London Road Station Partnership Blog

Our fruit trees are looking like shorn sheep – fresh and sprightly, relieved of their season’s over-exuberant growth. Bryn Thomas from Brighton Permaculture Trust visited last week as part of our fruit tree project. For the apples and pears, it’s been a case of pruning the side shoots, back to about five leaf points from the main leader. We’ve got beautiful fat apples on Tinsley Quince and Mannington’s Pearmain, and a few lovely pears fattening up on both pear trees. The trees still look beautiful, with dark green leaves despite aphid infestations throughout the summer.

For the plum, however, it’s been a radical change of character. She – as she’s a Marjorie’s Seedling, I always think of her as a she –  was tall and willowy when she was planted in a dustbin (how undignified!) in March 2012. She has grown happily ever since, but forever stretching upwards.  Now, the main leader stem has been cut right down. She’s going to be a lovely, rounder, more goblet-like, tree as she matures, but I confess to missing her idiosyncratic stem reaching for the sky over our fencing.

Following Bryn’s example, I think I’ll have to take the secateurs to my young miniature plums and cherries, which have been quite unruly in their growth over the summer.

Yellow courgette 11.8.13

We’re now into harvesting at London Road Station garden. We have climbing beans, yellow courgettes, raspberries, chard and sorrel, along with various herbs – sage, rosemary, oregano, chives, tarragon, thyme, dill and mint. Our beans are again towering up above the fencing, our very fragrant mint is spectacular (and held in check in a window box planter) and the yellow courgettes we were worrying about a month or so back are now are expansive after all the rain. We’ve had some currants, black and red. We’ve had some strawberries. We’ve got onions and garlic  drying in the conservatory. We were proud of our ‘cocktail carrots’, grown in a window box. I’m still not convinced that carrots are actually a good use of the space and compost, but we were thrilled that they grew and produced something edible.

Saltcote Pippin 11.8.13

Meanwhile, our young fruit trees have some fruit: the earlier apples – Tinsley Quince and Saltcote Pippin – have big green apples. It’s received wisdom that you should remove fruit on very young trees as it saps their growing energy, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut them  off. They are not due to ripen until early October, though they look deliciously edible right now. We even have some pears – well, one on each of the trees, Beurre Hardy and Concorde, but that’s enough to be proud of.

Beurre Hardy 11.8.13

We did have salad leaves of various kinds in both the shady leaf bed and underplanted in the orchard beds, but the very hot weather encouraged them to bolt, and there’s only so much you can do with bitter scruffy lettuce. We cleared the final remains a couple of weeks ago to get the beds ready for planting … the leeks.

We’ve also not managed to keep the cabbage white butterflies away from the cavalo nero and kale. It’s looking sad: nibbled, crawling with caterpillars, with tough leaves. Brassicas are a real challenge in a small garden, and they need to be netted.

We’ve also not be brilliantly successful with the ‘climbing courgettes’ (Black Forest) nor with our tomatoes. Two courgettes and three tomatoes are growing in grow bags. I think they may have dried out during our three weeks of very hot weather. I tried to revive them yesterday by giving them a real soaking and sinking bottle-reservoirs in the soil, but they are not looking at their best. I think we may need to build another raised bed up in our sunny corner: grow bags have their limitations when the weather is really hot.

So, our WINS for 2013? I think, for me, the onions, the yellow courgettes (grown from out-of-date seeds), the climbing beans, the mint (fantastic tea), the dill (it’s beautiful, just waiting to be added to smoked salmon or new potatoes), the raspberries and of course, the orchard. And we’ve done well with seeds this year: perhaps too well. There are still around 30 leek seedlings waiting to be planted … sometime, somewhere.

Our LOSSES? Hmm … cavalo nero, kale, possibly the climbing courgettes which certainly didn’t want to climb at the start, our grow bags generally which dried out. Oh, and basil …

We have now planted two basil plants in our public herb planters. It seems that people round here really like basil. The first plant was exhausted quicker than any of our other herbs. Our replacement basil seedlings then suffered from overheating/drying during the drought, but we managed to raise a few plants, one of which was planted last week in one of the herb planters …

When I checked yesterday, however, there was no sign of basil leaves, but just a brown stalk. This time, not our basil-loving neighbours, I think, but the natural vandals: slugs and snails, who thus far this summer have not been much in evidence. Unless of course, it is in fact this year’s enemy number one, the cabbage whites? I console myself that whatever the cause of the damage, it doesn’t look like the wilful vandalism of humans – and that is a good reason for optimism.

We’ve been wondering about the behaviour of our tomatoes and our courgettes, both of which are now doing well in the sun, but have particular, intriguing characteristics which have puzzled us. I’ve checked up on the varieties we’re growing to see if we can solve the puzzles.

Tomatoes

We have four tomatoes: two ‘Maskotka’ and a ‘Vilma’ in a grow bag, and a ‘Vilma’ in a 30cm pot. The Maskotka seeds we got free at the time of Big Dig Day, and the ‘Vilma’ I bought back in the dark days of February, and I have forgotten why.

All four plants are bushy, happy and producing lots of tomatoes, but most significantly not growing upwards. Do we need to do the usual pinching out of side shoots and staking? Looks unlikely: it turns out we’re growing special container varieties.

‘Vilma’

The Thompson & Morgan site gives this description: “Specially bred for growing in containers, Tomato ‘Vilma’ is a compact bush variety reaching 60cm (24″) tall. This compact plant produces a heavy crop of sweet and juicy, cherry tomatoes each weighing 20g (0.7oz) over a long picking period. Tomato ‘Vilma’ is easy to grow in the greenhouse or outdoors and will not require side shooting or training. Height and spread: 60cm (24”).”

‘Maskotka’

“A dwarf bush variety that has been specially bred for growing in baskets and containers, with cascading stems that fall gently over the sides of their pots. Tomato ‘Maskotka’ produces a heavy crop of bite sized cherry tomatoes weighing 25-35g (1-1¼oz) each, with a delicious sweet flavour. The fruits of this compact variety have good resistance to cracking whether they are grown under glass or outdoors.”

Courgettes: ‘Gold Rush’ = gold leaves?

We’re growing two types of courgette: ‘Gold Rush’ and ‘Black Forest’. Both have quite idiosyncratic characteristics. Both seem to be growing well now and both are producing courgette-lets. ‘Gold Rush’ has yellow fruits … and all our plants, both in the station garden and in my garden, have some bright yellow leaves. Funnily enough, they look healthy. There’s new growth and no sign of wilting or browning. It’s curious that in my garden, the ‘Gold Rush’ are growing alongside green courgettes, which don’t seem to have the yellow leaf problem.

Hmm … is this a mineral deficiency (magnesium? potassium?) or is it a characteristic of the plant? A quick flick through various web forums suggests that many other gardeners have this same ‘problem’. In both cases, the beds were manured in the autumn, so mineral deficiency seems a little unlikely. It may be a problem of take-up: something is stopping the plants taking up the nutrients in the soil.

The solution seems to be: 1) try tomato feed to increase potassium (we’ve started, but this could in fact be the problem) and 2) try a foliar feed of Epsom salts. This is used to promote more balanced take-up of magnesium, which can be compromised when plants are given potassium-rich feeds.