Home Grown Foods FAQs
Our rhubarb has gone to seed already, would it be due to lack of rain during the winter?
Can you grow courgettes and tomatoes in the same small greenhouse?
How do I acquire and grow Hot Chili?
When is the best time to plant rhubarb?
Can you please advise me about the storage of butternut squashes? Ours have rotted down the stems.
What is the best variety of scarlet runner bean to grow up sticks in a small garden?
I would like to have an apple identified. Can you please tell me the best way to do this or where I could get it identified?
I may be able to do this and if not, [because there are hundreds of varieties!] you may get it identified at one of the Apple Day Celebrations that take place during the third weekend of October each year. Wherever you take the fruit try to take 3 representative fruits and a foot long piece of a shoot with its? leaves attached. An idea of the tree's age often helps too.
Could you please advise if the use of mushroom compost on soil for growing cabbages is helpful or not?
Mushroom compost is certainly a good choice for improving and feeding the soil to grow plants from the cabbage family. Use it in moderation...say digging in about 3-5cm before planting. You can also use it as a mulch after planting and it is good at keeping the soil moist (but it needs to be moist first!) Don't over do it as too much will encourage soft growth that will be prone to hard weather and diseases. It often has lime in it and this is good for this group of vegetables as they enjoy a higher soil pH than other vegetables. It also helps to combat the disease called 'club root' which is exceptionally hard to control. Avoid using it for root crops such as carrots and parsnips as it tends to encourage poor shaped roots and quite a lot of leaf.
What causes my tomatoes to split, they are greenhouse grown and kept well watered and fed with Tomorite liquid fertiliser as per instructions?
Split tomatoes are caused by allowing the compost to dry out before watering, so that the plant gets a sudden rush of water, the fruits swell and burst their skins. To avoid this water 2 or 3 times a day when it is very hot but make sure that you reduce watering when the days shorten and growth slows down. You are right to continue to feed with Tomorite and this will make the fruit sweeter and tastier.
Our plum tree is laden with fruit, but most of the fruit has some form of fungal growth, which is followed by the destruction of the fruit as seen by the withered remains, or there are maggots inside? Do I need to prune the branches back?
What you are describing is, I think, 'Brown Rot' [Sclerotinia]. It is initially a soft rot with concentric rings of white spore pustules radiating out from the first blemish but ultimately the fruit becomes mummified. This hangs on the tree overwinter and spreads spores to next years' crop that way. A general fungicide sprayed at first sign of infection may do the trick [try Murphy Traditional Fungicide]. This spray is recommended for control of Bacterial Canker on plums and cherries when sprayed mid August, mid Sept and again in mid Oct and this may help to reduce infection but I think the main time to spray would be in late spring for this disease. If your fruits fell off, I would suspect Plum Moth attack, eading to maggots in the fruit. Cut some open to see if they are there. If so, you can control this in future years with a cunning Pheromone Trap that mimics the hormones released by the female moth, trapping the males so that they can't mate and lay eggs on your tree. For both problems it is not necessary to prune.
I have a lot of very small shallots this year, about the size of a marble. Can I use them to plant for next year, and can I plant them in the next week or so? (late Sept).
You could use the small shallots to plant now but unless they are the autumn planting type there is an element of risk that they will make too much growth this autumn that might then be damaged by the winter. I suspect that day length also plays a big part and that is why it is traditional to plant them in the middle of winter. There are suitable varieties for autumn planting available now. Whatever you do, to avoid small ones again, it sounds as if you need to feed them much more. Shallots and onions are heavy feeders.
I've grown a cherry tree from a stone. It's now nearly 3 ft tall and in a 15" diameter pot. Can I keep this as a container plant and do I have to pinch out the top? At the moment it is a single stem.
This will grow into a large tree and will need planting out. It is fun to grow them this way but cherries are grown budded onto a dwarfing rootstock to make them fruit early in their life [yours may take 10 -15 years to fruit with no guarantee that the fruit will be good!] and to keep the tree size small.
