It is so good to reap the fruits of your labour at the season’s end, I think this year I grew my biggest ever tomato at over 400g, this Amish Paste was almost a meal in itself. A new variety which also did well is Nagina, a blight resistant plum tomato which was soon hitting the roof grown in the greenhouse in Air-Pot containers and has proved to be good as a salad tomato or cooked into sauce. It is an expensive F1 seed so just two seeds were started extra early which meant there was plenty of time to remove side shoots and root them in order to have lots of bonus plants later in the season. Because they are blight resistant they can be gown outside as well as under glass, and because they all grew from just two seeds there is enough seed left to produce plants for years to come.

The peppers and chillies are still ripening, perhaps the favourites this year are Bolsa de Dulce (Bags of Sweetness) which can easily be de-seeded by cutting out the stem and shaking out the seeds, leaving a hollow round shaped chilli perfect for stuffing with cream cheese, or just steeping in a sweet vinegar. A huge number of Bolsa de Dulce ripened early in the season even on small plants grown in 1 litre Air-Pot prop. pots. For bigger hotter chillies Ohnivec has been a star performer producing masses of long fleshy pods which will probably mostly be dehydrated and powdered.

The raised bed made from a length of Air-Pot wall material has grown a nice crop of Hokkaido squash which are safely in storage now that frosts are threatening. The plants were extremely vigorous grown in this deep bed. A selection of winter hardy Japanese onions have been rooting and sprouting in modules ready to jump into the raised bed as soon as the squash plants are cleared away. This was such an easy way to quickly create a deep bed of lovely rich compost I look forward to seeing how different crops grow in this.

A tree fern which was bought as a short length of bare trunk last year has rooted well in an Air-Pot and produced a good spray of fronds. The trunk was kept moist by frequent hosings as a lot of water is absorbed through the trunk which is actually formed from roots, but the base prefers not to be very wet so the good drainage of the Air-Pot container has suited it well as it allows excess water to escape. 

In August some forgotten potatoes stored in a corner of a shed were rediscovered covered in long sprouts and roots.As an experiment these were stuck in an Air-Pot Potato Tower that had been recently emptied of an early potato crop. I think the sprouts on these may have got overlong but some decent plants have emerged so it will be interesting to see if they can produce a crop so late in the season. They will need to move into the greenhouse soon and be protected with fleece on cold nights, hopefully they will prove to be less tender than generally thought after all wild potatoes grow high in the Andes.