Plantasia Greenhouse Update: May 2016

Greenhouse – May 2016

Hello and welcome to the 2016 Plantasia greenhouse blog. Well it’s May already and we are bursting at seams with plants, all in the propagation area growing well in the recent fine weather. This year sees us increasing the diversity of plants and varieties we will be growing and I’m really excited by the new additions as well as the chance to improve on some of the favourites from last year. We have increase the number of capsicum and chilli plants to 50 varieties and you can follow their progress in the regular Chilli Update post right here.

We have added the variety Mountain Magic to this year’s tomato collection along with the trusted Ailsa Craig and reputed ‘whoppa’ in Gigantomo – sounds awesome! These three lovelies join our favourite main stays of Money Maker (Salad), San Mazano (plum), Capriccio, Poticio, Rosada (cherry/grape). Last year was a bad year for blight and for the first time our tomatoes suffered quite badly, nevertheless we still managed to harvest plenty. Mountain Magic has very good resistance to blights it’s reported, so hopefully we’ve got that issue well covered. Mini Munch and Delizia have been added to the cucumber selection making three varieties along with the very popular La Diva. Powdery Mildew was another big problem last year made worse by the cool night temperatures throughout the spring and summer and it hit all our cucurbits badly, including the pumpkins and courgettes. This year we are trying out some biological fungus control to combat the pesky leaf fungus and we will let you know how that goes. Undeterred by the Powdery Mildew wipe out of last year we’ve got some selected Giant Pumpkin seeds donated to us by an avid giant-pumpkin grower, from a fruit weighing 673kg. This was and orange fruit variety and hes given us seeds of the green fruit variety that reached 555kg too. I’m not sure we will get them that big in pots and planters but we will sure have fun trying. Yellow and green courgettes are also back this year. In addition to all that, we will be growing giant onions, beans, carrots, parsnips, 2 types of fennel, 5 varieties of basil, lemon grass, lots of herbs and salad leaves. We are even trying our hand at growing rice for the first time. On the ornamental side we have our stunning brugmansias over-wintered from last year and added 4 different colour varieties for this season. We have raised some new varieties of Datura from seed and we will be trying our hand at some climbing flower walls too.

It’s not just about plants in the Plantasia greenhouse, we use and test lots of products that we sell and new products that are just about to be released. So we will be reporting back on these just as much as the plants.

You can find out more about the latest products in our Whats New In The Shop? Blog.