled way to reveal a beautifully cooked cob inside.

Diary from the Pandemic Day 16 - Growing Salad

We enjoy a side salad in our house and probably eat one three or four times a week, depending upon our meal choices.

The word "salad" can mean so many different things and can have a multitude of different ingredients. As such, you can fairly easily grow yourself some kind of salad - even if it is just a potato salad!

Our typical side salad could also be called a "garden salad", and for good reason, as the ingredients within it are possible to grow in your garden.  Normally ours will include some kind of leaves, often lettuce, sometimes rocket, watercress and/or spinach, then some raw carrot, cucumber, tomatoes, beetroot, maybe celery or spring onion. Most of these ingredients I have either already talked about in previous posts or I will cover in future posts, depending upon the vegetable family that they belong to. So, in this post I shall be looking at the leafy element of salads.

The most obvious salad leaf is the lettuce. When growing lettuce it is easiest to think of them as either those that form heads or loose leaf ones. With head lettuce, you wait until the whole thing has grown to form a ball then harvest the whole thing. With loose leaf ones you can pull off leaves as and when you want them and let the plant regrow. Which you grow is just down to your preferrence. As well as the typical pale green leaf varieties, you can also get red/purple leaf types, which can look very attractive in a salad.

Lettuce are quick and easy to grow. The seeds are quite small and seed packets usually contain far more than you need. They can be started off indoors or sown directly into the soil at this time of year. Once they have germinated, it is useful to thin them out so that the individual plants have plenty of space to grow. Slugs and snails enjoy lettuce so you will need to protect your plants from these pests. Lettuce also isn't particularly keen on being in full sun all day so a partially shade spot is useful. If your plot doesn't naturally have shade then you can grow them in the shade of other plants such as cucumbers or French beans.

Whether you harvest your lettuce or not, it will continue to grow and eventually decide it is time to flower. When lettuce flowers the leaves turn very bitter and are no longer nice to eat so at this point you may as well remove the plants to your compost bin. In order to try to give yourself a good supply of lettuce over several weeks rather than way more than you can eat all in one go, sow just a few seeds at a time and roughly every two weeks. This way you should have just a few ready at a time, with more coming on behind.

Another popular salad leaf is rocket. As you will have seen yesterday, rocket is part of the brassica family. You need only a few plants of rocket to supply your needs. Like lettuce, it does better with a bit of shade, otherwise it will flower and this means the leaves become depleted as the plant puts its energy into reproduction.

Watercress is often paired with rocket but this isn't really suitable for growing at home. It requires fresh running water to grow successfully and safely so it is best to leave that one to the experts. Landcress does exist as a reasonable, although inferior alternative.

The other leaf in that common trio is spinach. Spinach is very easy to grow... or perhaps rather, too easy to grow. Spinach leaves in salad need to be small and tender and spinach can quickly grow big, lushous leaves. Although these are still useful in other dishes, such as pasta, they aren't good in salad at that point. So, as with other salad leaves, a series of sowings will help to keep a supply of small leaves. It also have a tendancy to want to flower and this is made worse if in direct sunlight.

A good alternative to spinach is leaf beet or chard. These are both related to beetroot but grown for the leaves rather than the root. Again, when small, the leaves can be picked and eaten in salads. They seem to grow more steadily than spinach and are less likely to go to flower so are good alternatives.

Of course, some of the very easiest things to grow are cress and mustard. Both of these are grown until they have only just germinated and are cut to eat before the true leaves emerge. As such, they are ready to eat within just a few days and you can quickly sow more seeds to get another crop. As they only use the resources contained within the seed to grow, they don't need any nutrients from the soil so they can be grown on something as simple as damp cotton wool. This is an option for a bright window sill and can be done whether you have a garden or not.

Similarly, if I have any out of date beetroot, chard, lettuce, spinach or brassica seeds that I would otherwise throw away, I sow these into seed trays and harvest them either when tiny, like cress, or just after the first leaves have formed. These tender leaves make a lovely addition to a salad and are what trendy chefs would call "micro leaves".

Other leaves to consider are some of the bitter and/or peppery leaves such as mizuna, chicory and endive. Personally I'm not much of a fan of the flavour of these but some people love them. They are, however, handy because they can be grown from autumn and into the winter, giving you leaves for salad when other leaves are no longer available. It is certainly a good way to change the flavours and mix of your salad with the seasons.

