Congratulations, Soy! Linda’s book will be on its way to you soon!
. . . . .
I can’t believe how fast our garden is growing!
Here’s what the first bed looked like in late August…
…and here it is today. Over the past five weeks, we’ve harvested broccoli, a dozen lettuces, kale and several beetroots from this bed.
The cabbages haven’t been a great success – we planted them too close together, and possibly a little late. As a result, they’ve been making lots of leaves, but not forming a tight ball. They haven’t been going to waste though – the chickens absolutely adore them…
The broadbeans seem to be growing before our eyes at the moment! We can’t decide whether to eat them young as Linda suggests, or to wait until they’re a bit bigger and shell them..
. . . . .
Bed number two was newly planted when these photos were taken just over a month ago…
…and it’s grown prolifically! In amongst the jungle of pea shoots, you can see kale, cabbage, broccoli, as well as carrots and lettuce. We’re following Linda Woodrow’s plan from her book, The Permaculture Home Garden, which very cleverly allocates part of the space in each bed to growing feed for the chickens…
The baby pea pods are forming. I’m very new to gardening, so I didn’t realise that each flower would turn into a pod. Now I’m excitedly counting the flowers to see how many peas and broadbeans we’re going to get…
. . . . .
The dwarf peach and nectarine trees seem to be making lots of fruit, although it’s unlikely they’ll all develop…
. . . . .
Garden bed number three has potatoes, capsicums, eggplants and tomatoes – this single cherry tomato plant has grown like a weed and is threatening to take over the whole bed…
. . . . .
We have a blueberry plant growing in a pot, waiting for a permanent home, and somewhat surprisingly, given our temperate climate, it seems to be fruiting! Maybe it has something to do with all the bees who visit our backyard now…
In a patch of soil where the chicken dome was originally situated, a small crop of wheat is growing from the uneaten grain mix we were feeding to the girls…
Today’s harvest of sprouting broccoli will be eaten at dinner tonight, simply dunked in boiling water and dressed with a little butter and salt..
. . . . .
I thought you might also enjoy seeing how the chickens are travelling..here’s Rosemary glaring at me for spying on her while she was laying…
…and Queenie, being very vocal and reminding the others that she’s the boss!
. . . . .
If you live in Australia and would like to undertake a garden project like ours, we have one copy of Linda Woodrow’s book, The Permaculture Home Garden, to g!ve @way (the funny characters are an attempt to avoid the search bots – I want to g!ve the book to someone who actually reads our blog!).
I was buying a copy for our friend Ian the Chicken Whisperer, and couldn’t resist picking up an extra copy for you. Linda’s book is tailored for Australian gardens, and is full of brilliant and inspired ideas – you can dip into it for suggestions, or go all out and follow her plan completely as we have.
To εnter, please leave a comment (before 14th October) and tell us which state you live in and what your favourite vegetable is. And apologies to our international visitors, but we can only ship to Australian addresses this time!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Awesome garden! I love your energy. Your hot chocolate with marshmallows looks tempting. I’ll make myself a cup today. :)
I probably sound ignorant asking this, but really, don’t you worry about snakes?
Sandy, no! We’re right in the middle of suburbia, so snakes are rare. Foxes have been seen recently though…
Celia, I am so impressed and inspired by your gorgeous, bountiful garden. You and Pete are amazing! Enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of your labour.
Thank you, dearheart. I wish you were here to share with us!
Your garden is amazing! WOW :) Wish I had that kind of success … but then it looks like you have more space than I do. Congrats on the wonderful dinners to come!
Sasha, thank you! It’s a fairly normal backyard for our part of the world – about 10m x 13m (30′ x 40′) – but now that the boys are bigger, we’ve done away completely with the lawn!
Celia,
What a garden? I wish we could have a permanent garden here but we have a really short season in this country… it is pretty sad because during summer it is all so good, fresh and tasty. We plan to move back to Brazil, when the kids finish school we might move and I will be able to cultivate 12 months a year and harvest everything I will eat!
I love your chickens, I love chickens, they are so good companies….
C.
C, thank you! You’re so right, the chickens are such lovely company…
Hi Celia, your garden brings back so many memories of my mum and dad’s garden when I was groing up. Broad beans are my favourite – picked off the plant and eaten straight away. Sadly, my dad is quite sick now and they are no longer able to plant a large garden but mum still has lots of herbs and a few veggies during the year.
