For flavour and texture, beefsteak tomatoes are hard to beat. Their large size and fairly flat fruit make them good for sandwiches, and they have thick flesh and less seed than other tomato types, meaning the flavour is less acid.
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Burnley Bounty tomatoes
Burnley Bounty tomatoes are an Australian cultivar. They have a good classic tomato shape, about 7 cm round and slightly flattened top and bottom, with a nice orange colour ripening to red. I selected it from the catalogue expecting it to have a good chance of being suited to the climate.
Read MoreTime to plant tomatoes
It’s great being on the Web and seeing posts from around the world. The gardening blogs and posts from the Northern Hemisphere have swung into Spring preparation, which includes getting your tomato seeds sprouting indoors, but it turns out that for us here in northern New South Wales the garden advice is to plant tomatoes too.
Read MoreWhen in doubt, sow asian greens.
One of my garden mantras should be; When is doubt, sow asian greens. They seem to always reward with a quick crop and are super handy to have ready to pick. I had given up on growing them for summer, considering them a cool season crop, but after a neighbour gave me some fresh pak choi at the height of the warm weather, I reconsidered. There was a bed newly free after a sunflower crop, so I decided to try a few rows. The result has been a bed of…
Read MoreRosellas; a pretty plant that makes great cordial
Yesterday I cut and processed my first lot of rosellas, and my attitude went from skepticism to planning how many rows I will plant next year.
Read MoreTomatillo failure
Tomatillos might not be a good crop for us here. I’ve tried a couple of plantings, and each time they grew well, then we had tomatillo failure as they were completely stripped by beetles and their grubs.
Read MoreGreen Gem cucumbers
Cucumbers have become a staple of summer this year. When we were living in the city I would prefer to get the old fashioned thick-skinned kind, rather than lebanese or telegraph, as I think they have better flavour. So my choice from the seed catalogue for Spring was Green Gem cucumbers; an old standard, good for hot climates, and mildew resistant.
Read MoreGreen zebra tomatoes
This is a crop that I’ve been looking forward to very much. Back in Winter when I was sorting through the seed catalogues to see which tomatoes I should get, there was one from the array of choices that I definitely had in mind; green zebra tomatoes to add colour interest to a tomato salad, and as a bonus they were recommended for regions with wet summers. You can see how pretty they are, the fruit are small, about 5 cm round, with green stripes. Fully ripe, the background colour goes…
Read MoreNational Pickling Gherkin
National Pickling gherkin; this name sounds rather grand to me. I’m not sure which nation they represent, but they were a lucky selection for our garden as they have yielded well and are different enough from salad cucumbers to be a separate crop for the kitchen. I planted two types of cucumber this year; a salad type and a pickling one, to hedge my bets. The first picking of the gherkins was a bit of a worry to me, as they were not only insipid but also bitter. Fortunately the…
Read MoreEdamame soy beans
Edamame soy beans are a large-seeded cultivar bred for the green beans. They are a rewarding crop, and another one that I had no experience of growing. In Sydney I usually had a bag of frozen edamame in the apartment freezer, ready for snacks, and had wondered how they compared with fresh ones. How do they compare? Fresher, greener, and I know how they’ve been treated.
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