Another handy tip when it comes to growing leaves for salad is that they can grow quite happily in old growbags. So, if you have previously grown tomatoes and peppers in growbags, the following year you can use those bags to grow salad leaves, thus getting more value for money out of your bag.

As leaves are so quick and relatively easy to grow, they are worth growing and they can easily add substance and interest to your salads, changing with the seasons.

Diary from the Pandemic Day 15 - Growing broccoli, cabbages and other family members

One of the biggest family groups within the commonly grown vegetables is the brassicas. This is sometimes also known as the cabbage family and it includes all varieties of cabbages, brussel sprouts, broccoli, kale and cauliflower. There are also some other members of the brassica family that at first glance might not seem to be related to the cabbages. These include mustard, radishes, pak choi, rocket, turnips and swede.

It is important to know that all these plants belong to the same family because families tend to use the same nutrients out the soil as each other and suffer from the same pests and diseases. As such, it is useful to not plant members of the same family into the same piece of soil year on year. So, although it may seem obvious not to grow cabbages where you grew cauliflowers last year, it may be less obvious that broccoli should not be planted in soil that grew rocket the previous year.

 

Being such a vast group, you are very likely to want to grow at least a few things from the brassica family, even if not the whole array. They are certainly useful plants to have in the kitchen and they are very nutritious. However, if you don't like a particular vegetable then there is no point growing it.

I make this point because so often I see advise suggesting that if you are new to vegetable growing then you should start by growing radishes because they are so easy to grow. Yes, it is very easy to grow radishes but I don't like radishes as they seem to mostly taste of ground with a hint of hot pepperiness. If I had started my vegetable growing career with radishes I might have decided that it wasn't worth bothering with if it was going to result in such horrible tasting produce!

So, general rule of thumb, if you know you don't like it, don't grow it. Having said that, however, I have discovered a love of some vegetables that I previously didn't like simply because when you eat them fresh and young, they have a flavour and texture so much better than anything shop bought.

Cabbage is not everyone's favourite vegetable for sure, especially if your memories of it are overcooked boiled portions as a child. However, it is worth remembering that cabbage is delicious in coleslaw, Chinese cabbage can be made into kimchi and red cabbage makes a fantastic pickle. It may seem old fashioned but with a bit of thought and the right variety, cabbage can be very trendy.

If none of that lot takes your fancy, then maybe you should look at the broccoli/cauliflower branch of the family. The big heads of broccoli you buy in the supermarkets are called "calebrese" when you grow them so look for this when buying seeds if this is the type you want to grow. Or you may prefer purple sprouting or tenderstem broccoli and these are particularly handy in the vegetable garden because they crop in March when there is very little to harvest. Cauliflower can be tricky to grow successfully, often not forming very big heads or having brown marks on the white curds. However, romanesco cauliflower is a good deal easier to grow and much more impressive looking in the kitchen.

If you love sprouts at Christmas then growing your own is something to really brag about when the family gathers around the table for the feast. They are fairly easy to grow, although you may find them smaller than the ones you can buy in the shops. Kale is also a very good winter vegetable and can be harvested over a long period of time. It is exceptionally nutritious too!

Lovers of Asian cuisine should consider growing pak choi and other asian leaves. Again they are straight forward to grow and some of the leaves, such as mizuna, can be grown into the winter.

Rocket is a very trendy vegetable these days and its peppery leaves work very well in salads or when paired with cheese.

Lovers of hearty winter stews should consider growing turnips and/or swede. They grow well through the winter and store well too so it is no wonder that people have survived off them throughout history.

Now is a good time to sow brassica seeds. They all have the same tiny black spherical seeds, which are a little fiddly but just big enough to pick up and sow into individual pots or modules. It is really important to label what you have sown as the young plants all look very similar so you won't be able to tell them apart until after you have accidentally planted them in the wrong place!

The young seedlings will need to be pricked out and potted on as they grow bigger. It is worth burying quite a bit of stem when you do this as this makes the plant less likely to be snapped.

By about June they should be big enough to plant out in the garden, although it is also fine to leave them inside for the time being, unless there are in low light conditions and getting a bit leggy. They can grow on a bit in pots and planted out once you have harvested some of your earlier crops and have freed up space.

