Sunday, October 25, 2009

Oxford '09

Yesterday was the 2nd (annual?) get together of garden bloggers in Oxford organized by Patrick. Vegplotting, Alternative Kitchen Garden, Ben from Real Seeds, Vicki Cooke from Heritage Seed Library and Dr.Simon Platten/British Homegardens each spoke about their projects/interests for 20 - 30 minutes. Most of the afternoon session was reserved for maverick potato & tomato breeder Tom Wagner - father of Green Zebra, Banana Legs and Schimmeig Creg tomatoes, to name a few. This was the final stop for him on a 2 month tour of Europe - giving workshops on breeding techniques and just spreading around his enthusiasm. Very inspiring!


This year I had a go at growing potatoes from true seed, and the results were unremarkable but I've had a lot of fruit set on both Verity and Skerry Blue so I'm thinking I'll sow some more next year. And I got a few pointers for increasing the yield.

3 comments:

VP said...

Good to see you again!

I'd been wondering what to do with all those potato berries - now I know :)

Tom Wagner said...

Thanks for mentioning my visit with everyone at the Oxford event. If I can do more in the future to help the group hold a truly annual meeting.....let me know.

I had loads of fun talking with folks after getting used to the "other" English language. But I did have a handicap with my rather poor hearing.


Keep talking about potatoes from TPS.

Tater Mater

Send Flowers to Indonesia said...

That was a really good post... thanks a lot for sharing...