Tomato Heaven - The Cherry Tomato Taste Test

Like many things in the potager this year, the tomato growth has been erratic and slow.  Until July, that is, when the blistering temperatures resulted in an eruption of growth and, thankfully, also a huge amount of setting fruit.  I've been removing the lower leaves ever since to keep the air flowing and hope to avoid the blight.  For that reason, I do spray with Bordeaux Mixture (the blue speckles visible on some of the fruit) as I know from experience that otherwise we may lose the lot, possibly before any fruit has ripened.

 I have as usual grown far too many varieties - 13 - but this is a tiny amount compared to what I would like to grow!

From Clay to Clay Soil in Just Three Years!

It has taken three years to get the vegetable beds in my yellow/blue soil-less ground into state that might loosely be termed a suitable growing medium.  I began with just clay.  No, I lie. I began with clay with boulders.  Rocks that ranged in size from fist to Deux Cheveaux.  Slight exaggeration, but you get the idea.  One of the downsides of a new build on a hillside was that all the topsoil was stripped off and lost as part of the basic groundworks.  Not that there was very much to start with.

The first year of growing was somewhat akin to pastry making.  Add a dollop of well rotted manure to the ground and try to rub it in to the clay.  Fail. That first year was thankfully hot and dry so my clay was more like smash-able concrete than the thick gloppy slick it is today, after the wettest first five months of the year for decades.