Sponge and oregano and seeds

[igenlode]

Using the cake which sank as an improvised flan-case was very successful. I filled it with a custard made from thickened evaporated milk, and covered this with tinned peach slices and a glaze made from the syrup in the peach tin boiled up with a spoonful of home-made apricot jam -- the glaze didn't quite set, presumably not having been boiled for long enough, but it didn't matter. I had some spare and kept spooning it over for each helping as it sank into the sponge overnight ;-p It would have been a very dry cake (due to being all outside and no middle, I think), so instead of going soggy it simply became manageably moistened. And the coffee flavour was barely noticeable.

I also bought a pot of oregano from the new herb-plant-stall at the market, which I have been eyeing up for a few weeks now. I normally grow everything from seed (even my little birch tree, although that was self-seeded!), but after my repeated failures at growing parsley I thought it might be worth getting a 'proper' plant intended for growing on rather than a supermarket one intended for eating. But as it's an annual I decided I'd do better to get oregano instead, which is a perennial and likes heat and sun. (£3.50 for one tiny plant is *very* much more expensive than seed, even if you're paying for seed in the first place -- but it does save the hassle of having Far Too Many Seedlings and having to thin most of them, and/or having too many plants because you can't bear to get rid of all the seedlings...)

I think the poppies I planted about ten days ago are germinating, as there are several seedlings all coming up at once -- they have already been coming up absolutely everywhere else due to stray seed in last year's compost, so I'm certainly not going to be short of them! I don't weed them out as vigorously as I probably ought since I'm fond of poppies and the blooms are so short-lived (one needs plenty), but the big Oriental ones will grow to a couple of feet if they establish in a deep pot, which is enough to overshadow and crowd out whatever is supposed to be in there. It's impossible to tell which variety you have at the seedling stage, so you have to wait for the first few true leaves to develop; the Oriental poppies have upright frill-edged leaves a bit like lettuces, and the field poppies are much more weed-like in habit and have slim dagged leaves like undernourished dandelions :-D

There are some poppy-type seedlings coming up in the compartments where I sowed (yet again) yellow poppy seed, from last year's successful seedpods, but since as I mentioned I also have poppy seedlings coming up in all sorts of other pots, I have absolutely no guarantee that these are actually from the seed I sowed -- and therefore dare not weed out the other, round-leaved seedlings that have also emerged there, even though I'm fairly sure those are not going to turn into poppies of any variety... Probably none of them are yellow poppies. On the other hand, the plant that is busy regrowing from the root in amongst the dill seedlings is clearly thriving, and very likely is in fact the 'disappeared' yellow poppy from last year!

Various things have emerged in the tomato pots, but clearly none of them are tomatoes. I have been pulling out the things that are definitely corn-marigolds (also busy germinating here, there and everywhere like the field weeds that they are) and leaving the others for the moment until I can be more certain of their identity. I remember that the towel-tomatoes took over a month to germinate (29th March to 7th May) last year, so I'm not too perturbed by the total failure so far.
Ironically enough the one variety that I *don't* want to grow if I can help it -- the magazine-tomatoes that grew so enormous last year -- has germinated in the mini-greenhouse where I put the last of the seed experimentally alongside the marigolds (the latter of which I have been planting out at intervals -- they grow much faster and more vigorously out of the 'greenhouse', where the inner tray offers very little root depth). I don't know if that was due to the greater warmth in there, or just to the seed always taking six weeks or so to germinate after planting... I haven't tried transplanting any of those tomato seedlings yet because I don't really want to 'waste' decent-sized pots on them (I might find a local sale to take them -- the variety is perfectly good, but just too tall for the space I have available). But I am keeping them alive as an insurance policy in case the other two pots do fail to germinate altogether.

(The herb stall was also offering 'bush tomato' seedlings at £2 each, and I was tempted to get one of those in order to have a guaranteed dwarf variety. But they are listed as F1 hybrids, so I shouldn't be able to save the seed -- as as the towel-tomatoes *did* turn out to breed true in terms of growing habit, at least in the first generation, it would be better to establish that line if possible. The 'heritage' cherry tomatoes I am also assuming are by definition not hybrids... although I don't know quite what happens if they end up interbreeding with the variety in the other pot, which I suppose is a distinct possibility!)

I don't think that any of the things which have germinated in the pot where I planted the basil seed actually are basil, but it's hard to be sure. If they are more corn-marigolds, then they will grow much faster and become identifiable -- if they really are basil, they will sulk for weeks :-p
Likewise the mesembryanthemum pot: I think I probably really do have some genuine small mesembryanthemum seedlings in there now, but the only way to tell is if they sit there at ground level plumping up their fat little succulent leaves, or start shooting up tall and slender.
Oddly enough, while the 'pink' Swan River daisy seed that I planted in the bathroom back on the 18th of March has germinated with success, the seed from the normal purple/blue plants that I planted later outside hasn't germinated at all, and I've put in another batch. I don't know if it is just a matter of the temperatures still being too cold for it outdoors, or the position of the pot (in shade) not suiting it, or of the seed not being ripe. I shall probably end up with vast numbers of seedlings now -- I already have six or eight of the 'pink'!