What a difference a year makes

I’ve been reminded by reading this post by Michelle on From Seed to Table, that I’ve been meaning to post photos of my caper plants. It was Michelle who originally sent me the seeds in autumn 2009 from which my plants have grown.

These are the capers sown in December 2009, as they are today. The plants got mixed up while I was away last summer, but I think the one on the left here is an Italian caper and the one on the right is Croatian. They’ve grown a lot of extra leaves just in the last few weeks and now look like ‘proper’ plants, so I’m very pleased with them.

Last December (2010) they were like this (left) and a year ago they were seedlings in small pots (above).

And the next year’s plants….

In November 2010 I sowed some of the seeds left over from last year and five of these have germinated. Soon I shall have to decide which of the two to remove in the pots where two have germinated, cutting them rather than re-potting them to prevent root disturbance to the other ones, because caper plants are very sensitive to this.

It will be a long time until I can harvest the weight of capers that Michelle does, but I feel that these plants are on their way!