Seeds from Italy

Blog readers will know that I like to try growing something a little different or unusual each year. Last Summer I bought a packet of vegetable spaghetti from an Italian seed company. Apparently related to the durum wheat family, vegetable spaghetti is not a widely eaten food in the UK and is considered by many in Italy as an exotic delicacy. Each year at the end of March is an extremely anxious time for spaghetti harvesters all over Europe as severe frost can impair the flavour of the spaghetti. Each strand of spaghetti always grows to the same length thanks to years of genetic engineering by expert growers. This particular variety comes in variegated form, producing green, red and white strands.

You can get these seeds from the parent company in Italy by ordering online at internet on www.primo-aprilla.com

Lima Beans

Another of my recent purchases in the USA was a packet of Lima Beans. This year I am planning a 'bean hedge' consisting of many different colours of climbing beans. Yellow, purple and green. Thompson & Morgan have a runner bean selection packet containing 4 different colours of runner bean flowers.

I am not sure, but I think Lima beans are grown for the white bean itself rather than the pod. These are named 'Florida Speckled Butter' which indicates to me that they are a butter bean. Americans call them 'pole beans' which is the same as 'climbing beans' here. The pod looks about 3 inches long and contains about 3 beans. Has anyone tried growing them over here?

Perhaps I could eat them with a nice Chianti......sssssccchlluurrp!

Strawberries

A couple of weeks ago I brought my strawberries into the greenhouse in the hopes of having an early crop. These are 2 year old runners which I planted up in a growbag. Last year I did not permit them to bear any fruit, thus enabling them to put all their energy into building up crowns for future years' crops.

This time of year, or earlier, all they need is a high potash feed and to stop watering. Strawberries have a very fine root system which is vulnerable to over-watering. Strawberries have two different sets of leaves which have two different purposes. The leaves this time of year are to feed the production of flowers and fruits. Once the plant has finished fruiting in June or July, shave off all these first set of leaves completely. The second set of leaves which will grow through the Summer and Autumn will feed the crown to produce these new leaves in Spring.

A difficulty I have experienced with this grow-bag cultivation is that the plastic on the growbag has deteriorated to such an extent, that after only 2 years it is much too brittle to pick up and handle, hands (and paws) just go straight through it.