I DON’T offer this as conclusive proof of green fingers, and I’m not even writing to Monty Don, but for the first time ever there are definite bunches of grapes on the vine in our back garden. It’s outside too. Always has been. Weird that.
A single black olive has also appeared on the outside olive tree. The one I got from Tesco for a tenner. And strangely one of the Italian chillis in the chilli pots on the windowsill has completely by-passed green and gone straight to angry red.
Don’t get me wrong. Not everything is thriving. Of the 100 or so garlic cloves planted a year ago about ten have turned out good. And even then they’ve only produced tiny micro, bulbs.
Of all the things I tossed in the ground and forgot this year garlic is actually the only one I really, really wanted to grow well. On the basis you just can’t easily and cheaply buy even vaguely decent garlic in Scotland.
Now, much as I like Lidl I have to report the small fortune (okay £35 for about 20) I spent on their fruit trees a few years ago was completely wasted. The spindly, hopeless, apple twigs produced nothing except rampant rust. So I went to the garden centre sale and replaced them with Golden Delicious, Cox’s, Katy and something else (label blew off).
Their boughs are now bending with a golden and red crop (though the leaves have some gross curling disease) just as everyone in my house has revealed they, ahem, don’t like apples. To be fair to Lidll one plum tree shot up like a rocket, is now about 20 feet tall and has produced delicious plums at the rate of two every five years. One that was even edible. How we fought over it.
In the ground, the Golden Wonders (Ebay) at least have thrived and when the 25 or so plants are dug up I except to be eating magnificent chips, and maybe a few roasters too. There are beautiful fat purrira chillis on the windowsill that have gone from yellow, to purple, to a deep black red.
Now I’ve read up on how hot they are everybody, including me, is too scared to try them. Unfortunately. And the beetroot? It’s so angry at where I put it in the garden, shallow plastic tubs, that’s it’s mainly turned into knotted, gnarled wood. Next year beetroot pals, next year. Onions? They’re both good. Blueberries? One lived. Okay. It’s not hugely impressive. And to think that not only am I glued to Gardener’s World every week, but I come from gardening stock. Sort of. I remember pineapple, peaches and even juicy grapes dangling from a monster vine that was reputedly fed raw meat in my Nonno’s greenhouse in Glasgow.
The thing is: if even the world’s laziest and most inept gardener, ie me, can get something edible out the ground in Scotland why is there so little fresh local stuff to buy in shops and markets? Or to eat in restaurants? At harvest time. Which is now. Though you wouldn’t really know it.
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