It's all about the tomatoes

In our opinion  anyone who doesn't like tomatoes just hasn't found the one for them, it's a bit like our view on Champagne.

Paul's favourite is the Striped Cavern, which hasn't ripened yet. This is a hollow tomato (?!) for stuffing, John M is distinctly unimpressed with the concept. Faye loves the sweetness of the Sungold, Natasha is a big fan of the beefsteaks stuffed with mince and Emma's favourite is the San Marzano (as eulogised about on the Blog eearlier this year).

The tomatoes in our visitor greenhouse are grown hydroponocally (without soil). The harvests are much bigger and everything fruits much sooner, so we always have plenty to share. 

Quick Photo shoot

May is my favourite month in the greenhouse because it's full of promise with plenty of tomatoes and chillies setting, but I can still manage to manouvere around to take photos. Come July the yoga moves come in very handy to try to get whole plants in shot without tumbling over the tomatoes!

Anyway, here are a few photos.

Chillies are set - just in time for Southport Chilli Festival

Hooray - we already have chillies in fruit and it's only May 12th!

The first to set are the Hungarian Wax, we've never grown them before - I know it's obvious from the name, but they reallly do feel waxy. I'm going to have to dig out a recipe for them. At the moment the fruit are a very 1980s yellow/green (surely you can see that it's reminiscent of 80s socks, or is it just me?)

We're taking part in the Southport Chilli Festival on Friday and we'll be taking along our young chillies to inspire shoppers to grow their own instead of relying on the limited range available in most supermarkets and grocers.

Sweet, sweet, sweetcorn

They say there is nothing sweeter tasting than sweetcorn plucked from the garden and popped on a BBQ. They say you should run from the garden to the BBQ to retain as much of the sugar in the corn as possible (it starts turning into starch in just 24hours). And they say there is no going back once you've tasted super-fresh sweetcorn. So, we simply had to plant some up.

We planted 4 young sweetcorn plants in two of the raised beds this week (8 plants in total). Sweetcorn is best planted in a square or a block configuration to give the male flowers at the top of the plant a better chance of shedding pollen on the female tassels below, so that's what we've done.

We're hoping that each plant will produce two cobs. They are ready to harvest when the tassles turn brown, but to check you can twist a kernel off, if it's milky it's ready - run to the BBQ!

I'm alredy thinking that if it really is as good as everyone says we are going to give all the raised beds over to sweetcorn, or take over next door!

A few more sweetcorn tips
Plant in May
It needs full sun and shelter from strong winds.
Sweetcorn hates clay and it will develop deep roots so it much prefers a deeply dug bed. 

Potatoes without the digging

I knows that lots of people associate potatoes with digging, but as our raised beds are at the office, none of us wanted to have to do too much digging, so we're using a Potato Grow Pot. The potatoes were placed in the planter and covered with compost on DATE. Today the leaves were already 12cms above this first layer and it was time to add an extra layer and more compost.

After initial concerns about growing potatoes above ground we're converted. This really is a superb way of growing potatoes on a patio - so simple and clean.

Unfortunately we have no idea what variety we planted because the person we sent to buy the seed potatoes (they shall remain nameless because we're nioce like that) can't remember what they bought!
Top gardening tip - write it down!

We're hoping for potatoes by DATE, we'll let you know the variety then.

A long weekend means that the plants at the office allotment will have to fend for themselves for a few days.

To get ready we set up the Click & Drip watering kit to irrigate all of the raised beds from one tap and Emma topped up the planters. 

Faye and Natasha's radishes are coming along really well and Emma's fruit bushes are look great.

A-lot-of excitement at the office allotment

The bright, warm weather is bringing the plants along quickly. At the office allotment the blueberries need to be kept moist at all times, so the Quadgrow veg planter is perfect as it ensure the plants don't dry out over the weekend. Those of us with raised beds can be spotted wandering through the factory on a morning armed with watering cans! Tending plants in the sunshine is such a lovely way to start the working day.

Liz has joined the office allotment group thanks to chillies. She was complaining that her chillies at home were slow to get started, so we told her to bring them into the office to be put in a Vitopod propagator. They've been in for two days and are now coming along beautifully. So much so that she is well and truly smitten with veg growing and has signed up for a Chilligrow and a Windowgrow at the office allotment and will be caring for the 4 fruit bushes in our Quadgrow Slim. Welcome on-board Liz!

You can't keep a good lettuce down

On Saturday the lambs lettuce in number 1 Windowgrow had reached mammoth proportions, so we harvested it to enjoy alongside chilli and naan breads. I harvested by cutting (so that the leaves will grow back) but was pleased as punch to see that they seemed to have grown back by Monday evening! You just can't keep a good lettuce down...

Back to Saturday, the leaves were as delicious as only a lettuce eaten within minutes of harvesting can be and were the perfect fresh counter-balance to the rich chilli and a bottle of absolutely delicious Argentinian Vinalba Malbec from the lovely chaps at Majestic wine warehouse.

Chilli can be a controversial dish and at the risk of causing an uprising I will admit that I don't put much chilli in my chilli as I prefer spice to heat - better for the wine too; so for me it's cumin, fennel, coriander, cinnamon, black pepper, some chilli and good dark chocolate.

