Monday, 3 December 2012

Garden excitement

It's all happening! My plants were taking ages and then they started shooting up. After two days of rain they're looking INCREDIBLE. The rain halted this afternoon and a spot of sun came out so I dashed outside. This is what I saw...

Black berry plant - first berry forming. My green-fingered friend, Barbara, gave me this plant (and a blueberry one too!) It is doing really well.
Three of my heritage tomato varieties are now in their new home -  a new bed I created two or three weeks ago. They've been growing in a pot for AGES! They're now in the fast-growing phase. The ones here are Malawi Cherry, Geranium Kiss and Tigerella. I'm addicted to netting so I've made a protective cover for them. My fingers (and toes) will be crossed over the next few days as they adapt to their new bed and the great outdoors.
Another of the heritage tomato varieties. This is Geranium Kiss. The leaves have a very geranium scent.
This is a 'Teddy' sunflower.
This is the first sunflower that opened. He's now fully open and the others (all on the same plant) are opening too. You can see loads of green growing in the bed and dashes of yellow at the bottom from other sunflowers. Totally joyful!
The tallest of the sunflowers. He's just opened.

An interesting face. The petals are just starting to unfurl. She's going to be beautiful!
This is the high-yield, kitchen-pot-plant cherry tomato plant that seeded itself in the bed that I'd planted the 'parent' in earlier this year. I moved it into the main bed a few weeks ago and it is thriving. These are the first cherry tomatoes growing and ripening. It is a small, squat plant.
Beautiful butter lettuce. Loads of young swiss chard varieties in the background.
An attempt at a photo with my favourite cat (my little angel) and my favourite flower - sunflower! Bracken didn't want to have much to do with this! She's my little gardening companion and she'll easily spend an hour out here with me while I mess around with plants and weeding and netting and cable ties. 

2 comments:

Sylvester017 said...

How did your Geranium Kiss (a dwarf tomto plant w/ slightly larger than cherry-size fruit) produce for you? I planted mine too late last year and only got 2 tomatoes from 2 plants in a pot. Good container plant but too small for a bed I think. At 1st thought it was a hybrid but couldn't find info on its origins so think I'll try it in a container a bit earlier this year.

adventurelisa said...

Hi Sylvester. It did bear quite a bit of fruit but I can't say that I was crazy about the taste so I didn't plant them again this year. Yes, it is quite a squat and sturdy plant that doesn't grow crazy all over the place - very contained and perfect for container growing. That geranium influence is definitely there in the scent of the leaves (I've never liked geraniums - except to look at from afar).

I planted another heritage variety this year, black cherry. 'Normal' cherry tomato size. The fruit is just starting to ripen and they're very tasty. The tomato isn't as black as I thought it may be - but a nice one nonetheless.

I've actually got another in that is a bigger cherry size but for the moment I can't remember which variety it is! I'll need to look through my packets.

I haven't done very well with my veggies this year. I've got stuff in but overall the result is not great - most likely because I didn't water enough early on.

Let me know if you try any other varieties that work well.