I gave this variety a go last year, they grew reasonably well but I suffered a lot of variation between plants with some strange looking vegetation! Despite that I had some success and even gave pickling a go, that was less successful as I improvised and used the wrong vinegar!
I want to give it another go, this time with a decent recipe! I've planted up four for now (as I'm low on space) and left them in the garage on a windowsill in the sun.
I suddenly had an urge to grow some courgettes so I ordered this variety pack of 4 courgettes & 2 summer squashes that range from a dark skinned traditional looking courgette (Black Beauty), to a vibrant yellow (Golden Zucchini) and even a small green globe variety (Di Nizza) and lastly a pale green (Grisette de Provence).
The squashes feature one green variety (Patty Pan) and one yellow (Yellow Scallop). I have planted two seeds of each and left on the windowsill for now.
As I've moved most of my strawberry plants from the kitchen windowsill to outside, it's freed up some room so I thought I'd plant up some herbs.
I've already grown one batch of sweet basil, which grew well and had a very rich and sweet flavour that we very much enjoyed so I planted another pot, a pot of thyme and to join them (and keep in with my unusual theme) some red 'Summer Suprise' basil, which is exciting from the get go with tiny (and very unusual) purple shoots poking through the soil!
Now these are very interesting looking berries! About the size of a grape and with a resemblence of a tiny watermelon, these are actually mini-mouthfuls of fresh cucumber with the hint of citrus about them.
I got a plant free last year with James Wong's amazing book Homegrown Revolution. It grew reasonably well but I only got around half a dozen berries. They were more impressive in look than flavour but I thought I would give them another go, this time from seed so I've just planted four up and will see how they fair. I'd like to have a go at pickling them as per James Wong's recipe.
I purchased 12 bareroot anablanca strawberry plants from Suttons Seeds. It was a backup plan to my Pineberries because they didn't successfully fruit last year I wasn't sure if they would work out.
Anablancas are a similar variety producing a white fleshed strawberry, with a more pink blushed hue than the Pineberry.
Because they have not been pushed as hard commercially, they are a lot cheaper than their more famous cousins. The 12 plants I bought cost £12.99... you can only get 3 Pineberries for that price!
Anyway, they've been doing very well and are also now flowering and are more than welcome in my collection!
I have kept my Spectrum Peppers, Orange Baby Peppers and Gusto Purple Chilies inside on windowsills for as long a possible for maximum growth but have finally started moving them outside this week after most have started to flower.
The majority are a great height and very healthy looking plants with plenty of buds queuing up to open. The chilies are ridiculous though, almost dwarfing the peppers and covered in buds, spread throughout the plants.
The peppers are the first to be successfully pollinated with the first fruits appearing.
I got three unusual plants free with James Wong's Homegrown Revolution book. One is these was an Electric Daisy that didn't produce an edible crop, another was a Cucamelon (Mexican cucumber) which I harvested only 3 or 4 fruits from (I've just ordered a packet of seeds and will try to grow them from scratch this/next year).
The third was an Inca Berry plant, otherwise known as a Cape Gooseberry. After flowering, the fruits grow in their own little paper lanters until ripe.
I only harvested around three berries last year but left the plant in the garage (along with my strawberries), expecting it to perish but it remained healthy looking and active and by the spring it had growth to a ridiculous height with a brand new off-shoot. So much so that the original plant snapped under its own weight. I thought it was definitely a goner!
For convenience I tied what was left of the old plant to the new and a long cane and pretty much ignored it whilst I concentrated on my much more prized vegetation.
I had spotted one flower again making an appearance but it was only whilst walking around my garden this evening that I saw that it has another 6 or 7 buds about to flower!
This is one resilient plant!
When my 6 plants arrived from Suttons Seeds they looked extremely healthy but their progress has been slow since. I have noticed some round growths which have been getting larger and larger.
At first I thought these may have been the berries themselves but after re-checking images on the internet, I'm fairly sure that these are actually the flowers emerging.
The flowers when they are fully revealed are very attractive and have an almost fuscia-like look to them. The berries themselves look a little like a blueberry in shape but a deep red in colour and apparently have a taste of wild strawberry.
It looks like my first strawberry harvest of the year will come from the Honeoye strawberries that I bought from Homebase a little earlier in the year (6 plants, £5).
I have a number of large berries, a couple have started turning already but stolen/gnawed by an unseen pest!