Fruit First Timers

It's not just veg at Greenhouse Sensation HQ, 4 fruit bushes joined the veg plot today; a redcurrant, blackcurrant and 2x blueberries. 

We've popped them in a Quadgrow veg planter and the Suttons catalogue says we should be picking fruit by July. The blueberries are destined for muffins by decree of Emma's husband, but we're looking forward to snacking on the redcurrants and blackcurrants, healthy alternatives to the flapjacks in the staff canteen!

First Tomato



 We have our first greenhouse tomato!

Our first tomato to form is a Sungold which is a very sweet cherry variety and an office snacking favourite, though Emma tends to get carried away and burns her tongue on them -something to do with acid and greed!

Sungold takes its name from the colour, it ripens to a lovely golden orange. The Sungold tomato seeds were started in a heated Vitopod propagator in a heated greenhouse on December 20^th and transplanted to a Hydrogrow NFT on March 25th.  The plant is already 1.5metres tall!

First Greenhouse Strawberry



 Our first greenhouse strawberry has formed.

We are growing El Santa, a summer fruiting variety, because they are reliable, we find they fruit early and they taste great.

We’ve just added a brief strawberry growing guide to our website http://www.greenhousesensation.co.uk/, so if you’ve never given growing strawberries a go take a look.

Sowing outdoors



 The weather has warmed up so we decided to sow outdoors in our raised beds today.

In the raised beds we've opted for carrots, white onions, mange tout and coriander.

We are lucky to have lots of rabbits in our area, but we don't really want to share our veg, so we've added fine mesh netting to the raised beds.

A word or two about San Marzano tomatoes

I'm particularly looking forward to the San Marzano tomatoes which we are growing in the polytunnel. Our Chairman and founder John M grew San Marzano tomatoes in his polytunnel last year and they tasted fabulous. This Italian plum variety is considered by many chefs to be the best tomato for pasta sauces in the world and you won't find us arguing with that!

I knew we were right to be fantatical about them last year, they even have their own website
http://www.sanmarzanotomatoes.org/ 

The skin is quite thick and the flavour has just the right amount of sweetness without too much acidity.

It's an indeterminate (cordon) variety, so it must be grown with supports and ours were huge last year, making several large batches of sauce. The plant looks very impressive when it's fruiting because the tomatoes which are about 3 - 4 inches long, grow close together in clusters.

In the greenhouse, the weather is warming up a little, so Paul's taken the lids off the Vitopod propagators. We still have 12 tomato plants in the Vitopods, we will be picking the best 4 for the Quadgrow veg pots at the Greenhouse Sensation office in the coming weeks.

Going Bananas



 The bananas in our greenhouse are receiving some tender loving care from Paul one of our expert greenhouse horticulturalists. 



Banana pup growing alongside mature banana

He has split a pup from one of the older plants and planted it into its own planter. A pup is effectively a banana cutting and it forms alongside the mature banana plant. We cut it when it' s 45cms tall, it’s quite a job because the trunk of the pup is 15cms wide.

 As with all cuttings it is very important to keep everything very clean when taking and planting the cutting/pup. This banana won’t fruit for another year or two, but the other 2 plants in our greenhouse should produce bananas from about June.



Banana pup

We grow Dwarf Cavendish bananas. This variety grows to 6 - 8 ft (1.8 - 2.4 m) and it is very fast growing. The bananas produced grow to 15 to 25 cm in length, and have a thin skin. Each plant typically produces 80 - 90 bananas when it fruits.

The bananas in our greenhouse are grown hydroponically (without soil). The planters use the Ebb & Flood technique which means water is pumped from a resrevoir below the planter to the plant roots several times per hour. Whatever the plant does not use drains (ebbs) away back into the resrevoir.

As the water ebbs away fresh oxygen is drawn down into the root area. This means that plants have great access to water, nutrients and oxygen. We think that the fact that we harvest on average 80 - 90 bananas a year is pretty good evidence of the effectiveness of this method of growing. 









Food in Paris





Emma here reporting back from a trip with hubby to my favourite city - Paris. Not much veg growing noted, but (as always in Paris) some absolutely wonderful meals. 

We arrived at about 11:00 a.m headed straight for Gard du Nord to eat at the Terminus Nord. http://www.terminusnord.com/ 

We were tucking into delicious bouillabaisse and drinking wine by noon.

Terminus Nord is of the Flo Brasserie stable and has received mixed reviews, some glowing, one particularly poor in the Independent in July 2010. We loved it, fabulous art deco, the food was solid bistro fare, it was jam-packed full of French families and people on their travels and the wine was very much appreciated by two people up since 4:00 a.m. It really did feel like the old days when travel was all glamour and in my vhumble opinion for that reason alone it is definitely worth a visit.

The other most notable food triumph was duck at La Fontaine de Mars  http://www.fontainedemars.com/index.html We had tried (foolishly/optimistically?) to get a table without booking on a Sunday evening. Not a chance, so we ate outside the restaurant next door, freezing cold but the wine warmed us up. We booked for a late lunch on Monday and were delighted with the most succulent and sweet duck ever known to man. This restaurant is all checked tablecloths, effecient but warm service and great food.