It does seem like everything in the garden wants to eat brassica plants so it is important to take this into account as soon as you plant out in order to limit damage. Before you walk away from your freshly planted seedlings, make sure you have put some kind of protection over the plants - this could be individual cloches as a short-term measure, but ultimately, your bed of brassicas will need to have netting over the top of it. If you don't do this, then by the morning you will be left with just stems, with pigeons having eating the leaves. And if the pigeons don't eat your brassicas then the slugs surely will so use some kind of slug protection.

After a few weeks, cabbage white butterflies will start to take an interest in your brassic patch and they will lay their eggs on them. If you don't destroy the eggs then they will hatch into caterpillars and this will devastate your plants. You can get some very fine netting that will not allow the butterflies through so you can erect this from the start, otherwise it is a case of visual inspection and dispatching. The disadvantages of the fine netting is, firstly, it stops you getting in easily to weed so your plants might get swamped by weeds, and secondly, should there be any gaps in the netting, butterflies will get in but birds etc. that prey on them won't be able to.

Later in the season, some of your brassicas will get white fly, but as pests go, this is fairly minor and can just be washed off before eating. Flea beetle is also a problem and these tiny, hoppy creatures nibble pin-prick sized holes into the leaves of brassicas. This isn't generally a problem on vegetables where you don't eat the leaves, such as broccoli and cauliflower, but it can make rocket and pak choi particularly unpleasant to eat. You can spray against it or you may be forced to grow these inside.

This may sound like a daunting array of pests and problems and it can be frustrating when your beautiful plants get damaged. However, they are very resilient and usually grow back from pigeon and catarpillar attack. It is more desirable to avoid the damage though and this can be achieved with netting and vigilance. They are such an important range of vegetables and collectively have a cropping season from June to March so it is worth the effort.

Diary from the Pandemic Day 13 - Growing Beans

Today I finished tidying up in the greenhouse so now I am all set to do some serious seed growing, which is handy as this is the perfect time to sow the seeds of the tender plants.

Tender plants are those which won't withstand cold weather and can only be planted out once all risk of frost has passed. These include things such as tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, courgettes, pumpkins, sweetcorn, and French and runner beans.

Enthusiatic newcomers to gardening have the tendency to sow seeds too early in the year and end up with plants that are ready to go into the garden before the weather is good enough to plant them out. Then they struggle to keep the plants in sufficiently large flower pots and in bright enough conditions until the weather warms up. So, either the plants suffer indoors or the gardener decides to plant things out anyway and the good ol' British weather serves up a fierce hailstorm or an overnight frost right at the end of spring.

So, the upshot is, take your time. April is a great month to start seeds off indoors but don't feel you have to get them all sown by the weekend. Get tomatoes and peppers sown if you haven't already, then move to sweetcorn, cucurbits, brassicas and beans. You have all of May to go yet before you can plant out so there is time for plants to grow and some of these will romp away.

If you are thinking about growing beans this season, then you might want to consider sowing some broad beans now. You can start these off in pots indoors or, at this time of year, you can sow them directly into the soil. I save plastic bottles for occasions such as these, and cut off the bottoms so that I can place one bottle over the top of each seed to give them their own mini greenhouse to protect them from the worst of the weather. If, instead, you are starting them off in pots indoors, you can plant them out in a few weeks when they are a few centimeters tall and, again, a bottle cloche over the top helps to protect the seedling from the weather and slugs.

Remove the cloche once the seedling has grow to the top of it. In a few weeks, the plants will flower; a lovely black and white flower with a strong scent. You can also buy crimson flowered broad beans, which look very attractive in the garden. Broad beans can suffer quite badly with black fly so it is worth removing the growing tips of the plants once they start to flower as this seems to reduce the black fly infestation. Once the flowers fade, bean pods start to form. The pods can get quite long and fat well before the beans inside have grown to an edible size so it well worth giving them a good squeeze before you pick them, and it is even worth splitting one open to check the bean size inside before picking any more.

Broad bean pods are like lovely furry sleeping bags with the beans nestling cosily inside. At first the beans will be quite small, with tender shells and little green hats. As the season progresses, the beans become tougher skinned and the hats fall off to reveal a black scar. The young, tender beans are delicious, the older black scar beans less so. As such, I would recommend picking and eating broad beans quite quickly to try to eat them all before they become tough. If they do become tough then you can remove the skin after cooking but it is fiddly.

