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Special Interest Forums => The Gardener => Topic started by: Nitpicker1 on March 03, 2009, 02:39:43 pm



Title: Container gardening
Post by: Nitpicker1 on March 03, 2009, 02:39:43 pm
Sweet 100s Tomato Experimental

(http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p285/nitpnz/no042.jpg)

Not many ripe ones showing 'cos it's right outside my office door and everyone has to try them for flavour!

Taken today, 3.03.09  Temp out there is 31.3c at present



Title: Re: Container gardening
Post by: Magoo on March 10, 2009, 12:53:36 pm
Home grown tomatoes have a nicer  smell and taste to the hot house ones we get in the supermarkets.   I bet these were tasty wee dudes.


Title: Re: Container gardening
Post by: Shef on March 15, 2009, 10:55:02 am
I know that potatoes can be grown in tyres, but can you grow gherkins this way as well? Our gherkin plants (5) have taken over most of the garden. We can't pull them out because I'm still picking a good kilo off them every day, but if we can, that's how we'll grow them next year.


Title: Re: Container gardening
Post by: Nitpicker1 on March 15, 2009, 11:50:55 am
Territorially challenged?

Are you growing 'em up a trellis or strung like tomatoes on a string, or just crawling along the gound? Seems to me you must be growing them in the open, and allowing thenm free range?

You could encourage shorter bushier growth if ya let laterals form by nipping the growing point out early in the season.

I don't think there'd be much point in growing them like spuds in tyres, 'cos spuds need to be moulded up, which is sorta what ya do when grpwing a spud in a tyre and add a new tyre full of soil as the haulm grows.

Cukes and gherkins do not need moulding-up but their habit is like pumpkin and marrow, putting rootlets out from the nodes into the ground if not trained up a support, thereby supplying extra nutrients to the vine's new fruit as it developes.

(http://i703.photobucket.com/albums/ww32/XtraNewsCommunity2/MSN%20emoticons/30emidea.gif)

Maybe you could organise a series of rich compost pockets in a row, and allow MAKEthe vine grow along the row, making LETTING it's new rootlets "take" in the compost pockets, a point for extra watering and feeding?

Perhaps you could "espalier" the vine by twisting it round the wires in a fence structure, keeping it off the ground?