Wild strawberries approaching!

Guess what? 

I'll be gorging on wild strawberries pretty soon!  I can't wait!

In case you don't remember (or have not been here before) - it's the same plant that travelled through half of Europe in an ordinary postal package, straight from my parents' garden to mine.  It looked rather sad right after the transit:

The brave strawberries regained life pretty soon, within a month or so being covered in fresh green leaves and sprouting first tentative flowers.

Now the plant has plenty of small, yellow-still fruits and I'm counting the days down to my first strawberries-and-cream of the summer.  Yeah! 

True, this will probably be very tiny dessert - I expect a spoonful or two after I've shared it with my other half - but IT WILL BE THERE.  And at present there is no chance whatsoever of buying wild strawberries on the Irish market.  It's simply not possible, at least as far as I know.

Well, I've had my share of gardening failures (sad story of a raspberry bush, anyone?), but wild strawberries are definitely a bright success. 

Another week or so... 

A bit of shameless self-promotion and chili plants

Traffic lull on my gardening lenses these days, and I need to give it a little boost. 

Sure thing, the blog gets most of my attention garden-wise, with lenses being rather general than specific, but still it may be entertaining reading.  There's one about reusing your rubbish as planting pots, one about talking to plants and another one discussing joys of growing a little garden on a window sill.  If you feel like reading greenish stories, do visit.

For dessert a quick picture of my budding chili plant - it actually has more flowers now, and looks even healthier and greenier.  I can't wait for when it fruits, but I don't want to jinx it - I may still find out that Ireland is not sunny enough for growing decent chili peppers. 

Well, today it certainly isn't sunny enough, and I'm suffering together with my chilis. 

Luckily, even the rain ends eventually :)

Does Night-scented Stock grow in your part of the world?

Night-scented Stock, also known as Evening Stock is actually Matthiola Longipetala.  I'm not sure as to the worldwide recognition of this humble flower, but if it doesn't have any, it surely deserves lots!

It looks modest enough (and I'm not going to treat you like an idiot by describing it, because you can SEE it above), but it has one amazing quality that not everyone may know about - smell. 

You can guess it by looking at its name - night-scented stock starts to grace the world with its smell only when it gets dark.  The scent is beatiful, sweet and oh so strong!  This tiny shrub on the picture, just a handful of flowers, one or two plants altogether, can make my head spin. 

I woud've never been reminded of how great this flower is if not my night trips to my balcony garden.  Imagine me, more or less in a nightdress, sneaking outside just to get a few twigs of parsley or whatever.  Then the scent attacks and I'm standing there, charmed off my feet, just smelling it and who cares that it's windy and raining.  THAT's how powerful the plant is. 

Another great thing, which may not be obvious and which I learn by my own experiment is that the night-scented stock doesn't need a big container to grow.  I have to admit - some of my plants do suffer because of living in half of a plastic bottle, they grow dwarf-size and generally don't behave (a subject for a whole separate post, really), but this small purple flower grows like insane and totally doesn't mind harsh conditions.  Conclusion - you can grow it anywhere at all. 

Second thing worth mentioning - it looks fragile, but it's actually very weather resistant.  I live right at the oceanside and my balcony is sometimes tormented by really strong winds - night-scented stock doesn't seem to mind at all. 

Blah, only the name is awful.  Night-scented stock, like if I was cooking or something.  Would someone please come up with a better name?

I have some seeds left, and I'm feeling generous today, so how about this -  if you send me a nice email to experimentalgardens(at)gmail.com and include your address, I will send you a handful of seeds.  One package only, I'm afraid, because I can't afford more postage (unless you charm me off my feet, haha) - if there's more emails I'll just pick my favourite, ok?

A thyme story

Is it hard to grow thyme, you may ask.  Ha!  It all depends.

Look at the picture.  Looks glorious, doesn't it?  As healthy as it can be, green, fragrant twigs everywhere (oh gods, the smell!  Grow it, if only to be able to smell it!).  Can you believe, though, that what you see is only a single plant? 