Broad beans also freeze well so you may want to freeze young broad beans rather than have them go over. Interestingly, the pods of broad beans make some people's hands turn black when shelling them, whilst other people are unaffected. It's just a genetic thing but if your hands go black you might like to wear disposably gloves whilst podding the beans.

Runner beans are another popular bean to grow at home but, unlike the broad bean, they can't be sown outside just yet. They can, however, be started in the greenhouse now and planted out at the beginning of June. Runner beans are also a fantastic thing to grow in a jar of damp cotton wool to show children the wonders of germination.

The biggest problem with runner beans in my opinion is their stringiness. They can have pods like razor blades and have awful strings of tough pod when you try to eat them. Look out for so called "stringless" varieties and try to pick the pods when still quite small to minimize this problem.

Better still, I would recommend growing French beans instead. These suffer much less of the stringiness problem and have a great flavour too. You can get dwarf varieties, which are handy in small spaces or containers and provide a crop earlier than the climbing varieties too. The climbing varieties have high yields and are an attractive plant, with pretty flowers followed by elegant pods. You can get green, yellow and purple podded varieties and they have different shades of flower too (although I have to admit none are quite a pretty as red flowering runner beans!). You can also get flat podded varieties.

It is important to pick the beans regularly during the cropping period as they will stop cropping as soon as they have managed to form mature beans. Towards the end of the season, you can leave some to mature fully and these beans can be podded and the beans inside can be eaten as haricot beans, or dried and stored over winter.  The plants will be killed by the frosts so the end of the season is around October.

You may also like to consider growing borlotti beans, which grow in the same way and need the same care and attention as dwarf French beans. They are best left to mature to eat the beans inside rather than the pods. You can also, these days, buy soya beans suitable for growing in the UK and these can be grown in the same way as other beans. Once mature, you can cook the beans in their pods and then pop the beans out and directly into your mouth. These are edamame beans and they go particularly well in asian dishes or in salads.

With so many varieties of beans to choose from, I would definitely recommend finding space for a least some of them in your vegetable garden.

Diary from the Pandemic Day 11 - Growing Peas and Mangetout

With the weather a bit grey and cold today, I went back to tidying the greenhouse. April is the key time for starting off seeds in the greenhouse so it would be lovely to have it all sorted out and clean (relatively speaking) within the next few days.

The greenhouse ends up as a bit of a dumping ground over the winter and needs a good sorting out just so I can move around inside comfortably. Then, of course, there is the problem of soil everywhere from boots, flower pots etc., and a gizillion spiders!

There are only a few things growing in the greenhouse currently - leeks, tomatoes, peppers and some peas and mangetout seedlings. At this time of year, you can sow peas and mangetout seeds directly in the ground but I like to start them off in the greenhouse. We have a bit of a problem on the allotment with hungry mice digging peas up and eating them. In addition, the soil is still a bit cold and wet for the seeds to much feel like germinating. And, of course, we have the usual problem of slugs and snails liking to munch on fresh new growth. So, all in all, it is a good idea to start them off away from all these issues and transplant them once they are big enough to survive.

It can be quite tricky to have a container big enough to grow sufficient pea seeds to make it worthwhile. The container doesn't have to be particularly deep but you don't want the peas to end up with all their roots tangled together, which would make transplanting them difficult without damaging them.

The absolutely perfect container for growing peas is old guttering. We got some off a friend a while back and we cut them into lengths the same width as the beds on our allotment. This means that once they have grown, we can dig out a trench on the allotment and transfer the pea seedlings directly into it.

We usually grow mangetout as well as peas. There are two really good things that I like about mangetout. Firstly, because it is the pod that is eaten and not the peas inside, they are ready to harvest sooner because you don't have to wait for the peas to develop. As such they can be ready to harvest in early June. Secondly, because you eat the pod, you only need a few pods to make a portion, whereas with peas, you can pick lots of pods and by the time you have shelled them you can be surprised by how few peas you have actually harvested! Shelling peas is quite a time consuming process and you can't do it if you are trying to make dinner in a hurry. Let's just say, sometimes its handy to reach for a bag of frozen peas! But I disgress. Mangetout are also quite pricey in the shops, costing a pound or more for a very small tray. When you grow your own, you can easy grow lots and, as a consequence, you can eat lots too!

