David W.E. Roberts


You have some sort of magic working for you.
snip

My pots are on concrete hard standing behind the house.
They are bounded by a West facing fence, South facing house/garage, North
facing shed side and so are in a sunny but sheltered position where the
concrete and the house wall retain the heat of the sun, and the sheltered
position hopefully keeps the humidity up a bit.

Sorry, lost the attributions in the above, but just wanted to add that my 9"
high pepper plant (bought as a 3" high plant from a garden centre, and just
labelled 'patio pepper') now has 5 x 3" + fruits on it (and several more
smaller ones), and doesn't look likely to stop anytime soon! It's on a north
facing windowsill (outside), in a 9" pot, and all I do is feed it tomato
food once a week. Guess there's magic in Ireland, too - either that, or
there are some strong plants for sale out there, this year! My chilli plants
are also doing well - 5 - 6" long chillies developing on two cuttings I got
from a friend, some smaller fruits appearing on my 'patio chilli' (from the
same garden centre as above, but living indoors on the windowsill), but the
jalapeno plant is very slow to flower - there are buds there, but they're
not open yet. T&M 'Firecracker' (another chilli) seedlings have started
accelerating their growth in the past couple of weeks, and are almost
respectable plants now...must re-pot 'em!

The world must be becoming a bit weird - my pumpkin seedlings are thriving,
and the summer squash seeds germinated, too, and are almost visibly growing
( a bit like my indoor banana, which is now 3 1/2" inches tall - and it only
emerged fom the soil last Tuesday!). This is not normal on the north west
coast of Ireland, I'm sure! In fact, everything in the garden has gone nuts
this year - and I'm looking forward to a bumper crop of blackberries, if I
can judge by the number of blossoms. Is the same true elsewhere? We have a
large evergreen something (it's like a Leylandii thingie, but I'm sure it
would be bigger by now if it were the genuine article) in the middle of the
lawn we've just had dug up, and it's increased in size by about a half this
year, as opposed to slow growth in the past 3 years ( at a guess it's now 8
foot tall - four years ago someone cut the heart out of it - before we
bought the house, and it was a sorry looking specimen - now seems to have
recovered) - plus the off-shoots in the hedge have really come on strong
(funny thing is, they're a dark shade of green, not light like the main
tree) - what used to look like a dead hedge is now thriving!

Don't think for a moment that I'm complaining - I'm loving these instant
green fingers I seem to have - it just seems a bit odd, is all! And the
blinkin' purple sprouting broccoli is now sprouting, too (it does what it
says on the tin, obviously!) - I wasn't expecting it to until the winter!
It's not been a hot summer here - nothing like you've had in the UK (I know,
my Dad lives in Brighton) - but it's been better than last year - ie, we've
had a few days of sun, and rain in clumps, rather than perpetual drizzle.
Also increased humidity. Could this account for the change in growth rate
that I'm seeing?

Jo (who can't write a short post to save her life, and yes, Shannie, I owe
you loads of e-mail - sorry, will reply to it all tomorrow!)



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