I was wondering whether you could give me any guidance on ripening home grown pears? The fruit remains hard and 'chippy' and simply shrivels after a couple of weeks. Do you know of any way that we can ripen the fruit so that the flesh becomes soft?
It sounds as if you are picking the pears too early. I have only picked my early variety so far (early Oct) and the others are not yet ready. If picked too early the cells will remain hard and gritty. I wait until the pears will just come off when lifting the fruit with a cupped hand [not tugging or twisting]. Store most of them in a cool dry place but check them daily. Only store perfect fruits and handle them very carefully so as to not bruise them. Some can be brought into a warm room to ripen as you need them. If this doesn't work, maybe the variety is not a good one?
I have two problems with leeks and onions. The leeks from about mid August are over come with what looks like a type of mildew.
It sounds as if you have white rot....which is bad news as there is no longer an effective remedy. You should destroy infected plants by burning, avoid growing onions, leeks and other Alliums on that soil for at least 8 years as there will be very persistent spores of this left in your soil. Never grow onions and leeks in the same place every year and always use a crop rotation to avoid diseases building up in your soil. This disease is generally at its' worst in hot dry summers. Sorry to be the bringer of bad news!
I planted 'Lady Di' runner beans this year and have good growth which is now up the sticks a good six foot. The flowers are falling off leaving no beans. Could this be a lack of pollination or can we blame the climate?
The weather is almost certainly the cause, coldish nights don't help. Runner Beans need shelter from winds as they get bruised easily but more importantly in this case the shelter is needed by pollinating insects. Sometimes bees learn to reach the nectar by biting through the back of bean flowers and thereby avoiding carrying out pollination. Have a look at the back of flowers for these holes. Not a lot you can do to stop this but it is reckoned that white and pink flowered varieties are less prone to this. If the insects are doing their stuff then the problem is often that the plants are too dry, so a thorough soak helps. This is where preparing a bean trench full of good organic matter before planting pays off. ?Lady Di? is an excellent stringless variety to grow so I hope you can get the beans setting!
Why are some of the leaves of my fruit trees ripped and torn? The newest leaves near the top seem okay at the moment and I?m concerned that something is going to damage these too. I can?t see any pest on the trees.
The most likely cause of this is the hailstorms that we had in mid June. The damaged leaves were small and tender then and the top undamaged leaves had not yet grown. The storms were quite localised and caused considerable damage to the leaves fruits and flowers of lots of plants. If your fruit needs thinning out then look to remove those fruits that show hail damage first.
Our rhubarb has gone to seed already, would it be due to lack of rain during the winter?
Rhubarb that has flowered already is probably best divided in late summer or early autumn discarding the centre of the root but ensuring that each division has a nice plump bud. Make sure that you remove flower shoots as soon as they appear as, if left, the hollow stems they have are a good conduit for rain water to flow right into the centre of the root where it will cause rots
I have a Camellia that I have had for several years. It was fine at Christmas with lots of flower buds. In January I noticed the leaves were covered in a black powdery mould. Can you help?
Your Camellia is suffering with sooty mould, this is a fungus that grows on the sticky residue secreted by sap sucking insects ( Aphid, black fly, scale insect etc.) Camellias are particularly prone to Scale insects, these (as the name suggests) look like scales or flattened wax blobs usually found on the under side of the leaves. The first step is to treat the plant with an insecticide to kill the bugs (I suggest Provado Bug Killer) , It will then be possible to clean off the sooty mould without it reoccurring.
We have a 3yr old peach tree, grown from a pip. For the last two years it has suffered from leaf curl, this year quite badly. I bought Bordeaux powder, but the quantities are difficult to fathom, for one tree.
Well done for getting peach flowers so soon. It often takes much longer from pips. Peach Leaf Curl is a fungal disease that gets into the buds when leaves fall in the autumn and again when leaf bud scales fall off as new leaves emerge in very early spring. Protection is needed at that time as the spores are in our damp air then. Either spray with Bordeaux [or Murphy Traditional Copper fungicide or Dithane 945 -both of which I think are better] or devise some way of keeping the trees drier during those critical periods. A small roof constructed over the top of a fan trained peach or nectarine works well and you can then attach a polythene curtain to this to drop down to protect the early blooms from frost at night. You will notice that peaches grown under glass rarely suffer from this disease as their tops are kept dry. As for hammering copper nails into the tree, well it sounds a bit drastic for a three year old tree!
