An Horticultural Post

Hello All,
Back from fishing, with 40lb of fish fillets safely in the freezer.

Some time ago I noticed a seedling growing among the spinach. It looked familiar, but I couldn't quite recall what it was. After a week or two I recognisd it as a Thorn Apple (also known as Devil's Trumpet) and decided to let it grow to show to the grandchildren, as though it is not rare it is quite uncommon around these parts. As they say, like Ttopsy, it grew and grew into this monster plant. The last one that grew here was not nearly so big, as you can see this is as tall as the sunflowers next to it. The white "dashes" that you can see open into large white trumpets towards evening. If you know the greenhouse plant Brugmansia  or Angels Trumpet, it has similar flowers, though I don't think it is the same family as I think that Thorn Apple is of the potato/tomato family.

Here is a close up of the seed, clarifying why it is commonly called a thorn apple. This plant is covered in these seed cases.

All parts of the Thorn Apple are poisonous, so I now have to, reluctantly because it is a beautiful plant, and with care (and rubber gloves) dig up the plant and bag it ready for the tip.
I have just looked up the latin name for this plant it is Datura Stramonim.

While with the tomato family, here is a tomato I grew from some seed which came with my last order from Marshalls Seeds. It is new bush variety called Montello. I don't know how to copy the picture from the catalogue, but it doesn't look like my plant which instead of bushing and bunching has long branches with fruits about two inches apart. This pic show the top two branches, there are more underneath looking exactly the same. Mmmm what happened there I wonder? Did anyone else grow this?

                                                                                                                                                                   A few years ago I lost one of the Victoria plum trees to who-knows-what. I bought a new one and planted it at the opposite end of the orchard. This year it flowered for the first time, the grand total of plums being eight BLACK plums! Four of those fruits are on the left, next to plums from our other Victoria. The fruits are a good size, I should have put a 50p next to them to show how big, I would say 2 to 2.5 inches. Clearly it is not a Victoria. Does anyone know what plum it is?

This last pic is of some lovely plump walnuts. I knew the squirrel would get them first and                  determined to pick them even if they were green when we got back from or fishing week (we got back yesterday) Too late!! they are all gone, apart from a few on the floor that are covered in bite marks. Did I tell you I hate squirrels?!

I reckon that is enough for now
Back Soon
Gillx