Suburban Tomato

One of the best things, if not the best thing about blogging is how much you learn from other bloggers and commenters.  As a result this could be a very long list indeed.  For the purposes of this post I have limited it to 5 and they are:

1. Brussel Sprouts – I have been reading on Mark’s Veg Plot about his brussel sprouts for I don’t know how long and despite my being fairly ambivalent about them as a vegetable they have piqued my interest.  So last week I sowed some seed.  Hopefully the cabbage white’s keep away from them…
2. Different methods of rat control – Since I posted about my rodent issues I have had heaps of good advice.  So far I have baited with poison (some of it has been eaten), and reset my traps (nothing as yet) but I’ve just read that they can’t resist salami so I will change the bait.  Since embarking on those measures Ann left a link  a great discussion on rat control on Gardening Australia’s website.  Since reading that I have hung up the moth balls and I am about to put out some Mars bars (the shop across the road was out of Milky Way).  We shall see if any of it works.  I hope so as I would like to enjoy at least a couple of slicing tomatoes this year.

1. Netting the blueberries – I had some lovely blueberries developing on my plants this year.  I posted on them and a number of people mentioned that it was important to net them.  I didn’t get round to it.  I ended up eating one, that’s it, one blueberry.  Not sure what got the rest – we have a lot of birds in our garden, but I do hope it enjoyed them.  Grrrr
2. You can grow tomatoes in winter in Sydney, in fact L at 500m2 reported better harvests in Winter than Summer (largely due to Fruit Fly in summer).  What I don’t know is whether they would do anything at all in Melbourne’s winter.  I suspect not but we shall see as last week I sowed some seed – Stupice that L grows and a Yellow Currant Tomato that overwintered in Diana’s Adelaide garden.  I’m not really expecting success but as they say you learn as much if not more from your failures than anything else.
3. Tronchuda Cabbage – I hadn’t heard about this cabbage before reading about it on Seed to Table.  Its the cabbage that the Portuguese traditionally use in Caldo Verde and as a result its something I definitely want to try.  Now I just need to source some seed.

Each season this year I have posted on the Top 5 crops for that season based on their value space ratio.  Value Space Ratio is a concept introduced to me by Mark at Mark’s Veg Plot and is a tool I use to try and ensure I am maximising the productive space within my somewhat limited gardening area.  The basic idea is to work out the amount of value a crop produces taking into account the amount of space it occupies and how long it occupies that space.  The hard part of this calculation is getting the value part right.

For me value is a combination of:

• The monetary value of the crop.  I use the Woolworths Online price for conventionally produced produce.  This is not because I want to devalue my crops but simply to give a realistic estimate of the base level of how much I save gardening.  Also I’m lazy and I can check the prices easily online throughout the year.
• The benefit of having it fresh and readily available.  This incorporates both the taste and vitamin benefit you get from eating the crop straight from the plant, as well as the convenience of having the plant on hand and ready to harvest when you need it.  An example of a plant which scores really highly in these areas is parsley: you can harvest a bit or a lot depending on your needs.  It tastes better fresh and the vitamin content is generally higher when freshly picked.
• The taste differential.  While the obvious crop here would probably be tomatoes I also think potatoes score pretty well on this measure.  This is entirely subjective of course but also hugely important to me.
• The availability of crop (ideally relatively sustainably/cheaply) elsewhere.  Potatoes are not going to score highly on this measure as they store well and are readily available at the farmers markets.  Fresh horseradish on the other hand would store well as its not that easy to find.  Garlic also scores well here as if you don’t grow your own you are left with a choice of either paying a lot for it at Farmers Markets or buying often tasteless stuff with ridiculously high food miles attached (at various times of the year we import garlic from China, Spain & Mexico).
• The benefit to the garden of growing that crop – this might be aesthetic (I’m thinking chillies or climbing beans here) or as in the case of crops like broad beans, the nutrients they add to the soil.

I don’t think I’ve perfected how to weight each of these categories but using equal weightings across the board these are this years Top 5 crops:

1. Cucumbers
2. Parsley
3. Coriander
4. Basil
5. Silver Beet

If you group the herbs together the list becomes:

1. Herbs
2. Cucumbers
3. Silver Beet
4. Salad Leaves
5. Kale

Based purely on monetary value the list was:

1. Cucumber
2. Silver Beet
3. Herbs (lemongrass & coriander scored particularly well)
4. Shallots
5. Passionfruit

My tomato crop wasn’t great in 2012 so this affected the scoring a fair bit and in previous years I think they would have made the top 5.  Otherwise (the cucumbers excepted) the list is pretty heavily geared towards cut and come again style crops which I guess makes sense as they are generally productive for a larger proportion of the period they occupy space in the garden.

I’ve been writing Top 5s for a year now and whilst I had been thinking of stopping them I have ideas for a few (or maybe more than a few) more.  I thought January would be a good time do a series of retrospective ones, looking back at the past year.  The first of these is this one – The top 5 gardening lessons I learnt in 2012.

1. Planting cucumbers early is not a good idea.  This year I am growing 4 varieties of cucumber:

• Lebanese
• Catalan Pickling
• Summer Dance and
• Lemon

Thanks for Bek at Bek’s Backyard for the seed for the last two.  The Catalan Pickling are the fat ones (they got a bit big while we were away over Christmas).  The Summer Dance is the long one at the back and the Lebanese the shorter at the front.

I sowed seed of the Catalan Pickling in early July and grew them on in an unheated mini greenhouse until they were big enough for planting out in September.  In August I bought some Lebanese seedlings and grew them on in the mini greenhouse until September.  I planted both out and they did not do well.  It was simply too early.  Growth was slow and a few died.  The plants from seed I sowed later (in August) and planted out later (early November) have done much better.  The lesson is: don’t plant out cucumbers before the soil warms properly – you might get the occasional early fruit but the plants don’t seem to recover properly and the long term yield will be significantly reduced.

2. Winter and Spring are the best seasons for growing potatoes in Melbourne.  I grew potatoes throughout 2012 and I found that; potatoes which did most of their growing during Winter, and better yet Spring, produced by far the greatest yield.  This post provides more detail.

3. Setting fire to mint kills rust.  My mint developed rust, I researched and found that heat can kill the rust spores.  Click here for the post describing the experiment.  The upshot of which is that I now have very healthy and productive rust free mint.

4.  Garlic, particularly hardneck varieties prefer cold climates.  You can find the round up of this years garlic growing experiences here.  In a nutshell though; softneck varieties seem to suit Melbourne’s relatively mild winters better than hardneck varieties.

5. Planting tomatoes early is a good idea.  I sowed some Tiny Tim tomato seeds in May with the aim of getting some early tomatoes and that is exactly what happened – they started cropping in early December.  An experiment I will definitely be repeating.

What has your garden taught you during the past year?