Come and have a quick walk around our garden with me.

Won’t take long – there’s only about 12 square metres of it.

Blackcurrants. Last year had a yield of 6. Not pounds or kilos. 6 blackcurrants. And they were sourer than an irritated hag. This year, loads of flowers has lead to loads of blackcurrants! Yay!

2 hanging baskets each sporting 2 cherry tomatoes with a French marigold for pest control purposes. See the sweet little tomato peeking out? No hundreds and thousands this year. Maybe next year.

Mum grew them from seed. She raised them and hardened them off (*ahem* dreadful term), then I took custody of them once the annoying stage was over.

Hello raspberries! My raspberries are looking fantastic! They are waist high already.

Mum’s aren’t doing so well. She spends too much time growing things from seed and dragging them in and out of the utility room to get them acclimatised to the outdoors.

You should get someone else to do that for you Mum. I do.

My wicker hanging basket that’s flat against a wall type of hanging basket. Can’t remember what the daisy things are called. It’s the dragon-tongue looking one that I love. Lotus Flash, it’s called. Love it.

Alpine strawberries. If you’re not much of a fan of strawberries in their natural state (puts hand in air), then these are the only ones worth eating.

Auntie Rene gave me some patio courgette (zucchini) seeds. I couldn’t shake my feeling that they wouldn’t come up. The weather was so awful that I had to plant them out late, then I ran out of compost and had to rush out for more, so I thought, bugger it, I’ll plant all the seeds – so sure  was I that some would fail.

So I planted 3 in this pot. Ermmmmmm and all 3 in this pot have done very well indeed.

These are my Winter pansies that I planted before Christmas. They were pathetic in the Winter. “Never again!!” I moaned. Now, of course, when I need some room, they’re blooming their brains out. They’re doing it on purpose.

I love Aqualegia

I adore Aqualegia

I wish I had an Aqualegia dress

Chives. Happy in the shade. Odd.

Hi, Aqualegia! (really must deadhead those thangs)

Standard, large, normal tomatoes. Mum and Dad told me they were potbound and that it was Mum’s fault for ‘doing them too early’. I have no idea what that meant, so I tutted and shoved them in a growbag.

My bargain wicker ‘raised’ (not by much) bed.

Bright lights chard in the front row – please note the yellow, pink and red stems

Salad leaves (cut and come again *ahem*) in the middle row.

Ah. Yes. That would be where I put the other 2 of Auntie Rene’s courgette seeds. Yes. They both look very healthy too. There will be much courgette here!

Sweet peas that don’t climb up sticks, but inhabit hanging basket things.

My beautiful, beloved Acer. Can’t eat her, but I like looking at her.

Herbs – parsleys, mint, thyme, oregano, fennel. One casualty already. A moment of silence for the Sage please. How amusing that it is the wise herb that has chosen to die.

I forgot to mention dandelions. I have seven billion of those.

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I officially love Summer. I thought I loved Winter the best, but as I have got more mature older, I have realised that I used to like Winter because Christmas is in it. Now I still love Christmas the most, but I’m really loving Summer. Allow me to expand on that.

I’ve always half-heartedly and incompetently messed around with plants, but not knowing what one is doing is rather a drawback. Even worse than that is asking your very garden-competent parents for instructions and then not really understanding what they’re talking about.

Pinch out the side shoots (offhand, in the style of  ‘don’t forget to wipe your bottom’)

Mmhm. Pinch them out from where?

From the side.

But it all grows out of the side. This bit?

No, leave that bit, pinch out this bit.

This bit too?

No. Leave that bit.

Pinch it. That means what exactly?

Nip it off.

Like this?

Well…more like this, but not that bit.

Whatever, dude.

So I took matters into my own hands. I had bought a punnet of teeny-tiny tomatoes; they were the size of cola pips (hands up who remembers cola pips?) and I loved them. Flicking through one of Mum and Dad’s garden catalogues, we saw a variety of tomato listed – ‘Hundreds and Thousands’. It has to be them and I must have those plants. Even better? No pinching out of side shoots required. Match made in Heaven.

They arrived as little plug plants, they had to sit in my kitchen for what felt like months, until they had outgrown their pots. One of the most stressful times of my life. Those 3 plants were trying to die! They were! They got dodgy coloured leaves, would suddenly collapse and were generally very highly strung. 3 operatic Divas in pots, I tell you. I wouldn’t mind, but I nurtured them – even got Mum to come over and visit them. She agreed, I was doing it all right – they just wanted to be outside, but not until they had filled their pots with roots. OK Mum.

First hint of spindly thin root on the bottom of that pot and those stroke-inducing buggers were outside. Inside for the night, then back out. Not in direct sunlight, but with a little dappled shade. They were more demanding than Alex and frankly, that’s incredible.

Oh yeah.. Mum, I told you they had filled the pot with roots – they sort of had. Never mind, eh.

So fast forward and they are in hanging baskets, suspended from a hanging basket stake thing that looked very alarming until the baskets were ready. Well, they’ve grown…and grown…and grown. They make Topsy look like an underachiever. So pretty with the yellow flowers, hahaha goodness, so many yellow flowers. Here come the little tomatoes, goodness hahaha, so many tomatoes. Green tomatoes, but lo! They are ripening, slowly, but it’s happening. See the little orange one peeking out?

The most dreadful picture of Alex ever taken. It just goes to prove that if you try to use a child for scale and perspective in a photo, it bites you back. Gone to kick a football before I could try again. Shows the scale nicely though.

Shameless use of Ian for scale too. He looks so uncomfortable in this picture. That’s because he’s thinking, ‘I’m going to have to eat this lot’.

So there you have the saga and wonder of the tomato variety ‘Hundreds and Thousands’. *wry chuckle* it certainly lives up to its name, and I hope that Ian and Alex are looking forward to eating that lot.

Oh! Didn’t you know? I don’t like tomatoes. Well, I like cooked cherry tomatoes as long as they’ve collapsed and are with other veg. A raw tomato? Not on your nelly.

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11th August – An update.

The first of the tomatoes are ripened and have been sampled by the tomato eaters of the family – a big thumbs up. Words used were ‘outstanding’ ‘so sweet’ and ‘excellent’.

I have seen the seeds in the shops, so it would have to be our recommendation for next year!

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UPDATE 7th September

So lots of people have had the opportunity to try these. Lots of people, because there are LOTS of tomatoes! They are so sweet (apparently) and very popular. Definitely, definitely growing them again next year.

They are at their best when very ripe. Dear little things.

I actually ran out of time harvesting some this evening. Man, they live up to their name.