House & Home The Vege Garden Thread

Corn seems to be doing well. Never knew what it looked liked before it becomes the cob you buy. Tomatoes should be ready to harvest next week or so for a few months.

Something (possum maybe?) keeps eating the leaves off my passionfruit vine and lemon tree, Both have almost no leaves now. Not sure the best course of action, thinking of pointing the night vision baby monitor at them to try and see what's going on, doesn't have record or activate in movement unfortunately so probably a pointless exercise. Ecooil spray had no effect and other citrus is untouched.

 

@TadhgMor , in regards to removing suckers from tomatoes, is that an on going thing?!
Did that a few weeks back and now there is plenty more but also a lot more fruit though and not sure if i should remove the new suckers again!

 

Keep removing suckers at the branch junctions. You want to have one main trunk growing and producing the flowers and the fruit.

I used to work on a hydroponic tomato farm as a teenager many years ago, as TadhgMor mentioned we also removed the bottom branches leaving about two below the lowest fruit to improve airflow and reduce disease. Finally we trimmed the fruit truss to no more than 8 tomatoes (experimented with different numbers) to improve fruit quality and size, not so much an issue with the lower couple, more important when you get up higher.

 

Thank you @Hodor

 

I spray possum affected produce areas with Beat-A-Bug "Poss Off".
Can be bought at Bunnings etc or online.

 

What @Hodor said

FYI, you want a thick healthy trunk to support the crop.

 

Probably too late for this year....my large ones are all over the place....but next year hopefully I'll know a little more.

 

Those Tommies look fantastic,
I have to net everything where I am.
You don't have that problem?

 

We're lucky in that we don't have birds trying to eat our fruit.
But we have a big problem with Black Birds digging up our smaller plants. We discovered this morning that they had managed to knock over the bird shield around our pumpkin seedlings and dig them up. No more seedlings
So.. we'll start new pumpkins in our seedling trays and wait till they're much bigger before planting.

 

Yes, they are so destructive, but if you are referring to the English Black Birds that I;m thinking of, they have a beautiful song. Bugger about knocking off the bird shield...

 

Container after container of Blueberries in recent weeks. Did some more picking this morning. Heaps more still ripening:



Just picked our first Aunt Ruby Green heritage tomato. Haven’t tried this variety yet. According to Peter Cundall it’s the most delicious tomato he’s ever grown. Supposed to be sweet and juicy with a tiny bit of a tang to it. We love growing unusual varieties of produce that you can’t normally buy. Most people have no idea of the enormous variety of stuff out there not available from the supermarket / green grocer:

 

Had a friend visiting today so decided to try the Aunt Ruby German Green tomato with a salad. Well it is a wonderfully tasty tomato. As Peter Cundall said it’s sweet, juicy, full of flavour with a ting tang. Our visitor raved about it also and wanted to know where to get one to grow. Being a heritage variety my wife saved some seeds for future.

Here’s a picture of half of it sliced:

 

We previously grew green Tommies, they were meant to have a much lower acid level and easier on the tummy. Would these fit that profile? Curious if it's a green thing or not

 

Asked the wife. Depending on the variety they will have a slight blush of yellow or pink on the bottom of the green tomato.

 

Not all green tomato varieties are low acid but this one is. I think the sweeter they are the less acid there might be?

 

So, I’ve trained the tomatoes up to the top of my construct at about 2.4 m high, taken all the suckers out on the way up.
What now, train them back down again?

 

What we used to do is have them trained on a string and could un-hitch about 30cm at a time, we could then coil them up at the bottom where the branches were removed.

Practically at home I think just snip the tip once it is at the max height and let the plant put energy into the fruit and replant new plants as required.

 

Ok a selection of some more unusual Heritage veges (excluding jalapeño in middle) just picked. Heritage varieties are typically not perfectly shaped and uniform like modern hybrids typical seen in supermarkets but the taste is sensational.

Epicure beans, Marconi capsicum, Mini White cucumber and Black Truffle tomato. The Black Truffle tomato is another variety growers rave about as being wonderfully flavoursome. It will be another first taste test for us.

 

Hmm

Bit hard to see but a range of crops on the dwarf fruit trees

Lunchbox peaches, apples, plums, pears. The Blueberries are still providing a crop also