Thai Pink Egg tomatoes are great for the home garden, especially in areas with warm wet Summers. The fruit is about 5 cm long, egg shaped, and ripens from a pearly grey to pink. Cut, the flesh is contrastingly orange, and the flavour is good, not at all acid, so excellent for salads. I selected this from the seed catalogue for two reasons; it is suited to our climate, and the shape and colour make it ideal for mixed tomato salads. Growing Thai Pink Egg tomatoes As the name suggests,…
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Red Aztec maize
Red Aztec maize is worth growing just for the wow factor. The deep red cobs look great, and I couldn’t resist them from the seed catalogue. I had everything to learn about growing maize, and it’s been an interesting crop, but the first lot of cobs are mature now. From the main picture you can see that they’re not the big, full cobs one might hope for, but with this lot I would at least recover my seed.
Read MoreJanuary harvest
The second half of January has seen the picking season move from just a few items to plenty. My parents were visiting for a couple of weeks and Mum made me this arrangement of a day’s takings.
Read MoreGrowing okra; tough and super productive.
I’m so impressed with okra! They are extraordinarily hardy and bear a consistent yield of pods, they have a long season, and best of all the freshly picked fruit is much better than shop bought pods.
Read MoreSowing into no-dig beds
With another series of rain days forecast, it seems a good opportunity for sowing into no dig beds that I made a few weeks ago. We have been busy with visitors for that time, so yesterday was my first chance to get down and have a look at how the hay rows are doing.
Read MoreHeirloom tomatoes ready to pick
At last our tomatoes are ripening! So today for lunch we are having a freshly picked assortment, seasoned with Majorcan black olive salt, which was a gift from some of our visitors over the break.
Read MoreThree sisters at 10 weeks.
The Three Sisters are one of my experimental plots. Having the space and climate means that I can give things a try, and as I outlined in my previous update, the Three Sisters mix of maize, beans and melons is a technique that I have wondered about, which seems pretty neat and sustainable. The Red Aztec maize that I planted seemed to do well through our dry Spring, and I only watered it when it wilted. The rain finally came nearly 3 weeks ago, and here’s a photo of the…
Read MoreGrowing okra: another drought star.
I’m an okra growing novice. I have always liked it, and bought it when it looked good in the greengrocer, but I have never seen it growing and could possibly be the first in my family to try it. But so far I’m impressed with growing okra, as it’s stayed unwiltingly defiant through our dry spring.
Read MoreSeed saving – the spring crop.
Seed saving. It seems like everyone’s doing it, and it’s a good job for a warm and breezy Sunday afternoon. Today I got my saved seeds into ziplock bags, and it gave me new enthusiasm to get out sowing. While I think of seed saving as putting away seeds for next year, some crops like lettuce can be sowed back straight away.
Read MoreThree sisters 4 week update
The Three Sisters bed is coming along, despite the dry weather. After my previous post, when the maize was well started, I finished off the planting with bean seeds between the maize stems, and watermelon, rockmelon, and cucumber seedlings in the spaces between the maize blocks.
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