Ian's Red Cherry Tomato,

I will be saving seeds this year from a cherry tomato plant that I have grown for the past couple of years.

I bought a few nice looking small red cherry tomato seedlings from some people who specialise in organic growing here about three years ago.  The sellers just said they were red and cherry....

I grew them on and they produced a nice crop of cherry tomatoes which proved to be sweet and tasty.

At the end of the season I saved a few of the tomatoes.... but didn't do anything other than wash and dry the seeds.  I cut the tomatoes open and washed the seeds out from the pulp.  Then I dried them in a paper coffee filter.  and put them away.

Last year I grew them again and again they produced a nice crop of bright red cherry tomatoes and again I saved seeds from the three plants I had.

Sadly, over last winter, something happened in my workshop and the envelope the seeds were stored in got wet.   I discovered this in about late January/early February of this year, when I found the seeds all stuck, in a mass, to the envelope.

Eventually, I decide to sow the lot and see what happened.  I simply scraped all the seeds off the paper onto a seed tray of sowing compound, watered it  and left them to it.

To my astonishment I got what must have been a couple of hundred seedlings.

I thinned them down and nurtured them.  I potted them on as they developed, pinching out a dozen tiny seedlings into a pot.  Later I split those pots into individual plants. I gave some of the pots of 12 away, I also gave away individual plants until,eventually, people were crossing the road when I approached for fear of being off loaded with another tomato seedling. 

I called them Ian's Red Cherry Tomato as I felt they had survived unfair stress and I owed them some recognition.

Now, some 6 months later I have about 20 plants fully grown in the garden, and today, I picked the first Ian's Red Cherry Tomato this year.  It was delicious.  They seem to be cropping better than ever this year.

I'm going to save seeds from these tomatoes and offer them under the Blogger's Seed Network.

If any one would like some seeds, please drop me a line at kitchengardeninfrance@gmail.com and I'll keep some for you.  I will be asking for a small contribution towards the postage costs.

The First Planting

I'm in the process of making a completely new vegetable plot for this year and was pleased on Sunday when the first plant got put in the ground.

The plot has several beds, all about the same size and I have worked out a planting schedule for this year.  One of the beds, on the west side, is dedicated to berries and it was in this bed that I planted the first new bush I had bought.    During a visit to a garden centre at the end of last week, I found some fruit bushes which had been reduced as a result of storm damage during the recent hurricane.  There were bare rooted fruit trees and some container grown bushes, all reduced.     I bought three fruit trees and a redcurrant bush.

On Sunday, I planted the redcurrant bush in the berries bed, a peach tree to the south of the plot and a pear and a plum in the same hole in another part of the garden where, eventually, I want a little shade. The garden centre actually told me that the plum tree would pollinate the pear tree, but I don't know if this is correct....   It could be that the man was mistaken... or it could be that I misunderstood what he was saying whilst translating from French to English!!!!!

I also bought some Asparagus crowns and spent Monday preparing a permanent bed for them.

Seed potatoes are chitting in the windowsill in my workshop and the rest of Monday was spent in preparing another bed for potatoes

In the new cold frame we have Ching Chiang Pai Tsai (a kind of Bok Choy), Joy's Cos Lettuce, Lollo Rosso Lettuce, Batavia Lettuce all coming along as well as some herbs.  I have not grown Bok Choy before so this is part of my response to the Growing Challenge

Overnight temperatures are still dropping down to around -3C or -4C(25 - 27F) and it's proving difficult to maintain the temperature inside the cold frame above 0C  (32F)...  But it is called a cold frame after all!!   I'm trying to line it each night with some insulation material left over from some recent work carried out on the property.

Last year I saved some seeds from a red cherry tomato that I grew and particularly liked.   I was rather disappointed to see that they had got damp over the winter and gone a bit mouldy but then dried again. I sowed them anyway and was delighted to see the first shoots appearing.

 

Many of you will remember that Kate is staying here with me at the moment and as you can see, she is helping a great deal with the layout and organisation of the new plot.  It was at her insistence that a seating area was included in the plan....

Reflections on my garden

This is my first year growing vegetables and I’m discovering I’m not very good at it. I’m especially, not very good at raising seedlings. I sow tiny little seeds that I can hardly see and usually, for me, not a lot happens! The surface of whatever container I have used seems to get a bit disturbed but that’s all. After several months of this I have only just realised that the problem is mice eating the seeds and the new growth!

I’m not very good with trees either. I planted some cypress to form a windbreak/hedge but they have stayed stubbornly at about 1ft tall. Again, only this week, I realised that deer are eating the new leaves!!

I do have three lettuces growing that I could start to pull some leaves from in a few days! The others are coming up behind. As for my first tomato, I repotted a Marmande plant (a local variety which is big, juicy and just delicious tasting) into it's final pot today and set it out, so now, it's up to the Mediterranean weather and some judicial application of water!

Onions and garlic are also looking quite good and I have some red cabbage gently growing. Peas are beginning to grow and will need some netting before long. I started some shelling beans and a couple of melon plants from seed today. I'm hoping to grow one or two Charentais melons. They do so well in this part of the world and we love them. Last year, a local farmer gave us a few and we ate them, still hot from the field. I also have a couple of butternut squash seedlings coming on in the workshop.

Potatoes are through and will need hoeing up within a week or so and the strawberries are beginning to flower. I saw some leaves where I have sown radish but the spring onions haven't appeared yet.

Four of my six herbs are doing ok - mint, chives, flat parsley and dill.
I have a couple of others sown but no signs yet, I’m beginning to think they have failed.. I also failed completely to get any basil growing!! And of course, in this part of the world, I have lavender – lots of lavender. I planted another 10 plants today to extend the lavender bed. Lavender seems to enjoy being in our harsh, clayey limestone soil. It’s funny isn’t it, both lavender and grape vines seem to need to struggle to produce their magnificent crops.

I realised today that one of the problems I am facing is mice eating the new shoots. I hadn't realised that was the problem. I'm now sowing a few seeds in pots and putting cloches made from cut down soda bottles over them. I'll see how that works?

And then there is the deer eating my new trees! I have resorted to putting my new timber compost bin (before I filled it with compost), over the tree to keep the beast out.

I suppose, for my first year I'm not doing too badly, but I know I have a long way to go! The problem is that when you are new to something you want success, nothing but success. Acceptance of the occasional failure is only something that comes with experience and I suppose that is what I am really growing.

I know that I’m only trying to grow a small bit of what I eat. I know that a lot of what I eat and drink will continue to be produced a long way away, that a lot of what I want to eat has to be produced a long way away. Maybe the experience I am growing is not just experience of my garden but a wider understanding of the issues of world food production, maybe I’m really growing understanding.

Ian