A tree I grafted last winter

Two winters ago a large Douglas Fir tree fell in my garden and completely demolished a Santa Rosa Plum tree. The following spring shoots appeared from the rootstock and last winter I grafted a scion of a Mirabelle De Nancy plum on to the biggest of them (and removed the rest). With a well established root network the scion has grown amazingly fast and is already 8 feet tall with many branches.

If you lose a fruit tree, watch out for shoots from the root, which is often more resilient than the cultivar. If these appear you can do as I did and graft on to them.

The New Vegetable Growers Handbook

I’ve been away from this blog for far too long, which is unfortunate, but I do have a reasonable excuse. The extended absence is due to the fact that almost all of my writing energy for the past 9 months has been devoted to revising my previous book “The Vegetable Growers Handbook” One kind Goodreads reviewer called that book “the best, most useful guide to vegetable gardening I have ever read”, which made me feel good, but I am not one to rest on my laurels (which is good as they are pretty few and far between). I wrote that book five years ago and in the meantime  I have learned a lot more and I eventually reached the point where I was no longer so proud of the first book and felt I could do better. The result is “The New Vegetable Growers Handbook”, which isn’t the most original title, but describes it adequately enough. The new book is bigger (50% bigger), better (with more information and more plants) and hopefully will keep me happy for another five years.

My new baby