Top 5 – Ways to Kill a Tomato Plant

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Liz

OK so the title is a little over the top, but my daughter has been particularly melodramatic of late and I think its rubbed off.  What the post is really about is the mistakes I have made over the years, when growing tomatoes.

1. Insufficient food – I actually think I made this error this year, in my rush to get them in I didn’t prepare the bed as well as I could have.  I added some Dynamic Lifter (pelletised manure) to the soil but thats about it and despite good initial growth the plants just ran out of steam (or more accurately food).  They perked up a bit when I gave them some fish emulsion but it was really a case of too little too late.  Tomatoes need good levels of nitrogen, phosporus, potassium and calcium and I suspect mine ran out of most of these.  This year I will prepare my beds properly with lots of organic matter (manure and compost) and hopefully will be rewarded with stronger and healthier and thus more productive plants.

2. Sowing too early/too late – The old adage is true – ‘timing is everything’.  Plant out your tomatoes too early and they just sit there unhappily and look sad.  Sometimes they never fully recover – especially if you make the mistake of planting out before the last frost and it kills them.  Plant them too late and you could run out of warm weather needed for ripe fruit, or worse still the first frosts arrive before your crops.  Having said all that, I do find that most books on tomato growing in Melbourne err a little too much on the side of caution particularly when it comes to early plantings.  I have happily planted out tomatoes in August before (admittedly in a pretty mild year) and I don’t think their progress was slowed much at all.  Personally I think the key is a slightly staggered planting out (in Melbourne from perhaps September to December) to allow for both early and late crops  – especially if you have room for lots of plants.

3. Irregular watering – Tomatoes like regular consistent watering – but not too much.  Too much water will cause the roots to rot and as a result the plant will be less able to withstand any periods of hot weather.  The signs over watering are very similar to the signs of underwatering as in both instances the plant isn’t able to access sufficient water from the soil – in the case of under watering because it isn’t there and in over watering because the roots have rotted so they don’t have a big enough root system to take up the water.  Other watering issues include: Too much water while the plants are fruiting and the fruit may split and too little water and the fruit don’t reach a nice size.  This year I’m pretty sure I over-watered my tomatoes, they like it on the slightly dry side but that isn’t really what I gave them and they looked pretty unhappy at times as a result.

4. Pests & Diseases – Is there any disease a tomato can’t get?  And why do all tomato diseases look pretty much the same but with differing sizes and shapes of brown spots on the leaves?  And its not just the leaves and stem, from blossom end rot (which may be a sign of a lack of calcium) to fruit fly there are endless things which can destroy your fruit as well.  Good soil, attention to garden implement hygiene, judical pruning of effected branches and the removal of bugs will all help but sometimes there isn’t much you can do other than simply hope for the best.

5. Unsuitable varieties – All tomato varieties are not the same.  There are some which will tolerate far higher levels of humditiy than others.  There are some which will grow happily in colder temperatures than others.  Some take far longer to set fruit than others.  If you plant the wrong variety for your micro-climate it is very easy to have some very sad looking plants.  The early fruiting varieties are generally better suited to cooler areas and equally there are some varieties which cope far better with the tropics than others.  Because temperatures vary from year to year some varieties do much better in some years than others.  This year I found Rouge de Marmande did really well for me but that Purple Russian was absolutely hopeless.  I wonder what will do well for me next season…

So what else could I do to my tomatoes to reduce their productivity?  Any hints you could give me would be much appreciated as I’d prefer not to destroy my tomatoes in any new ways next season…

Wanting another Top 5?  The New Goodlife talks TV this week.

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Monday Harvest – May 14th 2012

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Liz

Its cold here today (59F/15C) and as a result I don’t know how much longer the summer crops will last.  We are still getting eggplants, a few tomatoes and the never ending chillies.

What we are not getting are decent coriander crops, I pulled up this lot which had bolted before producing many leaves  in order to use the roots in a Thai red curry paste.  The paste also contained the lemongrass.

The below Thai basil, kaffir lime leaves and chilli went into the curry I made with the paste.

I just know that I will be harvesting a bit of silverbeet (chard) each week from now until Spring so I am trying to find new ways of photographing it.  Not entirely sure that this one was that successful photographically but it did taste good in Chicken Saag.

Another thing that I harvest each week and have similar photographic issues with is parsley.  I can’t remember if this lot became stock, was used in bean and chorizo casserole or was simply used in salad.  What I do know is that the lizard didn’t eat it.