Terrific job! You wouldn’t know you were new to gardening. We had a similar problem with our cauliflower as you did with your cabbages. Very leafy but no show. Then all of a sudden the tiny ball of cauliflower exploded almost overnight. Maybe if you have the space and time, leave them there for a little while longer and see what happens. Hopefully the same thing will happen to your cabbages!!
Hi Celia, your garden looks fabulous in such a short space of time. Congratulations! I too have a Linda Woodrow mandala system although it’s undergone lots of renovations in the last couple of years. I’ve been following your blog for a couple of months now and am really enjoying it.
You may want to remove some/a lot of the small fruit from your trees – that way you may get a couple of pieces of quality fruit.
Sue, I’m so sorry to hear about your dad! I hope he’s feeling better soon. Let him know we’re broadbean novices, so it’s nice to know they can be eaten raw! Thanks for the tip!
Sonia, there are still a few in the beds, so I’m crossing my fingers that they might ball up soon. If not, they won’t be wasted though! We didn’t grow caulis – are they easy? Thanks…
Jo, thanks for the tip – I’ll pass it on to Pete and we’ll get rid of some of the nectarine fruit. It’s only a little dwarf tree, so I can’t see how it could make all those little balls into stonefruit! :)
Lovely garden! How much rain do you get? We get lots of sun but have all our plants on a drip system. It only rains here about five months
Maz
I’ve sent you an email with pics of cabbages hee hee, pour encourager les autres, just take the pics out to the veg bed and show them to the cabbages, whisper to them that if they grow big and strong they might live for six months in the garden, that should do the trick! What joy though, I LOVE vegetable growing. It’s been the best part of the gardening, that and the bees on the lavender.
Ooh, I meant to tell you, about garlic, apparently those big single garlics that we got from planting them at the wrong time of year, well, you can replant them in the cold part of the year, coming up for us now, and then they will turn into extra super big garlics next time, almost like a biannual. The reason they didn’t make proper separate cloves is because they need at least a month of temperatures below 10C. So I will plant the monster singles out in the next couple of months.
Celia your garden is looking so good. Wheat isn’t what I normally expect in a sydney back yard :-) I’m fascinated with anyones blueberries at the moment as it’s my little pride and joy that I am really trying to make work. Have you pinched any flowers off it at all, someone was telling me about it on another blog- but I wasn’t aware of it. Apparently they do it in the first 1-2 years to ensure a better harvest down the track?
Oh and competition…Pick me, pick me!! No garden, but you know I will get one eventually :-) Fave vegetable…sweet potato. Roasted and drizzled with a little olive oil.
Maz, at the moment, we’re getting heaps of rain! We haven’t had to water much at all. For some reason, September in Sydney is always a very wet month!
Joanna, thank you for the cabbage photos – they look wonderful! Like little soccer balls! Re the garlic – I saw Hugh FW cooking “wet” garlic recently – slicing it up and using it in a bhaji. It looks wonderful, but I think your idea of growing mammoth buds is even better. I can’t wait to see how it goes! On a recent episode of Gardening Australia, they recommended storing garlic in the fridge for a while before planting, particularly if you were growing in hot places like Queensland.
Brydie, thanks for the tip about the blueberries! We’ve done absolutely nothing to it at all – it’s still in a pot waiting to be planted and we’ve kind of ignored it. So it was a surprise to see it making blue fruit! I always thought berries needed a really cold climate? (And hmmm…sweet potato! Yum!)
Wonderful! Following one of your earlier posts, I bought a trough of lettuces and am enjoying plucking and eating fresh leaves daily. I’ve only grown herbs before so this is a whole new world for me. Yum!
Congratulation on the garden, everything looks so vibrant and healthy.
I would love to read the Linda Woodrow. I have gazed at it longingly many a time as it seems such a wonderful resource, I think my favorite vegetable is fresh picked peas.. that said in a way it’s all of the ones I harvest from home.
Kind Regards
Belinda
Hi Celia – I enjoy ‘lurking’on your blog but this is the first time I have posted a comment. We live in Goulburn and I have been trying to become more self sufficient over the past 3 years. So far, given our frost tendency here, I have only just started to plant my summer vegs. I have 6 lettuce seedlings which are growing before my eyes, some self sown rocket from last year, mint, chives, silver beet, strawberries and assorted fruit trees which have just finished flowering.
