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Gardening

Find tips and tricks to make your garden or allotment flourish on our Gardening forum.

I went to see a lecture by James Wong last week. It was brilliant.

4 replies

MovemberSucks · 02/12/2015 22:22

The lecture was about his three year research project into how to maximise flavour in home grown produce. He's a great speaker, it could have been very dry as there were a lot of figures and statistics, but he was very funny with little asides and he spoke very fluently, no 'umm's or hesitations so he was easy to listen to.

The research is summarised in his book, Grow for Flavour. He found that the biggest impact on flavour was genetics, if you buy the right variety (rather than the one with the biggest picture in the catalogue) then you're most of the way there.

There were also loads of useful tips, like smaller berried varieties generally have better flavour than large berried varieties, especially true of blueberries and strawberries. Aspirin is a stress hormone for plants, so if you spray the leaves of young plants with half an aspirin per litre of water it will think it's under attack and grow more vigorously. While your plants are still seedlings, rough them up a bit by running your hand over them, they will think they are in a windy environment and grow stockier and bushier. He had an amazing technique for tomatoes too, which is a bit long to describe but might be on his website or Facebook page.

I am almost inspired to clear the weeds out of my raised veg beds and actually plant something next year. Grin

OP posts:
MovemberSucks · 03/12/2015 17:34

Bumping because it was REALLY good, and useful (for people who actually get around to growing crops every year, and not once every five years like me).

OP posts:
tomatotoad · 03/12/2015 17:39

That sounds really interesting - I might try those techniques on my flowers next year. Smile

AgentProvocateur · 03/12/2015 17:46

I've heard him speak before, too, and I agree that he's a great speaker and really interesting.

funnyperson · 09/12/2015 23:09

Yes I've heard that talk but because it was a bit obviously plugging the book I refused to buy the book

That said he is fit and dynamic and an interesting speaker and I like him on tv

But I refuse to grow cucamelons and i'm not too worried I bought the wrong sort of blueberry in a pot

Though I might try red plastic under the tomatoes next year

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