The reason why I am trying to find different ways of photographing parsley and chard is clear when you see this next pic – while this picture is fine do you really want to see it every week?  Celery is something that I harvest every week so I need to come up with some new ideas for that too.  Thoughts anyone?  I do like the little spider in the bottom left of the photo though.

Despite the cooler weather I’m still eating a lot of salads – this basket went on to become a Salad Nicoise which I ate for lunch one day last week.

I didn’t only harvest summers crops and greens this week.  More tamarillos hit the basket, I’m up to about 50 so far and counting:

Finally, I decided it was high time I harvested one of our pots of turmeric.  This is what it looked like just out of the pot.

This is what the rhizomes looked like after I’d cleaned then up a bit:

This is a pretty small harvest admittedly but then my climate is really not well suited for growing turmeric and this is really something of an experiment.  This is my second year of trying and I’m learning all the time.  This lot comes from some rhizomes that I left in the pot over winter.  I will be interested to see how much bigger or smaller it is than that from the pot with freshly purchased rhizomes.  My suspicion is that I will get better crops from rhizomes that I either buy fresh each year or lift and store until the next planting season as our winters probably cause a reasonable amount of it to rot in the ground.  But I might be wrong.  I’ll leave my other pot for a few more weeks and then harvest it and compare.

For more harvest related excitement head over to Daphne’s Dandelions to see what else is being cut this week.

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Growing Sweet Potatoes in Melbourne – Part 2

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Liz

Look what’s happened to me again.  I say again because exactly the same thing happened last year.  A long forgotten sweet potato decided to shoot while abandoned in the back of my cupboard.  Cool huh?  Like last year I plan to turn this happy accident into a growing opportunity.

My plan is to leave this one in the back of the cupboard until July/August then separate each of the four shoots from the tuber and place them into a glass of water until they form roots.   This worked really well last year.  Roots formed within a week or two at which point I planted then into 10cm pots filled with potting mix.   I can’t think of any reason why you couldn’t skip the rooting in water stage but I do quite like rooting plants in water occasionally so the kids can see what’s happening.  I kept the seedlings inside the house until the weather warmed up in October and I could see roots creeping out the bottom of the pot.  I then planted them in the garden.

Of course relying on lost potatoes in the back of your cupboard for shoots is probably not the best planning in the world.  If you haven’t forgotten to eat a sweet potato but still want to grow them Garden to Wok shows you how to get them to shoot by putting the tubers into glasses of water.  Mine grew from normal supermarket bought sweet potatoes.  I think the variety that are generally sold in Australia are Beauregard so I presume that is what I have been growing.

The other propagation alternative is to grow them from cuttings.  Sweet potatoes strike incredibly easily, in fact mine layered (when the stem puts down roots upon contact with the soil) themselves in many places – where ever they had come into contact with the ground.  At the points that they layered themselves they also began to form tubers – although these weren’t nearly as developed as those at the initial planting site.  Sweet potatoes are pretty vigorous, mine grew pretty much anywhere I let them.  Next year I think I will trail the vine up and over something (hopefully a chicken house if we ever finish it) rather than just letting it run rampant over the ground and up the fence.  Although the below picture doesn’t really show the extent of its spread you can see it both attempting to engulf my lemongrass and heading skyward up the fence.

My sweet potatoes were planted out at the very end of October so they had about 6 months growing time.  They didn’t have anything like full sun but what sun they had was warm afternoon sun, and the place I planted them is pretty sheltered.  Before planting I prepared the ground with cow manure and then mulched thickly after planting.

My understanding is that its best to avoid feeding them with too much chook manure as its high in nitrogen and they will put on leaves at the expense of tuber growth.  From each plant – I only planted 2 – I have probably harvested about a kg of tubers.  Not a sensational return but still pretty exciting.

I have harvested one plant completely but left some of its layered stems in place.  The other plant I have left in after bandicooting a couple of large tubers from it.  Sweet potatoes are perennial but it will be interesting to see how it deals with a Melbourne winter.  My feeling is that; if any remaining tubers don’t rot over winter then there’s no reason why they shouldn’t send up new shoots in Spring.

Normally on Thursday’s I post a recipe but I’m struggling to find the time during the day to both cook and photograph a dish.  Hopefully I will get a chance this weekend and will be back to recipes this time next week. 

