Horticultural Homily
Monday, August 15th, 2011 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanWe appear to have grown a huge amount of cherry tomatoes. I like cherry tomatoes, but there is a limit to the amount I feel the need to eat. This should be contrasted with the amount the tomato plants are putting out. They appear to have no limit.
Our cucumbers are heading the same way. To begin with we weren’t sure the cucumber plant was going to take. Now we are not sure it isn’t going to take the entire upper bed. We have already had to cut it back several times to let the other plants in there get some sunlight. In the meantime, quite apart from the widely spreading leaves, the little jungle below them is filling with small and rather prickly cucumbers. They taste very nice (insofar as cucumbers taste of anything), but they are relatively small and rather prickly. Rather more like Roald Dahl’s snozzcumbers than the things you find in the supermarket. Either way they, together with the tomatoes and before them the mange tout peas have become the very definition of the word fecund.
With the possible exception of the sweet corn, which is growing but not necessarily producing edible cobs (time yet for them to prove me wrong) and the lettuces, which start off well and then disappear, probably due to the attentions of their sluggy nemeses anything we plant in the top bed seems to just sprout. I wouldn’t be surprised to find leaves sprouting from the bamboo canes we use to provide support to our more gangly plants. We have a couple of lilies that can’t quite get going, but that is the fault of the bloody beetles we found on them. It’s probably best to forget them until next year or the year after in the hopes the insects will move on to pastures new and then try again.
Right at the bottom of the garden we have what ought to be a plum tree. It’s more of a plum bush spread as it is, across the trellis, instead of doing proper, treeish things. That has unexpectedly produced a crop of plums that have found their way into a cake and our tums. It wasn’t supposed to produce anything on account of the relative shade down there, but…
All this horticultural fertility is rather upset by the behaviour of the middle bed. It was, we thought, an ideal place for pumpkins and courgettes. Well, we had a couple of courgettes, but the rest seem to have disappeared though they may yet grow back. The pumpkins are equally uncertain. Next year I think we will just go for beans and pulses in general. I don’t care if they refuse to grow, can’t stand the brutes myself, but Furtle is keen and I suppose they will look nice while they are actually growing. There are other things we have planted in the middle bed, such as the raspberry, which seem merely to be existing rather than positively growing. I am hopeful that they will pick up next year and that they are simply just bedding in like my climbing rose did.
The buddleia just is.
Our cucumbers are heading the same way. To begin with we weren’t sure the cucumber plant was going to take. Now we are not sure it isn’t going to take the entire upper bed. We have already had to cut it back several times to let the other plants in there get some sunlight. In the meantime, quite apart from the widely spreading leaves, the little jungle below them is filling with small and rather prickly cucumbers. They taste very nice (insofar as cucumbers taste of anything), but they are relatively small and rather prickly. Rather more like Roald Dahl’s snozzcumbers than the things you find in the supermarket. Either way they, together with the tomatoes and before them the mange tout peas have become the very definition of the word fecund.
With the possible exception of the sweet corn, which is growing but not necessarily producing edible cobs (time yet for them to prove me wrong) and the lettuces, which start off well and then disappear, probably due to the attentions of their sluggy nemeses anything we plant in the top bed seems to just sprout. I wouldn’t be surprised to find leaves sprouting from the bamboo canes we use to provide support to our more gangly plants. We have a couple of lilies that can’t quite get going, but that is the fault of the bloody beetles we found on them. It’s probably best to forget them until next year or the year after in the hopes the insects will move on to pastures new and then try again.
Right at the bottom of the garden we have what ought to be a plum tree. It’s more of a plum bush spread as it is, across the trellis, instead of doing proper, treeish things. That has unexpectedly produced a crop of plums that have found their way into a cake and our tums. It wasn’t supposed to produce anything on account of the relative shade down there, but…
All this horticultural fertility is rather upset by the behaviour of the middle bed. It was, we thought, an ideal place for pumpkins and courgettes. Well, we had a couple of courgettes, but the rest seem to have disappeared though they may yet grow back. The pumpkins are equally uncertain. Next year I think we will just go for beans and pulses in general. I don’t care if they refuse to grow, can’t stand the brutes myself, but Furtle is keen and I suppose they will look nice while they are actually growing. There are other things we have planted in the middle bed, such as the raspberry, which seem merely to be existing rather than positively growing. I am hopeful that they will pick up next year and that they are simply just bedding in like my climbing rose did.
The buddleia just is.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-16 01:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-16 07:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-16 08:42 am (UTC)You become a Gardener.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-16 03:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-16 06:52 pm (UTC)Number One Son has ineffably communicated that he will eat any cherry tomatoes and / or cucumbers which may be troubling you.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-16 10:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-16 11:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-22 05:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-17 03:13 pm (UTC)The laws of pruning differ for espaliers to standard tree, so you might want to read up on that a bit. With plums, I think you need to be careful when you prune too as they're prone to disease if done at the wrong time (or so I think I heard on the radio the other day).