Another for the list

A week away, and a week that had the good courtesy to pretend to be summer. Very welcome. And for the most part I didn’t think too much about Otter Farm. I could relax, Trent was here, hopefully keeping his clothes on.

A few evenings though, colder as they were, had me thinking long and hard about what’s coming here before next spring. I’d already started a few weeks ago, but Mastermind conventions don’t apply when it comes to my planning. Lots of ones-and-twos on the list, but no definites on the larger scale – maybe chestnuts though.

I’ve been trying to keep my mind off any more ones-and-twos, and what do I get, a pic from Stephanie Donaldson. At the risk of exposing my horticultural new-kid-on-the-blockness, I’ve only recently met Stephanie, at my first Chelsea Flower Show. We talked of apricots, while I tried to offer the antidote to James Alexander Sinclair’s rather colourful introduction of me: it certainly included a phrase similar to ‘this is Mark, he tries to grow things that aren’t supposed to grow in this country, and they mostly die’. My mum always taught me that toffs were polite.

Stephanie’s picture is of a strawberry guava that’s doing rather nicely. This is a classic of it’s type: a picture of something apparently utterly delicious that shouldn’t be overly content in our climate that’s doing rather well for someone else. And something I’ve already tried growing once and killed. I’m beginning to see a pattern emerging.

  • I think you will find that my exact words were "This is Mark, Devon's foremost eco-farmer and plant vivisectionist".

Comments are closed.