You may also consider growing sugarsnap peas, which are like fat podded mangetout. These grow very nicely - just don't forget to label them so that you remember what they are and don't accidentally waste time waiting for the peas inside to develop.

As for choosing pea varieties, there isn't a lot of difference between most varieties. Some can be planted in the autumn and overwintered for a slightly earlier crop. Some spring planting ones are described as early cropping and some are described as late. The difference between them is nothing more than a few weeks. Some peas have very long pods with lots of peas inside but generally most pea pods have about 6 peas inside when fully developed. You can also buy petit pois type peas, which have multiple small peas in pods. Lovely to eat but just remember you need to grow and pick even more to get a good portion on your plate! You can also buy some that grow into very tall plants that need to grow up some kind of support, but most varieties these days grow just a couple of feet tall. You can find some that have purple pods too, although the peas inside are green. Most have white flowers but you can get purple flowering ones too, which are particularly lovely in the garden.

Once seedlings have grown big enough in the guttering, I plant those out on the allotment and sow another batch in the guttering. This leads to "successional sowing". This can be achieved when planting straight into the ground too. The idea is that you sow your seeds a couple of weeks apart and then the plants go onto to develop and crop two weeks apart too, leading to a steady crop for several weeks instead of one big crop all in one go. It does seem to kind of work, although it seems to me that later sown peas just try to catch up and end up developing their peas when they are smaller plants.

When you plant out peas it's a good idea to provide them with some kind of support straight away for them to climb up, otherwise they have a tendency to grip onto anything within grasp. This could be something as simple as a wigwam of canes but I prefer to use branches I have pruned off our fruit trees (see yesterday's blog). They have a lovely twiggy nature that seems to suit peas perfectly and it makes use of something that has no other purpose and you didn't have to go out to buy.

Once growing, keep them free from weeds and keep the slugs at bay and all should be fine. In dry spells, water the plants otherwise they will shrivel up and that will be the end of that. They will flower and then the pods will start to form. If they are mangetout, pick them whilst the pods are still flat. For peas, wait for the pods to swell but gently squeeze them to feel for peas inside as at first the peas will be tiny. Try to pick all the mangetout or fat pea pods that are there at any one time because peas will stop flowering and making more pods as soon as they have succeeded in creating mature pea seeds. Besides, overly fat mangetout or over mature peas just aren't nice to eat anyway.

Pea moths are in the habit of laying their eggs inside developing pea pods so later in the season don't be surprised to find a maggot or two inside the pea pods as you shell them. I say that casually as if it is possible but of course it isn't - you will always be surprised when you come across a maggot - and grossed out too I should think! If you normally wear reading glasses then I would recommend wearing them when podding peas so as not to miss this pesky little creatures!

As the plants reach the end of their season they will just dry up and die and that will be that. The pea harvest only lasts for a few weeks but freshly grown peas are delicious and can be enjoyed straight out of the pod without cooking. Harvesting enough to make a decent meal can be difficult anyway so you may as well just pop them in your mouth as you go!

Diary from the Pandemic Day 10 - Growing Fruit

Over the past week, I have been giving my fruit plants some much needed attention.

The thing about fruit plants is that they are perennial and will grow and yield some fruit every year even if you badly neglect them. This is unlike vegetable plants, which are annual and you have to start off afresh every year.

So what tends to happen is that the vegetables grab my attention and I think, I'll just get these seeds sown and then I will sort out the fruit. And before I know what has happened, the vegetables are sown and the fruit is cropping and I run from sowing season into harvesting season without taking a breath. More to the point, I move on without weeding, pruning and training the fruit as I intended. This is all very silly, given how much I love picking fruit and turning it into delicious desserts and jam.

But now we are in lockdown and I have the time to properly sort out the fruit and still get all the vegetable seeds sown in a reasonable timeframe. Now is a great time to prune apple and pear trees, which is handy because mine were in need of that just to get some of the branches out of my face or from poking me in the bum!

