Black Tomatoes

We grew pale pink beetroots last year (I think it's an Italian variety) - they were delicious, with a delicate flavour. They were sort of stripy with a dark circular stripe running through them, but mostly pale pink.

Agree about the tough skins nannyfran

Yes - and they taste different too, don't they?

I was a gardener. As in, started out in accountancy, hated it, wondered about teaching, went on a horticultural course and loved it so became a gardener, so I had access to some quite weird seeds very early on.

The mice LOVE those small pink beetroots, I had to give up.

Some of the Black Russian tomatoes really are very black, but they need a lot of sunshine to achieve it. So it is a bit of a lottery to grow them. I had one very good year and a couple of fairly bad ones.

Those tomato photos were on my 'miscellaneous' thread, so heaven only knows what else you saw, nonu!

I don"t know but whatever it was was great ! pm"d you

Jane, it seems we can see all your albums!

Luckily for me I am not a mad axe murderer...

Well, most of them are fairly old ones of this garden, because I only started to put photos in photobucket 6 years ago, when we moved here. It's quite a big garden.

Well I am going to look all round JANE"S garden now , care to join me ANA?

Well, I was waiting for permission, but I will now have a look, Nonu!

Jane is a decent sort she would be pleased for to just wander round !
Just so long as we don"t take cuttings !

Do we get and ?

I think we have Mexican mice in our garden. This morning I discovered they'd nibbled the tops off all the chilli pepper seedlings

not sure about about & [cake] , will have to check with *JANE!
She will probably take pity on us though !

Where did you do your horticultural course, jane? I did mine at CCAH, Milton which is now the College of West Anglia.

Oh Merlot you are so lucky I wanted to do that but was not allowed .
Still my DS who has set up his own little gardening business is going to one , so will be able to get tips from him.
Am off out now to see a sick friend , try and cheer her up !

I did it partly at Hadlow in Kent, and then some more in Lincs when we moved up there, at Riseholme, I went to work for a big tree nursery there doing graftings and cuttings and what have you. Also propagation of perennials. Then had a herb nursery for a while and planned and worked people's gardens. It was MiL's idea initially after DBH had made me move yet again, she thought it would help me to make friends in a new area if I went on a garden design course, so she bought me one as a birthday present.

Yes, I do always have cake. Can you see the new pergola, is it in there? I haven't added many photos lately because as poor Phoenix found out, Photobucket is a right b****r lately. I suppose I ought to sort it out properly really, it used to be very organised.

No, it's still on my computer, there's just a couple of pics of when we started it last summer.

It really grabs you doesn't it? I did the RHS General purely to learn how to garden 'properly' and not just a hit and miss approach. I then stayed on to do a year's Garden Design which was very rewarding because although I'm not exactly brilliant at technical drawing I do love planting plans. Sucker that I was, I then went on to the RHS Diploma course which was very hard work because it normally takes longer than a year. This was sixteen years ago when I was younger and fitter!!

I can't see a pergola, only tomatoes.

I think Jane must have closed the gate for the evening...

DD does a lot of her research on tomatoes and she brought home some dark brown ones. They were a nice flavour but quite thick skinned.

Waitrose sometimes sell Heritage tomatoes, some of which are nearly black, and purple carrots.

No, didn't close the gate - when I clicked on it all I could see was the tomatoes, so I don't know if it was a glitch. I can always put it on properly if you are really that interested - but once you've seen Zephirine Drouhin for the 20th time you may feel like crying.