My favourite vegetable is broccoli – I try to have 1 serving every day and never seem to tire of it.
Thank you for a wonderful blog – it’s so inspiring.
Cheers – Marg
Celia!
You are an extraordinary gardener!
Your beds are prolific and practical.
And I love your chicken videos.
:)
Your garden looks gorgeous. I just love this time of the year; it’s like everything just explodes into green. Our broad beans are bigger than our cherubs! I’m in Victoria. I also have blueberries that I bought in April- I read (somewhere) to tip prune them fairly frequently for the first year to encourage fruiting and to establish their root systems which will make a stronger, bushier plant. Haven’t told the cherubs they are blueberries yet though. They will pillage them as soon as they show signs of fruit! Thanks for the opportunity.
I have a case of garden envy! We had the thermometer on just 1* C this morning, so I usually hold of until October to do my planting in Canberra. I guess that’s this weekend though! I love lots of veggies, but especially beetroot, eggplant, broccoli and Fresh HOMEgrown tomatoes- not the shop imitations.
Vicki, thanks for sharing the excitement with us! We’re having lettuces on our sandwiches right now.. :)
Belinda, thank you! I’m sooo looking forward to the fresh peas!
Marg, thank you for stopping in to say hello! We’ve been eating broccoli every night this week so far…
Heidi, thank you! I’m not a great gardener, but Pete’s pretty good – I tend to just point and say, “can we eat that yet?” :)
Holly, thanks for stopping by! I hope we get to eat the blueberries – I’m still amazed they’re fruiting!
Chef, it is often so cold in Canberra – I’m astonished how different it is from Sydney given that it’s relatively close. I guess being a bit more inland makes a difference…
Oh right! Now I am so thoroughly jealous of your garden. I ooohhed at your head of broccoli but today’s post was a seedling too far Celia.
I have tried to be an earth goddess, but (thanks to a sudden burst of heat and humidity coupled with rain) my beautiful, leaping out of the ground button squash have got a dose of the veggie equivalent of the clap – powdery mildew, my kale, which was looking so come-over-hereo, one morning was just a collection of stalks! I looked for the caterpillars so I could at least give their fat little bodies to the chooks but they were obviously somewhere out of sight, no doubt still chewing thoughtfully. My tomatoes which grew so prolifically and produced so well are dying at the same rate of knots – oh and what button squash there are have now developed blossom end rot. Rats!!! Do earth goddesses get dirty, sweaty, red faces, sore backs and fed up (and say rats)? From now on my favourite veggie will be black jelly beans! I’d throw myself on the compost heap but it doesn’t get hot enough to do any damage.
Sorry, Jan… :)
If it’s any consolation, it IS only the end of September, so there’s still a solid five months growing left in Spring and summer.. ;-)
Surely the kale will come back? I don’t know about tomatoes, ours haven’t got any fruit on them yet!
it’s so impressive the way it’s been growing! you made me smile – i was counting the flowers on the tomato plants when those first started to appear, i was so excited! all i have left in the garden now are tomatoes that refuse to ripen and a bunch of leeks. and herbs – i’m wondering if i could move my rosemary bush into a pot and keep it inside over the winter… it’s the only one that still has a decent size, and i truly love it fresh. i’ve read someplace that blueberries are rather finnicky plants, new or not you must be doing something right! the chickens are funny!
i need to find a good, comprehensive gardening book. since this one is tailored for australia, i won’t begrudge the one who gets it :).
Lovely garden and chook photo’s Celia!
The wheat was a bit of a surprise!
Dana, I’ve never thought of growing herbs indoors, but a show I watched last night had all sorts of things growing in people’s houses – on sunny windowsills etc. One tip was to fill a bit of guttering with soil and plant out all sorts of herbs and leave them on the window sill – very clever!
Amanda, thanks! It took us a little by surprise too…haha..
i admire you, your family and your creations, all happily and joyfully arranged amidst the greatness of Nature. you are truly blessed celia, and i happily wish that you continue to bring in front of our eyes your every day miracles little or great ones! greetings fm hellas,eu!
gina
Gina, thank you for reading from so far away! How wonderful to hear from you! Yes, we are truly blessed, and thank you for your kind words. :)
Celia, I’m not going to put my hand up to enter your fabulous book, I shall restrain myself knowing full well it would join other ‘good intentions’ on my bookshelf. But good luck to all who enter.
