Worked with Mario today. He explained to me how differently he treated Cardoons Cynara cardunculus and Globe artichoke Cynara scolymus. In Britain cardoon is used as an ornamental, I have heard that people have tied their leaves around young flowers to blanche them to make them better for eating. Artichoke are grown and eaten for their young flowers so don't need blanching. In Italy it is more customary to eat just the leaves and is harvested as such before it flowers, and is commonly found in supermarkets there and is traditionally eaten at Christmas. So Mario treats them as an annual, had seeds sown in July, intending to be ready as edible plants for November. I planted a row of these 70cm apart.
Then I fixed tomato and aubergine plants with Epsom salts. They are fed with Tomorite, but as this is high in potash, this locks calcium and in turn magnesium, so we fix this with Epsom salts which has Mg. Signs of Mg lack - yellow blotches on the leaves, on the black cultivars - the blotches are dark purple. I mixed 80g of EP into 10l of water and then poured a jug full into each pot plant (approx. 1l per plant).
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| Photo 1: Magnesium deficiency on black/ dark purple tomatoes - dark blotches. |
We set the dosatron up with a 3:1:1 feed for half an hour to the drip system of the cucumbers at 1-100. And turned the irrigation on for half an hour for the tomatoes under glass.
I then thinned carrots I had sown over a week ago (roughly 5cm apart) and beetroot (roughly every 10cm, same as chard - but which later also gets thinned to every other one). Taking time to sow accurately at the beginning, less thinning needed, sowing quick but not as accurately, more thinning - amounts to the same, one method not necessary better than the other.
Myrtle is commonly used in cooking in Sardinia (roast suckling pigs stuffed with myrtle berries).