The raspberry bed was in a real state too, having ended up with brambles growing in amongst them. Brambles are a real pain because it roots again wherever they touch the ground and the roots can quickly get quite deep. They are, of course, very spikey so pulling them out is very tricky without damaging yourself. It is, however, awful to be happily picking raspberries and to stick your handy onto sharp thorns so it was definitely a job that needed doing. 

Over the next few days, there is more work to be done in the other fruit beds. Weeding, more brambles to remove, pruning, removing old plants and so on but I am hopeful for a particulary good harvest this year with all this extra attention.

So, which fruit can you grow at home and is there time to start this year?

Strawberries - if you grow no other fruit, you should have a go at growing strawberries. They are small, low growing plants that don't take up much space and can even be grown in containers. They are quick to get established and will give some fruit in the first year and will be at their best in the second year. Every year they will send out runners, which are new plants so you can quickly expand your strawberry beds if you wish. There is still time to get strawberries started this year. Keep them weed-free and when the fruit develops it is a good idea to put them into plastic bottles with the base cut off - this will help to keep them clean from mud splash, keep the slugs off and stop birds from pecking at them.

Raspberries - these can be purchased as "canes", which you can plant straight into the ground. It is a good idea to grow them along a fence or put in some form of support to just keep them tidy but this is not essential. There is still time to buy these online and get them established this year and you may get a small yield of fruit.

Currants - these can be grown as bushes and come as blackcurrants, redcurrants and whitecurrants. You only really need one bush to provide you with more of that currant than you probably need! Once planted, they need very little attention and will crop happily year after year. There is still time to buy these online for April delivery.

Goosberries - these are another easy to grow bush. Most varieties are green but you can also buy them as red dessert varieties, which are slightly sweeter but lower yielding. They are all very spikey plants, making harvesting the fruit something of a painful chore. Also, a lot of people don't like to eat gooseberries. So, this is an important point for all fruit varieties, if you don't think you want to actually eat the fruit, don't grow it. There is still time to order these online for planting in April.

Blackberries - given that brambles grow so well in places that you don't even want them and that you can go for a wander to the nearest hedgerow to pick blackberries in autumn, you might question whether it is worth taking up space in your garden growing blackberries. However, cultivated types of blackberries yield bigger, more flavoursome fruit and are generally thornless. There are even varieties these days suitable for growing in containers and hanging baskets. These are also available for purchase for planting in April.

Hybrid Berries - in addition to the standard berries above, you can also buy a whole range of berries that are crosses between one or more of the standard berries. They include tayberries, loganberries, jostaberries, boysenberries and chuckleberries. These all make very nice jam, if you are in to that kind of thing like me, but other than that I can't particularly recommend growing any of these over growing any other kind of soft fruit.

Blueberries and Cranberries - both of these benefit from growing in ericaceous compost because the plants like an acid soil. So, if you don't naturally have an acid soil (most places don't) then you would need to grow these plants in pots. Blueberries are particularly attractive plants so look nice in the garden but I have yet to grow a yield of blueberries bigger than one batch of blueberry muffins. My only attempt at growing cranberries failed altogether but you may have better luck.

Tree fruit - common trees available to buy online are apples, pears, plums, cherries and gages. These are all still available to buy this year but don't expect more than a handful of fruit from a tree in its first planting year. You may also be tempted to try peach or apricot trees but these are particularly tricky unless you have a nice warm, south-facing wall you can grow it next to.

Most tree fruit varieties these days are available in dwarf/patio sized trees that can be grown in containers. These are handy in small spaces but will obviously give a lower yield than full sized trees grown in the ground. Once established, fruit trees are delightful, giving beautiful blossom in the spring, fruit in the summer and autumn colour so they are nice things to have in your garden if you have space.

Citrus fruit - these are especially tricky and we don't really have the climate for them so unless you have a heated greenhouse or a large, bright conservatory, I'd say don't bother. I have tried repeatedly without success and much disappointment and I have always said that when I win the lottery I will get myself an orangery and grow citrus fruit but until then I won't be trying again.

Rhubarb - not technically a fruit but grown and eaten as such, this is very easy to grow and is the first one to harvest in the spring. Again, if you don't enjoy eating it, don't grow it, but if you do then it is worth growing. You can still buy crowns online at the moment and get them planted this year. It would be ideal to leave it alone to grow this year to get established then start harvesting next year.