The Tomato Lifecycle
With more than 3000 varieties, there is one for everyone and the tomato you fall in love with could as easily be red and round, as it could be purple and brain-shaped.
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How to Grow Coriander
Foodies and gardeners alike often find coriander to be among the most polarising plants in the patch, eliciting equally passionate responses of both love and hatred. While there is nothing that we can offer to change your taste, gardening haters may need to accept some responsibility. Rather than pointing the finger, it may be time to address our own shortcomings.
Coriander can sometimes feel like a tumultuous relationship that you keep going back to. But have you ever considered that maybe coriander is not the difficult partner we make it out to be, rather it always seems to be dating absolute duds? That’s right, we need to stop trying to change coriander, and rather try to understand it better.
Hero of the Month: Strawberry
To say that a strawberry is a fruit, is to call Jimmy Hendrix a guitar player. Sure, it’s true, but it also misses the point entirely. The strawberry is the ace of the garden and the king of the plate. It is an object of desire equally welcomed in Eros’ private bath house as it is a child’s lunch box. But it’s not just daiquiri makers that covet this sweet flesh- rats, slugs, birds and bats are similarly enamoured. Like looking at a camp fire, the strawberry stirs some primal longing within all of us.
Although we are all very familiar with the summer-bearing supermarket strawberry, few people realise that there are hundreds of weird and wonderful varieties that you can grow yourself. As is often the case, what we see on the shelves has been selected for commercial characteristics such as size, yield and disease resistance, often at the expensive to taste. There are red, white, blue, black, green and even purple strawberries. Consider the pineberry, a white strawberry with red seeds and a pineapple like taste. Hands up if you’d like to grow this? Thought so.
Once you have settled on a preferred variety, the best option is to start with a seedling (or a runner if you have access to existing plants). Find a site with well draining soil and feel free to add plenty of organic matter such as compost. Strawberries do best in full sun, so share your favourite sun baking spot.
Spring Onion 'Japanese Red Beard': Hero of the Month
There’s nothing quite like a stage name to build a bit of hype and to reinforce a legend. How many records, for example, would Ice-T have sold under his given name, Tracey Marrow? Would "Ice Ice Baby" have been such a hit if it was by an artist named Rob Van Winkle? However, sometimes the truth is greater than any alias, especially when backed by enduring substance. The same rings true in the vegetable world. The Red Beard Onion is both talented and enduring and, just like Beyoncé, it will always deliver a hit.
'Pineapple' Tomato: Hero of the Month
While more than three thousand varieties of the tomato exist, most of us would only be accustomed to a bare few. And dishearteningly, that few mostly don’t exude the wonderful characteristics that exist - of diverse flavour, texture and colour - but rather, they exude transportability. The compounding effect is that as gardeners we tend to grow what we know and hesitate at those that we don’t. But just because 2995 varieties of tomato are slightly softer-skinned, or can’t be grow to a uniform size or may look a little alternative, it doesn’t make them any harder to grow.
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