Last winter our veggie garden became rather wet and claggy so this year I decided to spread a layer of mulch over it to help free up the soil and make it easier to maintain. I should have done this several months ago to give it more time to break down over the winter but [...]
Every year about this time people ask these questions of me, “Rodney why do you grow so many tomatoes and how do you achieve such great results … what are you going to do with them all ?” I must admit that sometimes I ask myself the same questions especially when its time to stake, [...]
Daylight saving started last Sunday so now I have an extra hour at the end of each day to get our vegetable garden knocked into shape. The winter has been long and very wet but I’m hoping that’s all behind us now. In spite of the fact that the ground is still rather wet I [...]
In spite of the slow start to spring it’s been a great season for growing tomatoes and to ensure bumper crops again next season I’ve been setting aside some of the choicest tomatoes for seeds. Tomato seeds are encased in a gelatinous type sac which prevents them from sprouting whilst inside the fruit therefore this [...]
When I wrote to the NZ Gardener recently to make them aware of my bumper crop of tomatoes I certainly didn’t expect my letter to be made into a full page feature. You could say I almost “fell off my ladder” when the neighbour dropped by to show me their copy (details are on pages [...]
Its been about 14 weeks now since I planted my first tomatoes and at last, they are ripening in reasonable numbers. I picked the first of the tomatoes about 3 weeks ago but they didn’t compare to yesterday’s harvest. I’m tickled pink (as in Brandywine Pink) with the results so far, since these are just [...]
Do you ever wonder where all the bees have gone? It’ s no easy task to find bees whereas not many years back they were everywhere plying their all important trade. I can remember many an occasion when one of our children would come storming into the house hollering that they had trodden on a [...]
Now that the Christmas and New Year’s festivities are over I thought it time to see how my two trial tomatoes are progressing. Since my post of the 18th of December all the tomatoes excluding the one below have received another generous dose of worm juice however I’m now applying it with a watering can. [...]
It’s been almost six weeks since I planted my main crop of my tomatoes and now that the warm summer weather has finally arrived they’re racing away. My post of the 5th November “How to grow bigger and better tomatoes using worm juice“ covered the subject of using this as an organic fertiliser. Since then [...]
For the 30 years I’ve been growing vegetables tomatoes have always had pride of place in my garden as I enjoy growing them and love eating them. As mentioned in a previous post, this season I have planted six different tomato varieties so hopefully some bumper crops are not too far away. With two bath [...]
