Horticulture
Posted by R | Posted in Gardening | Posted on 20-06-2009
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I seem to have grown some tomatoes! To be quite honest this has come as a shock, because I had previously considered myself to be one of the least green-fingered people on the planet. In fact – I am the person who has previously managed to kill a spider plant, despite the fact that I have been assured that this is impossible. Following on from that unfortunate childhood herbicidal experience I had resigned myself to the fact that gardening was completely beyond my capabilities. However things, it would appear, may have changed. So how, you may be wondering, did I end up with some tomatoes? Well it all started when I popped in to a garden centre to buy some gravel. Yes, it’s an odd link, but stick with me on this one. For Christmas last year I was given a couple of bay trees by the in-laws to put on my balcony, and very nice they were too. The only problem I had was that I got the occasional weed growing in the pot and pulling them out was getting a bit tiresome. Someone suggested to me that a thin layer of gravel around the top of the pot would prevent the weeds growing by blocking out the light. Fair enough – so I decided to give that a try and the gravel was purchased. Stupidly I then fell into that age old trap of wandering around the garden centre to “see what else they had”. 
Foolish I realise, the garden centre staff clearly recognised me as an easy target as I walked in, and frankly I ought to know better. Nevertheless, 10 minutes later I somehow found myself loading the car with a 1 metre long potting trough, six garden canes, a packet of tomato seeds, some chilli seeds, some basil seeds, some coriander seeds, and a colossal bag of compost.Oh yes, and a very small bag of gravel. Having carted this lot back to the flat (not easy when you live several floors up) I began to wonder what on earth I had done. Not wishing to admit defeat before I’d started, I saw it through and I’d soon planted all of the seeds in the trough and put it on the window sill. Some water was thrown in the direction of the pot and with a dismissive cry of “that’ll never grow” I walked away.
Slightly to my surprise it’s all worked out rather well. 
It’s only been a few weeks and I now have a varied collection of green things springing up from the smaller pot on the window sill, none of which sadly yet qualify as a herb garden, but I’m a patient man. The chillies are doing quite well, and I now have a few 2’ high chilli plants with 4 or 5 fairly impressive looking chillies growing. Admittedly I can’t remember whether they were green or red chillies, they’re certainly green at the moment, but if they survive long enough time will surely tell. But the tomatoes? Oh my goodness, what happened? They are clearly keen because they have sprung up very quickly indeed. So fast in fact that I had to move the tomato plants out on to the balcony after only a few weeks. The little buggers are now growing so fast that they have climbed all the way up the garden canes, and are now threatening to make a bid for freedom over the edge of the balcony. I just can’t stop them, and I’ve done pretty much nothing to aid their progress. This isn’t supposed to happen! Did they perhaps not get the memo that tells them that all plant life in my care is supposed to shrivel up and die within two weeks of it becoming resident? It would appear not.
So now I’m quite scared; I fear that I may soon be faced with the dilemma of what to do with huge quantities of tomatoes. I’ve probably just jinxed them by writing that, but we’ll see. The gravel experiment has certainly been effective in solving the weeds problem, but may have resulted in some unwanted side effects. One of my bay trees is now starting to look very unwell indeed, the leaves are going very brown and even my limited gardening knowledge tells me that the poor thing is not happy. I don’t know why, because it’s been treated in exactly the same way as its brother (which is doing just fine). I’m hoping that the introduction of the gravel is circumstantial, but if anyone can explain it, I’d be interested to hear from you.
These special edition coins are often released to the market, aimed purely at collectors. Some of the coins are historic, some are designed to commemorate special events, some are presented in frames, some in shiny boxes, but all of them are invariably shipped all over the world at exorbitant cost yet they are never actually intended to be used as coins in the traditional fashion.
The shield is incomplete, there is no structure, no sense of order, and worst of all it means that I have not completed what I’ve (albeit unintentionally) set out to do. And that’s just not good enough! Of course, the logical side of my character tells me to give up on the whole thing and just spend them, but I somehow can’t bring myself to do it. It just feels wrong, and so the quest continues. The whole thing is starting to get ridiculous, because as a result of owning duplicates of some of the set, I now have £4.73 sitting on my shelf which is doing absolutely nothing. I could have spent that on….. well…. I don’t know what actually. But the point is that it’s a waste! I just want to find the missing coin so that I can move on and have done with the whole sorry affair, but despite my best efforts it continues to elude me.