Upside down tomatoes

 

Last year the upside down tomatoes were the only ones to grow, so this year I decided to put in a few more (8!) I have used most of the 4 sides of the uprights on our lean-to shed to hold them. (You can see the laundry behind.) You can also see two little red tomatoes in the tub to the left. We have already had two or three from it - it's a tumbler, bought from Kevin Harmon. And possibly put out a bit early - the later ones are thriving better.

 

In this one, between the plants on top growing down, and the tomatoes growing up, the plastic bucket is almost hidden.

 

While I was planting them, I decided to put some companion plants in the tops, so I planted nasturtium, calendula, basil, french marigold, night-scented stock, chamomile. And for the same reason that the tomatoes do well, they did well too. There's a volunteer tomato in one of the tops too!

Slugs just can't make it up that far. If it wasn't so damp, I'd worry that there wouldn't be enough compost to hold water for all these plants, but this hasn't been a problem yet. And if it is, I'll thin out the top plants. I put a lot of compost, manure, worm castings, and fish bones & guts into the tubs, and I have been watering with Comfrey tea, and worm tea, so they are all thriving.

Fresh Herbal teas

Last week we were in Donegal in the most wonderful self-catering house - if you like gardening - more about that later. Anyhow we were visiting our cousins who live nearby, and drinking tea - as you do. I can't really handle caffeine at all, and no one had any herbal teas. So I went outside to see if I coudl find any mint in the garden.

Sadly, there was no mint, but then I remembered that chamomile grows well in yards, so I foind some of that in a fairly clean place. Rinsed it off, poured boiling water over it and voila - delicious chamomile tea! My cousins, who are all farmers in one way or another, would know chamomile as a weed that colonises areas where there's no grass. They think it's hilarious that people pay for dried bags of something which grows so prolifically. The other funny thing is we tried to grow chamomile in the school, but were not successful - too much care, I suppose.

In our wanderings, we found some Russian Chamomile on the roadside - that's a bit rarer, so I brought a root of that home to grow.


Still had the yen for mint tea, so when I got home I took care of that, and I have drinking fresh mint tea at work all week - tastes a lot better than dried.

Now I'm inspired to make some herbal teas in school next year - from herbs it will be easy to grow - and who knows, if we choose the right ones, they may have a calming effect on the students!

Here's a good link to the wild chamomile -
http://www.slashfood.com/2008/06/19/backyard-tea-pineapple-weed/