Saturday 18th June, 2016.

Polytunnel - 9th June, 2016

On the peculiar habits of Broad Ripple Yellow Currants in the allotment garden of Nowhere in particular

I have shaken my head and rubbed my eyes at the spectacle of 'Broad Ripple Yellow Currant' tomatoes growing in the polytunnel of the allotment garden of Nowhere in particular. We sourced the heirloom tomato seeds from the Heritage Seed Library. The catalogue describes the tomato plant as 'very vigorous' requiring 'rigorous' pruning. Indeed it does - I'll write that again - indeed it does, for this tomato plant is growing prolifically like no other variety currently in cultivation in our allotment garden - including the, 'Tigerella', 'Red Alert', 'Red Cherry', 'Red Pear' and 'Principe Borghese' varieties. 

Broad Ripple Yellow Currant Tomatoes

just pruned - 9th June, 2016

'Broad Ripple Yellow Currants', as we are growing them, appear to require daily attention, as their 'vigorous' growth habit has created numerous side shoots which have very quickly, when unchecked, become main/side stems to fill, what has probably been through our inexperience, the inadequate amount of space given over to them. The 'Broad...s' have taken up as much time (and more space) as/than all the other tomatoes put together and for this reason I would describe them as very high maintenance. 

Broad Ripple Yellow Currant Tomatoes 

shooting trusses - 15th June, 2016.

As if the prodigious side shooting was not enough, our 'Broad Ripple Yellow Currants' have exhibited  another unusual, if not extraordinary, growth habit - that of growing new shoots from the ends of flowering and fruiting trusses. Truss upon truss upon truss? Surely not. Could this be part of a nightmare scenario out of an H P Lovecraft story? Is this particular and peculiar member of the Utopian Nowhere tomato community playing with my mind? I have looked to the other tomatoes to see if our nurture has caused similar peculiarities. Not as yet. I have warded off various paranoid thoughts that would see me cast as a 'Nahum'-like character from the Lovecraft story, 'The Colour Out of Space'.

Fanciful notions of a dystopian sort have been dispelled by practical action; I have cut the extraneous shoots from the plants and I continue to look forward to a wealth of sweet golden yellow tomatoes from the polytunnel of the allotment garden of Nowhere in peculiar and particular.

9th June, 2016.