I must have sown 20 or 30 seeds.  This single plant is all that survived. 

Good news is that it looks like this single plant is enough.

The seeds are tiny.  Smaller than a pinhead.  Seriously, you need a magnifying glass to see them (ok, maybe that wasn't so serious after all.  But they ARE tiny).  This may not be the case with all the thyme seeds of this world, but mine sprouted like crazy.  Rather quick, too, after 3 or 4 days from sowing I already had a green meadow in my pot. 

Then the Apocalypse came.  Or, to be precise, watering.  Small thyme plants are extremely fragile.  A drop of water falling from a high will kill them.  No joke here, dead, kaputt, thyme was no more.  I killed my first two meadows this way, and I do learn from my own mistakes - I tried to be careful once I recognised the problem, but still - the thyme was dead.  Hm. 

In the end, I gave up.  I stopped being so careful with watering, only threw a splash of water in the pot's direction once in a blue Moon...  Oh miracle of miracles, one single green shoot survived this harsh treatment and grew up to be the healthy green shrub you can see above. 

I already started pinching twigs here and there to add some thyminess to my cooking.  Once it grows even bigger, I'll probably savage it to make thyme pesto, but for now I'm happy with a few leaves in a salad or soup. 

You know what's the best bit?  Thyme is a perennial, so I will be able to pinch it again and again and again...  And next year too, and a year after that...

Go ahead and plant your own.  I dare you!

Splash of colour

Pretty neat, heh?

I wasn't much for planting flowers when I started playing gardener, but since I happened to have few packets of seeds, I sowed them anyway.  How glad I am now I did!  This orange marigold never fails to cheer me up, even on the grayest day it's still vivid orange. 

You don't even need many plants, there's one pot with four plants on my balcony and still it makes all the difference. 

One extra benefit is the fact, that marigolds are extra hardy and irresponsible gardener will find it quite difficult to kill them off :)

Tomato horror story

As promised.

Just looked at the picture - quite a difference, yes?

Funnily enough, the plant still manages to sustain growing fruit (3 altogether), but there are hardly any leaves left now and the rest of the flowers withered away. 

Now - WHY THE HELL IS THAT???

I have few suspicions, and if you happen to be a tomato expert and know which one is the most likely, please let me know.

1. Disease - the leaves got all funny before they died.  Sort of shrivelled.  Or is it some nutrient deficiency?

2. Small container.  Not enough space for the roots - could it literally kill the plant?

3. Or did it simply dry up?  I was away for one week some time ago, and the plant looked pretty miserable after my return.  I got someone to water it in my absence but... well... people are busy these days.  But nearly a month of regular care passed since and the tomato didn't recover, just the opposite.

Now it's racing the time to see if tomatoes will ripen before the plant dies :)

Brag before you fall

Hereby I'm going to take my own advice and dedicate this post solely to boasting how beatiful my tomato plant got before things turned bad. 

If you prefer horror stories to happy-ever-after, wait for the next post.  Otherwise - just look at this beauty!  It might be excessive gardener's pride, but I'm stunned by how pretty tomato flowers actually are.  I might even consider making them a part of a goddamn bouquet - if not for the yummy tomatoes I'd be losing this way.

Just to remind you - I'm being rather optimistic and irresponsible and my tomato plants are still growing in plastic bottles, cut in half.  I'm pretty sure they would love to have a bit more space.  They're threatening to go on strike...  I can hardly see any soil for the roots anymore.

Up to a certain point, it was working allright.  The plant grew and grew, green and cheerful, and finally it became covered with flowers.  My oh my, if all the flowers managed to turn into tomatoes, I would be a tomato potentate!  They were unbelievably numerous. 

Not too many bees in my place, so, like a good girl, I summoned my faithful make up brush and embarked on a tomato-shagging quest each morning.  Guess what?  Some of the flowers even turned into actual tiny tomatoes. 

Now, that's where my story turns into horror.  Or at least a good, heart-breaking drama.  If you want to know what happened (and learn to avoid my mistakes), come back tomorrow(ish).