'Blue Bayou' Tomato

This is a 'black' cherry tomato that's well worth growing outdoors in the UK. It's  sweet and when cooked has a superb rich flavour.

However, it's tricky to harvest at the right time so I've written this guide to make it easier.

Most tomatoes start green and stay that way for quite a few weeks as they grow towards harvest size. Not this one! It quickly turns from green into a very dark blue/black cherry. An easy mistake is to harvest at this stage. It's still really a green tomato. 

Here's three pictures of the same (unripe) tomato 

A casual view

Underside shows some green

Inside is green and not nice

Here's a truly ripe fruit

Has a red patch and no green

Inside, red and delicious 

Fuchsia "TriColour" - an amazing plant!

 This hardy* Fuchsia isn't rare - lots of garden centres have them. At fist sight, they look quite good with cream/grey/green leaves and decent red flowers but in late May/early June, they have a lot of red on the leaves like this! 

Catch it even earlier and the new shoots are a dark chocolate red.

So, to summarise, it offers the standard hardy Fuchsia characteristics,  in leaf and flower from around June to December plus a couple of months of  chocolate, red and purple foliage before that.

*Yes, it is hardy in Gloucestershire, UK but not quite as hardy as some. I lost one out of three plants last Winter.