ED Gardening thread

[DrinkingBuddy]

About half of my tomatoes have ripened so far and the first few jars of chutney have been made. This week in particular the fruit has started to ripen at an increasing rate.

There are some great green tomato recipes around if your tomatoes don't ripen, made a few jars of it last year and it was delicious.

[The Minkey]

DB - that's good going. Are yours under glass?

[Sue]

DrinkingBuddy Wrote:

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> There are some great green tomato recipes around

> if your tomatoes don't ripen, made a few jars of

> it last year and it was delicious.

xxxxxxx

I didn't go to all this trouble to make green tomato chutney :))

[DrinkingBuddy]

No, just in a raised bed in the garden.

[The Minkey]

Oh well done. Do you remember when you got the seeds in?

[Alec John Moore]

My first attempt at growing chilli peppers this year. There's something slightly devilish about the way they ripen and the green shades through brown to red.

Alec

[peterstorm1985]

Fried Green Tomatoes. Just slice, (dry on kitchen towel), season, dip in egg then flour or cornmeal and fry. Yum.

[Thomas Micklewright]

a question re basil.

I have a few small basil plants on my window sill - they were doing superbly for the past month but now seem to be dying, could it be overwatering / rain or too much sun burning them?

[red devil]

Were they supermarket bought basil plants?

[Sue]

Thomas Micklewright Wrote:

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> a question re basil.

>

> I have a few small basil plants on my window sill

> - they were doing superbly for the past month but

> now seem to be dying, could it be overwatering /

> rain or too much sun burning them?

xxxxxxx

When you say they are dying, what exactly do you mean?

Drooping, brown areas on the leaves, something else?

Window sill inside or outside? As you mention rain, I presume outside? Have you checked for pests?

[Tarot]

Is there any point in putting green tomatoes under a sun bed,has anyone tried this yet.?

[jules b]

Why are dock leaves important?

[The Minkey]

Apart from easing the sting from nettles, and probably playing host to some insect larvae or other, no idea..

Tomato ripening has commenced in earnest, and I've got some Centaurae Montana plantlets if anyone's interested, seedheads are popular with Goldfinches.

[katanita]

First year I've tried my hand at proper gardening and loving it. Because it's all been a bit of an experiment this year, I tried planting a load of slightly random seeds in a medium sized planter to see what would happen. I chose seeds based on what might be ok to sow later in the season and what looked like fun, so got saltwort (kind of like milder thinner samphire, I guess), spring onions, pak choi and sorrel. Despite doing very little other than watering them, I now have a monster crop of pak choi and sorrel, and the other two have come on nicely as well.

But now I need some inspiration for what to do with saltwort, pak choi, spring onion and sorrel! Any good recipe suggestions? Might also be needing the green tomato suggestions as well as they've been really slow to ripen.

[Peckhampam]

my favorite use of sorrel is adding it to scrambled eggs or omlette. Delicious

[flapjackdavey]

Agree re sorrel omelette, also sorrel makes a nice sauce with salmon!

I sowed some red-veined sorrel, or what was described in the seed catalogue as red-veined sorrel, in a pot this year, and it looks very pretty but it tastes nothing at all like sorrel, in fact it doesn't even taste edible :D

Ooops sorry, this is actually Sue, my laptop is being repaired and I'm using FlapjackDavey's laptop, forgot I needed to sign in as me :D

[Tarot]

If you have nettles and get stung and you have dock leaves growing in your garden too, you can rub the leaves on the stung area and it will counteract the stinging.

[Marlene]

My tomatoes have developed black round spots at the bottom of the fruit, where the flower used to be. Can anybody suggest what to do? It just happened in the last few days after tne downpour we had recently. Has anybody managed to ripe their tomatoes properly outside this year?

Tks

[Sue]

Blossom end rot, sounds like :-S

Loads of stuff about it online if you google, eg

http://organicgardening.about.com/od/diseases/p/blossomendrot.htm

I have tomatoes growing in a hanging basket which are ripening OK, mixture of red, orange and still green at the moment.

[Marlene]

I have read that. How can the soi have calcium deficiency if I apply tomorite, and the compost has a lot of broken egg shells to enrich it with calcium? I thought it was too much rain because the fruit looked quite healthy at the beginning and I was just waiting for it to ripe. I got lots of tomatoes plants but all with green tomatoes, not red ripen ones.

[The Minkey]

Blossom End Rot can be the result of by erratic watering, over or under. A deficiency of calcium wouldn't help. Sorry to hear yours are affected. Are you sure Tomorite is a good source of calcium? As for eggshells, I stick them out into my garden hoping they will help improve the soil over time but I suspect they need to break down very finely before they can be taken up by the plants. My dad's toms have also been affected, he's looking for a calcium supplement he's heard it can help correct BER problems even if used retrospectively.

I mixed a load of blood, fish and bone into the compost when planting the tom plants out into their buckets I feared I had right royally f***ed up as the plants grew so vigorously I thought it would have been at the expense of flower and fruit production, but it would seem not. They have sent out some very generous trusses which have started ripening in earnest the past week or so. No sign of BER as yet but I am keeping my eye out for it.

[Marlene]

Can I still use this stuff now? Put more soil mixed with it?

[The Minkey]

I don't know, Marlene. It may well be soluble and if not, you could probably apply it to the soil and it would leach in when the toms get watered. It's not something I've done myself. An interesting thing I read was that the soil may have enough calcium in it, but it may not be available due to under/over watering. I don't think Blood Fish and Bone would be your solution as it's a mixed fertiliser and you're looking to correct a potential calcium deficiency.

[Sue]

Loads of helpful stuff online if you google, Marlene, just put in "blossom end rot".

[The Minkey]

My strawberries have just begun a second crop - flower and fruit coming along fine.