Weeding the Web

Garden veg review: Tomato Mountain Magic from Thompson and Morgan

If you want to be driven mad by a tomato, I'd say plant the Red and Yellow Currants I mentioned a few weeks ago. With further experience and even though they taste good, I can categorically say I find them Very Annoying, being so fiddly to pick. However, I do have one other variety on the go, thanks to Thompson and Morgan who supplied three plants of Mountain Magic. This F1, cordon-trained tom promises freedom from blight while rewarding you with the rich flavour of heritage varieties. 

Tomato Mountain Magic F1 from Thompson and Morgan. Fully blight resistant.

It's been developed specifically with outdoor growers in mind and, apparently, carries the late blight-busting Ph-2 and Ph-3 genes which means full protection against all current British strains including Pink6 and Blue13, which are the most virulent to hit UK crops. It also has in-built genetic resistance to both verticillium and fusarium wilt and cracking.

Mine went into an area where I haven't grown tomatoes before, because the currant varieties are occupying my favourite south-facing wall. But as the wall also offers some rain protection and therefore reduces the incidence of blight, perhaps it's just as well I had to find somewhere else - a sunny but more exposed area. They're planted in black bottomless buckets to allow them a less clay-ey soil to start off in (and it means I've got compost in situ to spread on the beds after they're finished) and to help the sun warm them up faster.

They started to come through at the end of August, somewhere between the size of a cherry and a bog standard tomato and, as you can see, they're good-looking - uniform, evenly coloured. But I wouldn't say they're zinging with flavour. They're described as being highly rated against the flavour of heritage tom Brandywine but they lack depth and tang for me. However, the taste is pleasant and sweet (its grape tomato heritage gives it a high sugar level, say T&M), with a moderate tomato taste. It's also thick-skinned, which I've noticed is often a feature of blight-resistant varieties. 

So far I've had one Smith period this year, notified to me via Blightwatch on 6th September and, here, three weeks later, I can say there's absolutely no sign of the disease. Overall they're a strong, sturdy variety (in fact, I've had to wrestle a bit to get the plants to release the harvest), so if you find toms difficult because of blight, I'd say Tomato Mountain Magic is definitely worth growing. Taste-wise, I'd always head for Harbinger.

Why I WON'T be entering Thompson and Morgan's garden photo competition

If you're an inveterate photographer you surely have oodles of pictures with a certain merit. Maybe prize-winning? That's what crossed my mind when I saw the number of flower categories for Thompson and Morgan's current competition and thought I'd have a go. Then I read the terms and conditions and now I'm boiling mad.

What's wrong with this picture...?

 

This is what they say:

All photos that are entered will become, by default, the copyright of Thompson & Morgan and its Group of companies and will be used free of any charge for the foreseeable future in any marketing literature, be it paper, online, broadcast or any other format.

Note that. ALL photos, not just the ones that win. That's every picture entered in all thirteen categories, from the Plant Selfie with the prize of a £10 e-voucher to the Increditransformations category awarding £100 a year for life to spend on plants.

We all know why companies run competitions like this. It's a way to gather useful marketing material, finding pictures that would take a lot of sourcing or setting up and that offer variety in showing their plants off to their best advantage, grown by everyday gardeners. Obviously they save money on hiring professional photographers but, no doubt, they also have to wade through a lot of dross. And we all love a competition; it could be a quid pro quo. But to demand copyright?

That means, if it doesn't win, you'll never be able to put any of your entries in another competition. If you thought of making your images into cards to send friends or prints to put on the wall, you'd be breaking copyright law. If you wanted to post them on a blog or forum, you'd be acting illegally.

Could you take two pictures both identical and just send one, retaining copyright in the other? Well, you could try that one in court but you'd probably lose.

Basically, you've given your efforts away, whether you win or your photographs languish forever unseen in a forgotten folder on Thompson and Morgan's server.

And I think that's unacceptable. In fact, I think it's outrageous. I'm boiling mad that a company thinks such exploitation is acceptable. A kinder stance would be to require exclusive use only of winning images. That use, I suggest, should be time-limited; at least you'd be able to use your own images some time in the future. They could demand an indefinite right to use, without exclusivity, which would mean that you retained the right to use your own images whether they used them or not. They could...  Oh, you get the idea. Basically, they could take a stance that was a hell of lot less acquisitive and less punitive on the entrants.

Here's how it looks to me. They say: look, you've gone to the effort of taking all these pictures, and some might be really very good, and we're going to be beneficent and offer a very small number of them a prize. We're doing you a favour here.

What's wrong with this picture? Actually, the favour is that they end up with a picture library at a tiny fraction of the amount it would cost them in professional fees. The entrants, in case you've missed it, in awarding them permanent, exclusive use are doing them the favour.

At the end of all this, you might think that I must have fantastic pictures. I don't. However, they're my pictures, and I don't see the equity in sending them off for a small chance of winning something, only to lose them forever. Perhaps you'd let me know what you think.

Anyway, you won't be surprised to know that I most certainly won't be entering anything in the Thompson and Morgan photo competition, and if you value your rights and those of other photographers, I'd suggest you don't either.