Your ‘girls’ look particularly regal I have to say & the garden is stunning.
Cheers Anna
Your garden is beautiful! I’ve just started my own vegie garden this year, and due to space issues, i’ve been growing them all in pots. It is amazing, I never had even thought about just how many different vegetables can be grown in pots!
Celia – what an explosion! It must warm the cockles every day that you can go out and harvest some veggies for dinner.
I just adore the look of that sprouting broccoli – can you grow it through summer or will it finish up in the Spring? Last summer I planted just one cherry tomato that looks similar to yours and I swear it became seven! It took over the entire bed and killed off a few other plants nearby from strangling. Produced the most amazing and abundant tomatoes though so it was worth it.
My favourite vegetable has to be broccoli :)
LOL I had to chuckle at Rosemary’s expression-if a chicken were ever to glare this would be it! :P And your garden is going wonderfully! :D
Anna, thank you! Yes, regal, especially Queenie! Although in the video clip, she reminds me of a cranky coach in the locker room at half time! :)
Christine, it’s astonishing what grows in pots! The blueberry is trying to fruit while it’s still in a pot! Our garlic is growing in an old laundry tub, our strawberries are in pots, and so is our bay tree.
Sarah, truly, my cockles are as warm as toast, it’s such a nice feeling! I asked Pete about the sprouting broc, and he said it would go for about three months, if we keep cutting it, provided it doesn’t get too hot. I think then it goes to seed. By the way, how’s the kitchen going? Can’t wait to see the pics. :)
Lorraine, didn’t she look cranky? It was very funny… :)
Celia the kitchen is going well although we apparently will have to now wait several weeks for our benchtop to be made – which means we can only look at it with no cook top or sink to use and no bench to prep on, it’s just cupboards at the moment! So still cooking in the laundry on the trusty camp stove :0
Wow, your garden is thriving, Celia! You must be so pleased. I wouldn’t give up hope with the cabbages, they seem to take aaaages to do anything and then in a short space of time can really surprise you. I sometimes wish we had your climate – so many more options!! :)
PS Is your garden in the mandala layout? What have you got in the centre circle? I would love a mandala garden, but we lack usable gardening space so had to lay the beds out in one long line instead. It still works great but it’s no mandala.
Chris, yes, laid out in a circle with six round beds. I think the big advantage is not having to walk the dome too far from the last bed back to the first – our girls try to sneak out and eat everything in the other beds. :)
We don’t have a circle in the middle, just a little pond. No frogs yet!
Wow Celia, I am so impressed. I don’t think I could ever manage a vege patch that size. Great job! I’m jealous of the produce you will receive.
LJ, Linda’s method is detailed, but user friendly in terms of maintenance. We almost do no weeding at all, for example. And when we do, they’re not really weeds, they’re chook food. :)
Amazing! Just amazing! I love how abundant your garden harvest has been! It’s hard to believe that you and Pete are beginners at gardening! Very unlike mine 8(. My garden has been good to me for lettuce, italian parsley and silverbeet…but that’s about it. Oh, I am trying smthing new though, watering my plants with camomile tea (have you tried it?)
I hate to ‘steal’ food away from the girls, but try stir-frying some of the cabbage or put some of it in soup. My cabbage looks very much like yours and I was amazed at how nice, soft and yummy it was. (mainly coz mine looks bitter and tough).
Rosemary looks so stern and suspicious! Very much like how one of the chicken’s (I was holidaying at a farmhouse) eyed me as I peered into the basket for eggs.
The wheat is a real bonus, are you going to do anything with it?
I havn’t tried kale yet, but am going to get some from the farmers’ market this weekend. 8)
Ohoh, and I hope I get picked out of the hat, I live in the ACT, my favourite veg is eggplant (oh noo…I just realised that it’s egg….plant…I promise I love it coz of the texture and versatility not coz it has ‘egg’ in it!)
Okies, think that’s a super long comment, soy over and out 8)
Soy, I have no idea what we’ll do with the wheat – probably leave it for the chickens to eat! It just looked so gorgeous that I couldn’t resist taking photos of it!
