Gardener's diary - the tomato install

Spring 80 (93 day season)

The race against the hedges and growing lawns has slowed and I’m finding my pace again in the gardens.

Beautiful thalictrum are in flower along with alliums, clematis and digitalis. Flower buds are appearing on the trachelospermum, hydrangeas and lavenders.

The wisterias are waving their long stems, grabbing hold of anything they can like drain pipes or nearby trees. I’m undecided on wisteria, they require a huge amount of maintenance and seem as though they can be destructive to brick work and foundations. Interestingly, Horniman head gardener, Errol Reuben Fernandes discusses growing wisteria in its natural state, untouched by human hands which is confusing to any gardener.

Slugs and snails are rife this year - they’ve eaten fox gloves, Japanese anemones, hydrangeas, rudbeckia, brunnera and all my allotment courgettes, squashes and cabbages (anything newly planted in the garden is their favourite food) . The frost didn’t make its usual cull and conditions are optimal for them, thriving in the damp, humid weather.

My usual deterrents are void - wool pellets would do the trick however I arrived and checked over my clients summer display and found a slug happily sat on top of the pellets. They have small jaws with many teeth, called a radula which can do a lot of damage in just one evening. After some research, I discovered Richard Jackson’s organic slug pellets - I’ve applied them alongside nematodes and hoping for the best.

Big tomato install 🍅

Last weekend, my partner and I planted all of our tomatoes at the allotment. He has always wanted to grow his own fruit and vegetables so I gladly share my allotment with him. This year, he decided to grow: Tomato ‘Artisan bumble bee mix’ and ‘San marzano’ - both indeterminate so will fruit throughout the season.

I cleared a spot at the allotment for him and have been enjoying watching him lovingly water his seedlings on our window sill for 2 months. He would ask me questions, commenting on which was bushiest or expressing concern by a yellowing or curled leaf.

After his rigorous research, he decided he would use membrane at the base. Membrane will help manage the bindweed that has seeped over my plot and also should help retain moisture. He borrowed my higonakami knife (a gift from the team at Niwaki for my birthday, thank you again) to cut small square holes.

We stripped the bottom leaves from each tomato plant, planting deeply, staking them and concluding with a generous water.

A heron

I took an impromptu walk on Hampstead Heath, deciding to go to the pond and feed the water birds. Chick season is wonderful, particularly with the moorhens and coots as the chicks go through many colour evolutions.

A new visitor arrived - a long legged heron. It wasn’t interested in food and instead quite interested in me, staring fixedly towards me for sometime.

The heron’s feathers were long and wet, hanging downwards, stained by the dirty pond water it hunts in. I walked alongside the heron as it moved slowly along the bank. At one point, it turned towards me and seemed to look me in the eyes. It was an overwhelming feeling to be so close to nature - for a moment, I was able to consider how this bird will live out its life alongside mine. It will hunt, produce offspring and could even spend its whole life by this pond as most herons in the UK don’t migrate.

Bird of the week:

Song thrush - I heard my first song thrush this week. It was charming, 3 different verses repeated like an alarm.

An additional note - a speckled baby robin trapped itself in my allotment shed, all fine now.

Ikebana of the week

Roses and a peonie - all home grown on my allotment.

I’m not a big admirer of these orange roses, I believe it to be Rosa ‘remember me’. It was found abandoned on a bench with no label so I decided to grow it next to my shed, a lucky dip of roses.