Hi there! I am new here and from Germany.

[annie8]

Welcome Iris from the east coast of Scotland. My goodness Hamish MacBeth that is a blast from the past! We have a shorter growing season up in Scotland. The west cost tends to be wetter than my side of the country. It does tend to be colder up here although we had a pretty hot summer for once. I dont have problems with tomato blight either, get the sense that it is less of an issue up north (?). I find it best to grow my tomatoes in the greenhouse, with a mix of heritage and F1 varieties. Completely agree there is huge difference in taste between home grown and supermarket tomatoes. Welcome to the vine.

[quanglewangle]

What are your sorts of garlic?

I have not bought them yet!

I use my own saved cloves for a few years but they seem to get smaller over time so I then buy new ones.

I usually plant garlic on the shortest day and harvest on the longest day

[Iris_Germany]

Welcome Iris from the east coast of Scotland. My goodness Hamish MacBeth that is a blast from the past! We have a shorter growing season up in Scotland. The west cost tends to be wetter than my side of the country. It does tend to be colder up here although we had a pretty hot summer for once. I dont have problems with tomato blight either, get the sense that it is less of an issue up north (?). I find it best to grow my tomatoes in the greenhouse, with a mix of heritage and F1 varieties. Completely agree there is huge difference in taste between home grown and supermarket tomatoes. Welcome to the vine.

Hi Annie, thanks for your welcome!
Hamish is not the only character from english novels who has stolen my heart! I am a passionate reader of english crime novels and everything which is thrilling or funny or good.

My most loved writer is Tom Wood btw. His "Victor, the assassin" books I have read countless times. If you look on his twitter account, you see that he is very proud of his tomato harvest. (I thought, it was rather miserable! Ha, ha, ha!)

In greenhouses, our tomatoes grow well too. If the blight does not get somehow in the greenhouse, which happened to me this year. The butcher's list was fatal. I could have cried.

The thing is that blight arises when leaves get wet. I had the window open in my greenhouse and after 3 days storm and heavy rain the leaves got obviously drained and the blight spores who are transported by the wind, came in and infected everything.

Concerning Scotland: I am fascinated by Scotland somehow, though I have never been there. I hear from fierce Highlanders during the Napoleon Wars fighting for England in India for example (Richard Sharpe, Bernard Cornwell). The Napoleon Wars are not so long ago, and when I imagin that this kind of wild soldiers hack with their claymores everyone in pieces who comes near them, I am totally thrilled!

[Iris_Germany]

I have not bought them yet!

I use my own saved cloves for a few years but they seem to get smaller over time so I then buy new ones.

I usually plant garlic on the shortest day and harvest on the longest day

Mine too! I grow always winter garlic (ready on June - July), and this year the cloves where much smaller than the year before. I think it was the cold and the rain who did them no good. I took the biggest cloves from my own harvest but had to rebuy some too. Now I hope that next year will be better. The winter was so long in Germany this year, and then it rained and rained and rained. The years before it didn't rain and everything died of thurst.

[nick the grief]

That's unfortunate. 2/3 of my garden is always in the shade, and I am getting frustrated because I do not know what to do with it. I tried already different kind of shrubs and perennials but nothing works really. Vegetables I did not even dare to grow there.

Morello CHerries theyre good in the shade. As to shrubs, we used to have a peony that flowered its head off and hardly saw sun. then there are the Ferns - I love ferns and used to have quite a few.

[Iris_Germany]

Morello CHerries theyre good in the shade. As to shrubs, we used to have a peony that flowered its head off and hardly saw sun. then there are the Ferns - I love ferns and used to have quite a few.

Hi Nick,

I thought abouth the morello cherries you mentioned. In German, they are called "Shade-Morellos". I never thought of them that they grow in the shadows, although I heard and spoke out this name a thousand times!!!

My garden unfortunately is an allotment. I have bought a lot of new fruit trees already, and it is getting a bit expensive now. God knows how long I will have this garden, and until the fruit trees are big and I can finally harvest something, I am older and greyer ...
But it is a superbe idea nevertheless. Maybe I can get some morello trees somewhere not so expensive. I haven't even thought about sour cherries when I look at my shady parts of my garden.

So thanks a lot, Nick! GREAT idea.

[Nicos]

Have you got red, white and blackcurrants?
Also gooseberries? They grow well in shade too.

[Iris_Germany]

Have you got red, white and blackcurrants?
Also gooseberries? They grow well in shade too.

Hi,
Yes, thanks, I got them. White and red ones. And they grow also in complete shade?

I have them planted in half shade at the moment. When it is fully shady at this place (in July), the harvest is already done by then.
Alas, this year I got some kind of fungus. They did not care and the crop was good but I wanted to do something about it. (Treated them with sulfur).

[Nicos]

Rhubarb too ?

[Iris_Germany]

Rhubarb too ?

Well, no.
Though I like rhubarb. I never had some but it's a good idea. Thank you!

[Nicos]

^^^ it’s beautiful if you roast it slowly in the oven for 1/2 hr….most of the ‘acid’ becomes more caramelised