Re the kale, my friend the Spice Girl told me the secret to kale (cavolo nero) is this – the longer you cook it, the better it tastes. It’s not like spinach that disintegrates in soup, the kale holds its texture and flavour for ages. When we made the soup recently, I cooked it literally for hours, and then we kept reheating it over and over again, and it was fine. I think you can just eat it lightly steamed, but I find there’s something in the cabbage family that gives me an upset stomach if I don’t cook them enough.
The soup was so easy – hot chorizo sausages (I bought the raw version from the butcher, not the salami like ones), kale (remove the centre rib and chop it up), white beans (from a tin!), garlic and a little lemon zest (I used preserved lemon rind), all sauteed and then water was added, and the soup was boiled up for ages. Wonderful flavour – here’s a photo:
Your favourite veg is eggplant? Hahaha….why am I not surprised? :)
Don’t chickens make the best pets! And you get eggs too, such a win win.
I won’t enter the competition, as I have (and love) Lindas book – I actually found your blog through hers.
I think my favourite vegetable must be leeks. Such a delicate flavour :)
Cherie, you’re so right! And how nice to find another Linda fan. We loooove leeks, have you tried the perennial version? Chris at Slow Living Essentials put me onto them, and I was able to mail order them through Cornucopia Seeds. They’ve been fantastic – growing so much faster than regular leeks, and they just keep making babies that we replant out all over the garden. Chris’ post is here.
Thanks for the tip Celia. I ordered some straight away, and can’t wait to try them :)
Wow your garden is so fresh and beautiful. I love the wheat picture… it make me think of my farm in Thailand :)
Thanks for these beautiful pictures!
Thanks Tes! A wheat farm – wonderful!
Think I spied some cavolo Nero in the garden…
Hahaha…my garden or yours, Roz? Yes, definitely cavolo nero in both the bed photos – I used it to make soup recently (photo in the comment above)! It’s a great veg, we brought in a whole heap of it a week ago, and it’s almost all grown back!
Amazing. We have just planted lettuce, cucumbers and heirloom tomatoes. I hope our garden looks as amzing in a couple of weeks. I was talking about you at home earlier this week and we were just wondering how big your garden beds are so its nice to get a perspective of size. Our patch is about the size of one of your beds.
Would love a copy of the book. Fave veg would be zucchini I think, but I am pretty much a fan of all of them!
Vita, thank you! We used to have a standard back yard lawn and little flower beds, now we have all veg beds and no lawn. The added bonus is no-one now has to mow the back! Good luck with the cucumbers and heirloom tomatoes – this is our first time at toms, so we’ve gone safe and just planted cherries and romas. I wanted to plant San Marzanos, but we scared off by its purported fickleness. Now that I’ve seen the cherry tomato plant growing, I wish we’d just planted a few of those – I can’t believe how fast it’s growing! :)
Thanks for the recipe and tip on kale, I’m going to try it. Honey will love the hot chorizo in there too! Glad you told me about it too cos I was going to flash cook them.
Hi Celia
Wow what an inspiration you have become. I sit in my office thinking of ways to save a little extra money.
I have been lucky that our new house has a small veggie patch, but it needs a lot of work to get it functioning. I would love to be able to grow all of the families fruit and veggies from this one area. I am trying to use organic materials in the garden, but it doesn’t seem to have made a great deal of difference to the plants. I guess I will have to keep trying. I do have some fruit trees and would love to try making jam or chutney with them. i am not a very confident cook, but after reading some of your ideas I will give it a shot.
My kids love pasta sauce, so I have planted some tomato plants in the hope they grow well and I can make my own sauce. If you have any easy ideas I would love to hear from you.
Soy, it’s very delicious – I got the recipe from Annabel Langbein!
Noons, thank you very much! We’ve been surprised by how much we can grow, but also surprised at how much room it takes to grow not a huge amount of produce. A broccoli plant for example is quite big, but only produces one head of broccoli! I have a new respect for farmers now that we’ve tried to grow our own.
Even with all our space, I don’t think we can grow everything we need, so we just do what we can, and will continue to supplement with what we can get at the markets. I’m hopeful that we won’t have to buy any greens in Spring and Summer, but we’ll still need potatoes (for now), onions, apples, fruit and mushrooms. It’s lovely that we can grow some of what we eat – that’s been such a buzz for all of us! Your fruit trees sound wonderful! I’m not sure we’ll ever get enough produce for jam, as all our trees are dwarf varieties. And Pete’s roasted tomato passata is absolutely delicious, and easy to make, when you have enough toms (freezes well too!).