I planted Lady Crystal and Rocket early potatoes for the first time, neither look very healthy but Lady Crystal has started to rot at the base of the haulm and I have never had this happen before.
I've never grown Lady Crystal before but it sounds as if they have a disease called 'Black Leg'. I stopped growing a variety called Manna for that reason. This sometimes occurs when tubers are planted into cold wet soil and when spring is cold and damp followed by warmer weather. It is probable that the seed you planted was infected [always buy 'Certified Seed' - but sometimes this disease creeps in even there]. It is best to dig out all the plants that are infected, including both the new and old tubers and put all plant material in the bin [not the compost heap].Rotating potatoes on your veg patch minimises the likelihood of the disease being carried over from year to year and this is important with lots of potato diseases but especially with 'black leg'.
I have recently taken over an allotment and am ready to plant potatoes however there?s lots of wireworms there. I am looking for pirimiphos methyl to control it. Is it still around?
This is one of the pesticides that has come off the market and there is no chemical replacement for it available. Wireworms are often a problem with neglected allotments or in soil that has been grassed down for years. After regular cultivation the pest usually disappears and, if you turn the soil over regularly, it gives birds the chance to eat this and other soil pests. It may be better to grow leafy salads and cabbages for a few years and if you must grow potatoes, make sure that you dig them out early before the wireworms bore into the tubers in the autumn.
I grew three lemon pips last year in 6" pots in compost previously used for hanging baskets, They are now about 9 to 12" high. What size pot do they need? Do they need ericaceous compost or would they need a more soil based compost?
Its' fun to grow lemons from pips but it may take many years for them to reach fruiting age. This is why lemons and other citrus are usually grafted onto a seedling rootstock of citrus or onto a close relative called Japanese Bitter Orange [Poncirus trifoliata]. However growing from pips is how new varieties of citrus are found so its' worth a try! Citrus prefer a low lime potting compost that has an open structure and is free draining. I also believe that they are easier to grow if there is some soil in the potting mix. You might be able to buy John Innes Ericaceous mix which is soil based and has a low pH or you may need to mix equal parts of Ericaceous compost with John Innes No.3. Don't be in too great a hurry to pot the seedlings on as your 6" pots already sound large for young plants. As with any pot plant, if you aren't sure, knock the plant out of the pot and if the roots are crowded then pot on into a pot just one size bigger. If not, leave well alone. Take a look at our "Tips on?." section for more of our tips on growing citrus.
A long established gardener told us that to prevent club-root in cabbages you dip the roots in a solution of Jeyes fluid, 1 teaspoon to a gallon water, before planting, is this true?
Your friend could be right and I have heard it too but it is no longer recommended due to a tightening of the recommendations that can be put on lots of products nowadays. I am personally rather nervous about the residues that a strong chemical such as Jeyes Fluid could leave and would never use it this way myself. Keeping the soil well limed will help prevent club root and ensuring that you don't get young plants from infected soil is vital. Plants raised in compost modules avoid the risk and has become very popular with both amateur and professional growers. Club root is one of the main reasons for practicing a crop rotation on your veg plot. It affects all the Brassica family, Wallflowers and Stocks too.
Can you grow courgettes and tomatoes in the same small greenhouse?
You certainly can and I often do! Courgettes can be grown under the benching as long as there is pretty good light reaching there. You will get earlier crops that way but they tend to become very leafy by mid summer and can suffer from mildew so it is best to make a later second sowing outside. Alternatively you could grow a couple of plants in one of the Westland Special Instant Planters [so much better than ordinary grow bags] and move it outside when it gets too hot or the plants triffid-like in the greenhouse. Good varieties include Fi Defender, Fi El Greco and the heavy yielding yellow Fi Orelia. Of course, it is essential that you harvest your courgettes regularly otherwise you will end up with just one or two monster marrows!
