You may remember that a couple of years ago I was utterly baffled by a little Brown Turkey fig that I grew in a small pot on my London patio. After a year of doing nothing interesting, this small but determined fig tree suddenly started to fruit over the winter and then promptly died for […]
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The weather is dank and dark, the heating still isn’t working and the dog refuses to recall but I find I drift easily away from all of these petty everyday issues when I think of summer and the bumper soft fruit crops I hope we’re going to get. I’ve become increasingly irritated by supermarket soft […]
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In our rush to become self-sufficient, we somewhat madly placed an order for 32 bare-rooted fruit trees, 160 raspberry canes, 36 fruit bushes and 10 rhubarb plants the day that we exchanged on our little smallholding and a couple of weeks ago, they arrived. Faced with all these bushy twig things and a finite dormant […]
Read MoreI wonder if I’m being a bit too ambitious with all of the unusual plants that I’m taking on this year? First the hanging raspberry (which has admittedly keeled over as promised but has yet to produce any fruiting fronds), and now this, a climbing strawberry. I’m trying the perennial “Mount Everest” climbing strawberry plant. […]
Read MorePretty unimpressive before planting You know the old saying “too good to be true”? Well I think I may have fallen for the marketing hype on some raspberry plants to replace my old Raspberry canes. They claim to be trailing or tumbling canes that you can grow in hanging baskets. This makes me suspicious in the […]
Read MoreStrawberries being planted in a hanging bag One of the many problems faced by people with very small urban gardens like mine is that even if you’re lucky, the amount of growing space that you have in full sun is pretty minimal. Because the garden is so small, half of the growing space that I […]
Read MoreAmazingly, some of the pineberries that I planted in my hanging bag are coming back to life. Better still, they’re actually starting to fruit! It’s important to cover the plants with straw or glass over the winter to protect them, as they’re rather fragile and delicate. I failed to do so, being occupied with the […]
Read MoreIt finally happened. I was so thrilled by my Brown Turkey fig tree as it produced so many overwintering figs, you know, over winter. And as we’re having such a warm snap at the moment, I thought I’d pop it outside so that it could enjoy some of this lovely bright sunshine. So I popped […]
Read MoreI have a certain fondness for gooseberries, something that I think is shown by the fact that I’ve squeezed five bushes (two green hinnomakis, two red hinnomakis and a trusty old invicta) into my tiny space. They’re marvelous things, gooseberries, useful for everything from a liquor to liven up fizz through to pies. They’re one […]
Read MoreI brought my very normal Brown Turkey fig tree (because of the usual space problems, I have to grow my fig tree in a pot) in from the garden about three weeks ago thinking that it probably wouldn’t survive a frost. So it’s been happily sitting in the sunlight coming through the French windows for […]
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