The perils of growing peppers

It was somewhere in the middle of June when I began to wonder about my peppers. After the massive success of my tea-fertilised plants last year, there was no way I wasn't going to grow them like that again, so I eagerly snapped up two plants from the annual sale by the local horticultural society. I was rather proud of myself. You can't hang around at the sale - the tables are pretty much cleared in half an hour - so I'd got there at a goodly sprint and felled only two old ladies in my path. 

 

Chilli - hiding in plain sight

But this year the peppers were different, not so tall, rather branched and extraordinarily fruitful. In fact so fruitful, that if every pepper grew to full size I would surely have a phenomenon on my hands. Unless, of course...?

The labels clearly say Bell Boy, but of course they're not. Quite what possessed me to cut one in half and pop it straight into my mouth, I'm not sure, but when the squeals had subsided from the kitchen (stoically ignored by Husband who was watching the news), I announced that our need for dried chillies was now amply met for several years to come. But what exactly had we got?

A visit to the Horticultural society hut last weekend brought a rather sheepish look all round. The plants are obtained from a grower and the mix-up had occurred before the secretary had even seen them. No pepper plants had ever left the grower.

Apache chilli - popular for pots

I have Apache, a compact patio chilli that matures early and is rather attractive. It's certainly easy to grow, having thrived outside in a sheltered, south-facing position, with nothing but the dregs of the teapot for sustenance. Its heat rating isn't consistently reported but seems to come in around 70-80,000 on the Scoville scale, somewhere short of a habanero (quite hot enough for me. Even Husband has agreed they're hot).

In investigating Apache, I've also discovered what you possibly already know - that a chilli tastes hottest when it's full-sized and still green. Chilli expert Joanna Plumb in an article in The Guardian, said, "When it goes red, it is as hot, but it goes sweeter, like the difference between a green and a red sweet pepper."

Meanwhile, the society secretary had taken five plants for herself. "Can I persuade you to take some?" she asked, passing me a boxful.

 

When a company asks you to take down a review...

What would you do if a company who had given you equipment for honest review asked you to take that review down?

This has recently happened to me. It's such an unusual request (I've certainly never had one like it before) that I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about it, and I'd be really interested to hear what you think, whether you blog or research potential purchases online.

In the email, the writer said:

It's fair and honest but not really doing us any favours. Would it be possible to take it down now?

It's easy to see where they're coming from and I do sympathise. Printed in a gardening magazine, the review would have gone to recycling or be languishing on a few bookshelves, but not easily available online to every new person considering a purchase. Equally, though, bloggers have a responsibility to their readers, to give them an honest review that is as accurate as we can possibly make it.  If I take down a review for no reason other than I've been asked to, is that breaking a trust?

So, I reread my review with an open mind. It all came back to me. There were many positives, which I reported on, but there were also a number of criticisms.  Husband, who has just launched a product himself, immediately imagined himself in the place of the company. The review was recognised as fair and honest, but it obviously includes points that needed addressing. What had they done about them? he asked.

Well, actually, nothing. Or nothing that they've told me about. The review has been up for a while. At no point has the company responded to the review, and nothing was said in the email about any improvements that might have been made.

Earlier this year I reviewed business cards, drawing attention to a problem. The company commented, said the problem was solved, and I added this to my blogpost, so that no one would miss it. In the case of the equipment in question, I was sort of surprised at the time that nothing was said in answer to my comments. Now the natural response would be to point to the improvements that had been made, as a bolster to the argument for removing the review.

But zilch. Which makes me think the company still thinks my observations valid. And coincidentally, I spoke not so long ago to someone who'd used the product in the recent past. It was clear from a quick chat that at least one of the snags I'd mentioned still exists. 

I asked another blogger, who asked an unexpected question. "What do you think made them feel entitled to ask you to take it down?" To be fair, I'm not sure I can accuse them of feeling entitled. After all, if you want something and you don't ask, you most definitely won't get. On the other hand, I think bloggers are sometimes seen as only-too-eager beneficiaries of company largesse, with obligations to go with that.

So, for the time being, the review remains:  

• Because the review is fair and honest.
• Because there's no reason to think that anything about the product has changed.

However, it's food for thought. Every blogger I know takes the task of reviewing a product seriously, being as fair in their views as possible. Even so, should those views have a shelf-life?

Comments, as always, welcome. What would you do?

 

 

 

Autumn planting combination: lace-cap hydrangea and cyclamen hederifolium

Does your heart sink when you realise that it's pretty much dark by 8pm? Mine does. This year has been particularly good at the extreme ends of the day and I'm missing the extra light. I've woken to bright sunshine at 5.30, and even got up then to sit in the garden! Now it's definitely still dark at 5 am, and dusk is settling early. Still, this time of year can provide some of the loveliest planting combinations, so here's one that cheered me up when I found it last year.

Shade is often a problem, but this combination of cyclamen hederifolium and hydrangea was thriving in quite heavy shade, where the sunshine penetrated mostly in the later afternoon and, even then, was dappled.

The small bracts of the lace-caps added a sort of splash effect in the shade, and really brightened it up. But what lace-cap is it?  I'd guess maybe White Wave, though this had a spread of at least a couple of metres.  Lanark White possibly? But I didn't see any blue (or pink) colouring in the centres. Do comment below, if you have any ideas.

For more #autumnplanting combinations, see Fuchsia and Dahlia and Sedum and Dahlia.