How do I acquire and grow Hot Chili?
Chilli peppers are best grown in a greenhouse with a minimum of 10-15 degrees C. You can grow them outside in a sheltered place in summer and they grow well in grow bags or pots. The longer you leave them on the plant to ripen the hotter they get!
I have found that a couple weeks after planting out leeks that they start to wither and die back and when examining them there are maggots in the plant. Is there anything I can do to overcome this problem
It sounds as if your leeks are being attacked by the Onion Fly. This pest looks a bit like the house fly and lays its eggs at the base of plants from the Onion family. They hatch into maggots that feed on the roots of onions, leeks and even garlic. After feeding the maggots pupate in the soil and wait for the next susceptible crop to be grown. So if you rotate your vegetables on a three or four year rotation you may have some success in controlling them but I don't think that there is any chemical control for this pest left on the market. Many garden chemicals have disappeared due to the soaring costs of getting E.U. approval for their use by gardeners and the market for them is not big enough to justify the six figure sums needed to get approval. I don't think that there is a natural predator that you can buy yet. It?s best to remove any plants under attack that you see and burn them and try rotating your vegetables or stop growing plants from the onion family for 3 or 4 years.
I'm fed up with buying tasteless tomatoes from supermarkets and have decided to grow my own. Which variety would you recommend for my small unheated greenhouse?
A lot depends on whether you like to eat tomatoes sliced in your sandwiches or as I do straight from the plants. For flavour, I don?t think you can beat the sweet cherry varieties and, whilst ?Gardeners Delight is good, I grow the orange coloured ?Sungold?. Don?t let the colour put you off as it always comes out top in blind tasting trials here. For a conventional sized tomato the choice is not so straight forward as there are many to choose from. The old variety Ailsa Craig is very tasty but prone to uneven ripening (as many of the tastiest are). Whatever you grow, feed them well as this does improve the flavour.
When is the best time to plant rhubarb?
Rhubarb can be planted from mid summer through until spring. It is difficult to get new roots until autumn and from late winter onwards you should plant pot grown plants. If you have established plants in the garden, now is a good time to cover them with 20 to 30cm of strawy manure or good garden compost. If you can get an old chimney pot to cover them up, you will be able to force much earlier crops.
Can you please advise me about the storage of butternut squashes? Ours have rotted down the stems.
Butternut squashes should be easy enough to store if properly ripened. Don?t cut them off the plant until they have stopped enlarging, leave them in the sun for the skin to mature for a few days then store them in an airy frost-free place. I don?t think that giving them lots of nitrogen based feed late in the summer helps storage, so avoid that. I reckon that this is one of the best and most underrated winter vegetables and well worth growing!
What is the best variety of scarlet runner bean to grow up sticks in a small garden?
The variety we have great success with and most of my customers prefer is called 'Lady Di'. It is in fact an improved form of 'Enorma' [which would be second choice if you can't find Lady Di]. We sell 'Lady Di' as loose seed, it is stringless, crops well and has good long pods of good flavour. I agree, when you look at seed racks there are too many choices but invariably every gardener has his or her favourite.....
We have a southwest facing sheltered stone barn wall, do you have any suggestions for planting against it? I would like fruit if possible.
As it is south facing you may be able to grow Apricots, Nectarines or Peaches there. The later two can suffer from a disease called Peach Leaf Curl but if you can add a small shelter to the top of the wall or the barn roof overhangs to keep the plants dry this will help to keep them healthy. All three flower very early in the year and so a polythene screen that you can drop down over them to protect them from frosts will pay dividends. Other fruits you might consider on this warm wall are a hermaphrodite variety of Kiwi fruit, a Brown Turkey fig or an espalier trained pear tree such as Williams or Conference. Pears do best in warm places and these two are partially self fertile. The best variety for flavour is I think Doyenne du Comice but it needs another variety to pollinate it.