Hi Celia,
I love perusing your blog, the recipes and photos are always so inspiring.
I began a vegetable garden last year, as therapy to cope with my first child leaving home. It helped !in that respect, but I’m clearly at a low point on the beginners curve. Still once you’ve tried your own home-grown produce, it’s hard to reconcile with buying tasteless things from the supermarket.
I’ve just started harvesting asparagus, from last year’s planting, and it is a relevation!! So fresh and juicy, it doesn’t always make it back to the kitchen
Your garden and blog are amazing!
My favourite vegetable is technically a fruit: Tomatoes… Great big, tasty, misshapen ox hearts like my nonno would grow. I’ve tried planting some heirlooms but they’re slow growers; I didn’t inherit the green thumb :P
Your garden looks great as always. Glad your veg growing is proving mostly successful. The main thing I’ve learnt through the years, is that some things will grow well, some poorly and some not at all and it is different every year. As for broad beans, its a matter of taste I guess. I prefer them shelled, but whilst they are still fairly young so green and juicy – yum.
Meryn, thank you! You’re so right – I don’t think we could go back to bought broccoli or lettuce again!
Lauren, thanks! I wanted to grow heirlooms, but Pete said they weren’t for beginners, and we should cut out teeth on the more robust varieties. I really want to try them though – they always look so magnificent! :)
Choc, thanks for the wise words of advice, I’ll bear that in mind and try not to be disheartened if/when it goes pear-shaped. :)
Gosh, hard to choose a favourite veg. I’d have to say probably asparagus, I’d eat asparagus every day if I could. And hey, why can’t I?
I’m in NSW, and our wee veggie garden is looking pretty dreary compared to yours, so I dare say that we could use the odd book or two to help!
I don’t comment all that often, but I enjoy your blog and your recipes (I made your version of Hugh’s spiced nuts for pre-dinner nibbles at the gentleman’s B’day dinner this week), so thank you.
Jade, thank you for stopping by! Those nuts are so moreish – I can’t keep them in the house, but they’re a perfect gift or party treat! :)
Hi Celia,
Your garden is looking fantastic. Ours is just starting to grow and with all the rain we have had this weekend it should just take off. I am loving reading our blog.
Thank you
Tracie
Tracie, thank you! Haven’t we had a lot of rain? As you say, wonderful for the garden though! :)
WOW, I am envious of your garden! Our rented place has a backyard consisting of a deck an rocks….nothing green to be seen :0, but i have planted a few things in pots to see how that goes. As for my fav veggie…..Im going to go with beans or corn. Thanks for the inspiration
Sandy in not so sunny Melbourne
Sandy, I hope the sun’s come up for you in Melbourne! I’ve seen some amazing plants grown in pots! :)
Hello! I was just looking at the pictures of your beautiful garden. We are expecting snow anytime here, so our gardening is finished for this year. Just a note about heirloom tomatoes. I’ve been growing them now for the second year. Some of my favorite, best tasting tomatoes are heirlooms. I add a few new ones every year to try. I found they take longer to germinate than the hybrids. It is possibe that they don’t bear as much fruit as other varieties, but I feel they make up for it in flavor. So far I have been pleased with my trials (and errors). I tried to save seeds from my favorites this year. See if they’ll sprout next year. Also, we prune our plants pretty hard during the growing season. If you would look into the greenhouse (too cold to grow them outside here) you would see lots of stems, tomatoes, and very few leaves. It keeps them from spreading into the growing space from other plants, allows air to circulate, light in, and promotes fruit poduction. I usually leave only the main stem and one or two suckers, cutting out all other suckers, and trimming the leaves on the lower part of the plant. Just a thought, it seems to work well for us here.
I usually don’t write often, (I’m new to all this), but felt I should share my experiences with heirloom tomatoes. (I also tried growing heirloom carrots this year. They were orange, red, white, yellow and purple. The orange ones were my personal favorite, followed by the red ones.)
Happy gardening!
Manuela, thank you! I’ll pass this on to Pete and see if I can persuade him to try some heirlooms next year. This year we’re growing romas and cherries – both just making baby fruit now. I’ll also let him know about the heavy pruning – you’re right, they’re threatening to take over the beds! :) Thanks again for taking the time to leave such an informative comment!