Gartenperle overload

Would you adam and eve it. There I was thinking that I was all organised and had recorded all my sowing times in my very nice Jack Vettriano desk diary, and can I find when I sowed the Gartenperles ?? Can I heck as like. So based on the fact that I sowed my Totems on 30 April, I'll go with that for the cherries too.

To begin with the GPs were slow to take off. Reaching for the sky with not a bit of "Ideal for Hanging Baskets" in sight. This was also mentioned on A4A and others seemed to be suffering the same fate ..... till the fruit started appearing and then it was a matter of tying up stems with various bits of old string and cord to almost every available hole in g/h No. 2.

I have seven. Four in the g/h in a ring culture type idea. Black Morrison bucket (8 for 99p when you can find them) filled with jolly old multi-purpose compost, sat in a blue Morrison crate (5 for a quid) base filled with various mixtures basically involving multi-purpose and John Innes something or other. Not very scientific I'm afraid. One went in a hanging basket along with my old favourites Naughty Marietta marigolds and the other two in a huge-ish pot with the same multi-purpose mix and NMms.

All have done exceedingly well (just like Mr Kipling cherries) ! Now we're not the biggest cherry tomato eaters in the world. There's just the two of us and before I started growing them, I don't think I'd ever bought a cherry tom in my life. I was attracted by the packet PR blurb "Ideal for growing in baskets, containers and window boxes, where you will be rewarded with bumper crops of delicious fruits in summer. Easy to grow, naturally trailing, needs no stopping or sideshooting". There were various words that attracted me. "Easy" being one and "bumper crops" being two others.

Messrs Thompson & Morgan did not lie. Tonight I had another picking and came back in the house with about three big bowls full, and there's already two large plastic bags full of the things in the freezer ! If I had a glut, this was it. Managed to palm off a colander full onto the M-i-L tonight .. I think she was pleased/impressed. We've been chucking handfuls of the little darlings into almost anything that demanded a tomato. Chilli, spag bol, etc skins and all. Probably sacrilege but hey ho, we were never going to eat that many raw !

The pic is of my very first tom picked. It ripened at least a week or so before any others and tasted lovely. I made a huge fuss of him and took loads of pics before popping him in my mouth and killing him. lmao. There was no way I was sharing my first born.

I've made an attempt to save some seed and also have a few left over in the packet, but I'll not grow so many next year, you can have just too many cherries.