20 ★ FTWeekend 21 March/22 March 2020House Home
Containment has never been one of
Corbyn’s strengths, but horseradish
fanciers do not need a Watson to give
them plants of their own. This year,
Suttons are selling young roots, or
thongs, of horseradish at a princely
£14.99 for five. They need to be
planted by the end of this month.
In a plug-prolific world, why bother
sowing seeds of vegetables in a busy
schedule? One answer is cost: plug
plants are much pricier than home-
grown seedlings. Another is that seed
widens the range of options, four of
which are essential in a balanced life.
Supermarkets seldom sell runner
beans but their flavour is one of the
joys of August. They no longer need
tall canes and plenty of space.
Runner Bean Hestia is a superb recent
arrival, bringingthis vegetable within
reach of anyone with a balcony or
terrace. The flowers combine red and
white very prettily and although the
bushes grow hardly 2ft high, they are
heavy with proper runner beans in
late summer. Unlike most tomatoes,
Hestia is an ornament to its setting,
never needing to be staked. A packet
of 20 seeds give you more than enough
even when in lockdown.
We are all fools sometimes but
I look on radish and lettuce seeds,
too, as foolproof. Unlike pre-grown
plugs, they can be sown at staggered
intervals from April onwards to
prolong the season. My top lettuce
is Antarctica, one with a crunchy
white heart. My top radish is French
Breakfast 3, a variety with long
cylindrical red and white roots. Both
will grow very well in a window box,
self-supplying flat-bound owners.
So will carrots. They like to be
watered so that their soil stays damp,
but they are the subject of widespread
misinformation. They are said to need
boxes at least a foot deep, far deeper
than those on most windows, but this
dogma is wrong. Rounded carrots uchs
as Romeo will develop fully in a normal
window box, but even the longer-
rooted ones, antes Red for example,N
can be excellent. The answer is to pull
the carrots when they are still young
and very short. Forget those lumpy
prizewinners at flower shows.
Carrots are far more tasty at an early
stage, as I learnt form the great French
chef, Raymond Blanc. Sow carrots in
succession and pull them when young.
A self-isolated summer can teach us
all good tricks.I
am more than ready to self-isolate.
In spring it will be a pleasure.
The garden needs all the attention
that is otherwise lost in socialising.
In return it will give back quiet
beauty and a sense of achievement.
After my daily hours of working in it,
I will finish that long classic of an
epistolary novel, Samuel Richardson’s
Clarissa. Its heroine is theoriginal
self-isolator in English literature, a
distinction that others in the book
begin, at least, by forcing on her.
In social times I have been crawling
piecemeal through her text, sabotaged
by drinking other people’s wine at
lunch. By the time a vaccine is
launched, I will have had a chance
to pick up speed and finish her tale.
I will also have a much tidier garden.
If shopping is going to be
problematic, the garden will be a
lifeline. It can feed us in a temporary
crisis; better to veg-pile than to
stockpile. Vegetable gardening is
far easier now than when stockpiling
was last a British obsession, in 1974
when the FTSE index hit the 140s.
Like flower gardening, it can be
simplified by buying plug plants, not
seeds in packets. Anyone can grow
a tomato from a plug. A single plant
can produce hundreds of fresh
tomatoes. I only wish I liked the
squishy fruits when uncooked.
Two of the top English seed suppliers
have latched on to plugs, offering a
fine range of tomatoes and much else.
Suttons’ spring list illustrates seven bigpages with the various tomato plugs on
offer and then moves on to red-hot
chillies (suttons.co.uk). Thompson
and Morgan offers much the same
in a slimmed-down list if you do
not wish to be spoilt for choice
(thompson-morgan.com). It will send
out rooted young plants or plugs in
April that you will have to pot on and
keep in a warm, airy place until late
May, when the traditional time of late
frost is past. Then they go straight from
their pots into a grow-bag, a bigger pot
or open ground. Growing them could
hardly be easier.
Space is no longer a problem.
Breeders realised long ago that
balcony and terrace gardening is
a big market. They have obliged
by devising patio and container-
compatible tomatoes, some of which
I tried last year. The most intriguing
is the new Veranda Red, a tomato
that will grow in 10in-wide pots
on a terrace and will fruit there
very freely. The fruits are only
cherry sized but salad lovers will not
object. They are profusely born
and the flavour is sweet. Suttons
send out Veranda Reds at £7.99 for
three super-plugs or £11.99 for three
bigger plants.
Tumbling tomatoes began to be bred
15 years ago. They are not plants for
window boxes, where beginners
sometimes try them. They need more
depth and width to prosper but they
too flourish in big pots on balconies.
Tumbling Tom is a good one fromThompson and Morgan and the new
Tumbling Bella from Suttons will
swamp you with cherry tomatoes from
late July onwards. Neither needs any
training or staking. They tumble down
over the sides of their pot and fruit as
they trail. They are not too untidy.
Upright varieties produce bigger
tomatoes. Suttons helpfully mark
whether varieties are bush or cordon
varieties; the former needs no training,
the latter produces bigger fruits but
needs to be trained on canes, with their
side shoots being pinched out through
the season. Two reliable, top-class
choices in the cordon category are
Moneymaker and Shirley, though the
latter is best in a greenhouse.
Big, beefy tomatoes are readily
available from the Premio or the
ribbed Belriccio varieties and trendy
purple-brown tomatoes can be had
with Marron, a new variety. The more
you feed the plants with diluted
Tomorite during the fruiting season,
the more fruit you will pick.Splendid
self-isolation
Inchallenging times, a vegetable garden — or even
just a pot on a patio — can be a lifeline. Here are
easy tomatoes, beans and lettuce to sow or plug
Like their gardeners, tomatoes are
susceptible to airborne disease.
The most tiresome is the blight that
thrives in warm wet weather and
that played hell with my few plants
last year. Breeders are on to it
already and most of those I have
named have a reasonable resistance.
If you still worry about blight,
Crimson Crush and the big-fruited
Crimson Blushare the ones to grow,
the latter being the first blight-
resistant beef tomato.
Almost anything edible can now be
bought pre-grown. Early inlast year’s
election campaign, deputy Labour
leader om WatsonT stepped down.
To my glee, Watson ended his goodbye
letter by referring to the horseradish
plants that he had recently given
Jeremy Corbyn, the party leader,
for his garden. I regard them as a
double-edged present. Horseradish
is even more invasive in a garden
than Momentum co-ordinators in
a party machine.Dwarf tomato ‘Tumbling Tom’,
perfect for a terrace GAP Photos/John Glover—Robin Lane Fox
On gardens
MARCH 21 2020 Section:Weekend Time: 18/3/2020- 18:38 User:rosalind.sykes Page Name:RES20, Part,Page,Edition:RES, 20, 1