My six or so Toscana strawbs I grew from seeds are doing rather well, rather better than the 6 plants I ordered from Suttons Seeds, which are still looking fairly puny.
My homegrown plants are already quite large, two have sent out runners with very well developed mini plantlets (which I couldn't stop myself from planting up) and another is just starting to sending out a couple of flower stems.
I cannot wait to see the flowers in full bloom as they supposedly put out unique and vivid fuscia-pink petals to lure hungry pollinators.
My original Leo Alba was a tiny little plant when I bought it from Homebase last year but I was drawn to it by the picture of small white strawberries on the front.
I had a good harvest of berries, getting handfuls later on in the season. From that tiny £2 plant, it grew to fill a large square box which I overwintered, I also harvested some seeds which I planted in late January in a windowsill propagator. From those I grew around 15 plants which have filled a large long and two round planters.
Now they're all coming into flower and my original has even got a few berries on the way.
I'd forgotten about my corn really but it seems to be growing well. It's a bit of an experiment really, I'd never thought of growing corn before but after seeing a picture of the bright red ears of corn that look like large strawberries that can be popped in the microwave after harvesting, it was worth a go.
The literature said unsuitable for pots but I put seeds in the deepest pots I had at the time and I will keep a close eye on them from now on.
This is my 2nd batch of Mr Fothergill's Mustard Colour & Bite salad leaves of the year. I grew it last year too and it's one that the wife and I love.
It has a very tasty, sweet, almost mustard and honey flavour that grows very quickly and doesn't seem to be of interest to slugs and other pests and at under £2 a pack, it's one I'd recommend to all.
My two main Blueberry bushes are literally covered in berries. There's a few buds here and there that didn't get pollinated but I should have a good supply this summer.
There's even a few berries on one of my brand new small plants. That plant and my other two new plants will no doubt come into their own next year, providing even more.
I grew a few sugar snap pea plants last year to a successful and tasty result!
So I grew plenty more this year along with some beans and they've really taken off, grown huge and just started flowering.
The 5 canes that I bought at the beginning of the year continue to grow well with masses of healthy, green leaves that should hopefully yield plenty of golden berries in the autumn.
There even 3 or 4 cheeky, early berry threatening to emerge. As an autumn-bearer, I'm not sure how these will fair but it will be fun finding out!
When I bought my original hanging basket that contained 3 Pineberry plants, they appeared to have already flowered and had small buds ready to become the unusual white strawberried that the big, bright label promised.
For some reason they never progressed passed this stage, rather like pollination had been unsuccessful. They were prolific at.sending out runners though and I was able to breed enough plantlets to fill a couple of large square planters.
I overwintered the lot and they recovered well in Spring and have recently sent out flowers. I spotted that the petals have fallen from a few so I had everything crossed and I'm over the moon to see that the first had started to swell and is on its way to becoming a Pineberry!
Unfortuately due to some random gusty storms, my polythene greenhouse came down and took with it all my Toms. Luckily my wife was on hand and rescued them all.
They lived indoors and in the garage until this weekend when I finally had the time to resurrect said greenhouse.
I fixed it back in place, now in the corner of my garden and tied 3 of its 4 corners to the garden fences. I then loaded it up with all my tomato plants (and my small vine). This gave me the first proper chance to count them up. I was shocked to learn that I have 39 healthy plants!!
I had previously planted some amethyst dwarf beans along with some sugar snap peas in a specific 6 cane planter. A lot of the peas have survived the onslaught of slugs and are fairing well but all the bean seedlings have been destroyed.
My wife suggested starting them in pots first, away from danger which was a brilliant idea so I planted some a couple of weeks ago along with a few more sugar snap peas and the very interesting looking Firetongue bean variety.
I checked on them a couple of days ago and most were just poking through the soil so I was rather amazed when I checked on them again and found how much they'd grown since!
I'm not sure when it first turned up and I certainly don't know where it came from but I've had a small, wild bramble along my fence for a few years now which has produced a fair few berries.
This year though it seems huge! It may actually need a bigger prune at the end of the season. But flower bud are starting to show all over which should mean plenty of fruit later on.
It may not be my best looking plant (with one of its two main branches growing almost horizontally) but it is likely to provide me with my first taste of this very strange blueberry variety as this collection of infant berries shows!
At last the first few flowers are emerging on my original Pineberry plants that I overwintered in the garage last year.
Hopefully this means that this year I will be able to harvest a few of these most strange berries.
