True life has an uncanny way of following fiction or I suppose the fact is that fiction is really a reflection on true life.
Some months ago I wrote about the life of a tomato Who’d be a tomato. In that story I talked about the predator becoming the helping hand.
As I knew it would, true life has emulated what I wrote and now, I find myself lavishing loving attention on the seven tomato plants that have been allowed to survive thus far.
The three on the left are Marmande, a local variety of big tasty beef tomatoes, then there are 2 golden sunrise and two cerise rouge – simply red cherry!
The Marmande are a big brute of a tomato and as you can see, they are set to become the playground bully on this bit of my domain.
I decided to grow the tomatoes in pots this year as I had filled up the beds I prepared and previously, in the UK, my father in law always grew tomatoes in pots in the greenhouse.
The lack of room in my beds also prompted me to grow my carrots in a container. On a couple of the gardening social networks to which I belong, there has been a great deal of discussion about container growing, and my friend ilex over at:
has been an inspiration to me. The other fact I learnt, only recently, is that the
carrot root fly can only fly below 20 inches (500mm) above the ground, so, by putting my carrots in this container and raising it up on a shelf the pot is higher than root fly can get!!!!
I’ll tell you in a few weeks whether it worked or not!
Elsewhere things are growing well and I’m feeding most of the French population of snails, slugs and rabbits. Just occasionally, I even manage to pick something for myself.
Rabbits ate the basil and I’m not sure it is going to recover. I thought it might but it has been transferred to the ICU and the prognosis is not good.
In the orchard there is a sad face on the fruitless cherry trees and the plums are also looking short of fruit. I have plenty of apples though and some walnuts are beginning to form. It does look however, that this year will bear a poor orchard crop for us, with no cherries, no pears and no plums. It’s too early to say about the figs, but the tree has been disturbed as this was the first year of pruning after many years of neglect.
