All About Tomatoes

Penny — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 08:33:03 +0000

All about tomatoes and potatoes, peppers and other relatives, is another excellent book from Diggers and Clive Blazey. Although this small book does have all you need to know for your tomatoes to grow and thrive, it also looks at the history of tomatoes, talks about open-pollinated versus hybrid seed and why we all need to grow and save the free, open-pollinated, non hybridised types. Diggers has done years of research into tomatoes and their yields, colour, texture and flavour. Clive has listed the 60 that they think are the best. With mouth watering beautiful colour photos it’s hard to resist planting them straight away. But there are nearly 5500 heirloom varieties available around the world so maybe you need to try some of those too. The majority of the book is about tomatoes, but there are 8 pages at the back that cover some tomato relatives like potatoes, capsicums, eggplants, pepino and several more. Borrow it from your library, buy it from an independent bookshop or online from Diggers

All About Tomatoes by Clive Blazey, The Diggers Club, Dromana, Australia. Hardcover, 80pages, $24.95

Heirloom vegetables and heritage fruit

Penny — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 05:08:01 +0000

Last weekend saw a celebration of old cultivars and varieties of both fruit and vegetables. At Diggers Heronswood, Dromana it has been the Harvest Festival Weekend with a really beautiful array of pumpkins and squashes, garlic for sale and tomatoes to taste. Nearly all of these are heirloom or open pollinated varieties that are so important both for our gardening history and our future. Heirloom and heritage varieties are an integral part of organic gardening, many are the result of selective breeding over numerous generations so that they show special characteristics.

Turk's Turban, Delicata, Potimarron, Australian Butter, Buttercup and Bohemian are just a few of the heirloom varieties of pumpkins available to grow.

Heirloom varieties of squash, gourds and small pumpkins

At Petty’s Orchard they held the Heritage Apple Day with over 100 varieties of apples to try. From the beautiful sweet dessert apples like Cox’s Orange Pippen to the more tart but sublime when cooked Edward VII (a late season English cooking apple first recorded in 1902) , and even cider apples like Dabinett, an old Somerset cider apple producing bittersweet cider.

Such a rich panoply of tastes and textures, colours and scents. So much to loose if we don’t make an effort to preserve our heritage of varieties. So what can we all do? It’s pretty simple really, support the organizations and companies that sell these precious seed and grow unusual varieties of vegetables and fruit. Grow these vegetables and harvest and store our own seed, that way we help to preserve genetic diversity for future generations. Volunteer for the organizations that keep these fruit going, like the Heritage Fruits Society — PW

Scarlet Stymared

Sweet Coppin

Penny Woodward » heirloom

All About Tomatoes

Heirloom vegetables and heritage fruit