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Posted in Autumn Harvesting, Potatoes, Spring Planting | Tagged | 55 Comments

Top 5 – Beetroot Dishes

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Liz

You can grow Beetroot pretty much all year round in Melbourne, but for much of the year other crops seem to get all the attention.  It is in our hungry gaps – the end of Autumn when the summer crops are fading but the winter ones have yet to begin and the end of Spring where the same thing is happening only this time in reverse, that beetroot really comes to the fore.

Regardless of when you grow it beetroot is one of those crops which it is quite easy to have a glut of, as a result I think it is good to have a few different recipes to cope with those times of the year.  These are my favourite ways to eat beetroot.

1. Beetroot Salad – I absolutely love beetroot roasted in foil and then cut up immersed in dressing and then topped with mint and feta.  The saltiness of the feta works well with the sweetness of the beetroot and the mint adds a lovely fresh burst of flavour.  Just a perfect combination in my book.

2. Beetroot Relish – I make a relish that I serve as a vegetable side dish out of beetroot and apples.  Simply grate one medium to large beetroot and an apple.  Finely slice an onion, fry the onion and when soft add the beetroot and apple.  Cook with sugar and vinegar added to taste.  A really nice way to eat beetroot and at its best served at room temperature.  It goes well with pork.

3. Beetroot Rasam – There are a number of different soups made using beetroot as their primary ingredient, borsht being the most common and popular one.  But my favourite is a south Indian soup called Rasam.  Rasam is made with a wide range of ingredients but I really like this version made with pureed beetroot.  It is hot, sweet and highly spiced.  A really refreshing and interesting way to use what can be a fairly mundane vegetable.

4. Beetroot Chutney – My daughters favourite chutney is beetroot.  This is a fairly sweet preserved chutney with a mellow vinegariness and the warmth of ginger.  I like it with cooked meats and in particular with sausages and coleslaw.

5. Pickled – I am one of those people who will eat beetroot happily out of the can.  Having said that I do prefer my home refrigerator version made with apple cider vinegar a bit of  sugar and spiced up with cloves, chilli, cinamon and a few carraway seeds.

The other way I regularly use beetroot is to add moisture and depth to chocolate cake, but as you can’t really taste the beetroot when its cooked like that I didn’t think I could justify including it in my Top 5.  I would love to hear how you cook beetroot as I can feel something of a glut coming on and I would love to try some new things with it.

If you, like me, are always dying to see what The New Goodlife has written about this week then just follow the link.

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Monday Harvest – May 7th 2012

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Liz

I seem to have coloured coded my first few photos this week.  Here we have the reds – still more chillies, a few cherry tomatoes from my Tiny Tim plant which is still going strong in a pot and some tamarillos.

Next the greens (or more accurately a single green) – I have been harvesting a fair bit of basil lately and making pesto for the freezer.  My plants are still growing but we’ve probably only got a few more weeks left before the weather gets a bit colder and they start looking very sad and sorry for themselves.

Now for the oranges – the colour not the fruit (I do have some fruit developing but they are small and very green at the moment).  I have really enjoyed growing Sweet Potatoes this year – I will write a separate post about it soon – but this harvest of a kg worth came from one of the plants which I removed after layering some of its stems.  I am hoping the layered segments will get through the winter and start growing again in Spring.

 

I have yet to cook these but the weather is screaming soup at me so I suspect that’s what they will become.

These next few bits look a little pathetic.  I dug a small Kipfler potato plant from my side bed and found these few spuds – summer potato plantings really don’t seem to be worth the trouble here.  I have been harvesting a handful of beans every few days – this looks like one of the smaller harvests but it is the only one that made it in front of the camera.  For the record they were Jade and I ate them stir fried.

This final harvest isn’t something I grew myself, I found them on the footpath as I walked to the shops, in fact I’ve found a few of these everyday I’ve walked down my road in the last couple of weeks.  What are they?  They are feijoas.  Feijoas, for those unfamiliar with them, are a South American fruit which are particularly popular in New Zealand and to a lesser extent here in Australia.  Interestingly when I lived in London I got a weekly Fruit box from Abel & Cole and feijoas featured in that on at least one occasion, so I presume that they must be grown in or near the UK as well.  The plants are often grown here as hedging but the fruit is edible as well.  I really like them they taste a bit like a guava, a slightly perfumey taste with a lightly acidic feel.  If you don’t like guava’s you probably wont like feijoas either, but if you do I think they are definitely worth a try if you can find them.

It will be interesting to see how many more weeks I’ll be able to include colours other than green in my harvest – a few at least but come June it may become more and more difficult (at least until the cauliflowers are ready).

For more vegetable ogling head over to Daphnes Dandelions.

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