Dede Sophie

Germinating tomato seeds can always go wrong so check out these five (5) easy mistakes to avoid when growing tomatoes from seed. Get them wrong and you could lose a batch of seedlings, however these techniques are not just for salad crops these principles are relevant to the majority of seed grown plants. Timing is extremely important, because if you leave sowing your tomatoes too late then you risk not having enough of the growing season left to allow the plant to produced ripened fruit. Sow then too early and you risk having your seedlings damaged or even killed by late frosts! But it doesn’t stop there as the importance of having sterilized equipment and compost cannot be underestimated as you can easily lose a batch of seedlings to fungal infection. For more content like this why not consider subscribing to our YouTube gardening channel ‘Walking Talking Gardeners’. It is free to subscribe and you can unsubscribe at any time!

A second battery option targeting urban drivers has been added to the ID.4 by Volkswagen Ireland, writes Brian Byrne. The 52kWh battery comes with a claimed range of up to 357kms, and provides an entry price point €44,343 on the road for the car, VW’s best selling model in Ireland in the first two months of this year. The battery complements the offering to date of the 77kWh with a claimed range of up to 525kms, pricing that version of the car from €51,440 OTR. These prices include all available grants. 

  Canna ‘Cleopatra’ is a gorgeous herbaceous plant which despite being introduced in 1895 has been seemingly missing from the plants beds of UK garden centres. Growing to approximately 1.2 metres tall, this bi-coloured ornamental specimen has the star quality to stand out amongst the regular collection of canna lilies. Its strange, haphazard chocolate/green leaf colourisation is due to it being an unstable colour hybrid. It is as though two distinctly different colour forms have been spliced together but rather than one dominating so that the hybrid reverts to just the one type, the variation is extremely stable! There is even a colour choice of red, yellow and even a mixture of the both. Remember to dead-head your spent booms to encourage more flowering. Flowering from mid-summer to the autumn, it will perform best in organically rich, well drained soils. Canna ‘Cleopatra’ will tolerate a shady position but to get the best show of blooms position in full sun. However it will require w