Early tomatoes!

In Tasmania most gardeners pick their first ripe tomato in January, but there are things you can do to have ripe tomatoes early!  Over the four years that the Food Garden Group has awarded the Golden Tomato Award to the first member who came forward with a home-grown ripe tomato, the winners have taught us things that can help you grow early tomatoes too!

Food Garden Lingo no.2

It's amazing how much food garden lingo there is!  Here is a second lot of words and terms. How many of them are you familiar with?

Helpful for beginners and an interesting knowledge test for more experienced food gardeners.

How many will you get right?  The answers are further down the page.

Food Garden Lingo no.1

It's amazing how much food garden lingo there is!  I wrote down a whole bunch of words and terms, and then found out what precisely they mean. How many of them are you familiar with?

A Look at Grafting

In days gone by mankind developed many creative techniques to manipulate plants into producing bigger or better crops. Grafting is one of these techniques and it was developed over many centuries.  This is an introduction to grafting fruit trees.

Fruit - Apples and Pears

Introduction

Apples and pears are available at supermarkets throughout the year at reasonable prices, so why grow your own? Well, commercial fruit farmers focus on varieties with middle-of-the-road tastes, that will appeal to a wide audience. A variety that has great taste, but looks unattractive, or does not store well, will simply not be grown commercially. Growing your own apples and pears gives you access to varieties that are seldom or never available in shops.

This is a blog post by ‘Max and Max’. Together they tapped into Max’s decades of professional fruit tree experience and documented what might be helpful to home gardeners who grow apples and pears. One Max learnt a lot. The other Max is thanked very much for his time and sharing his knowledge.

A Blank Canvas

Developing a new property from scratch is both an exciting challenge and a daunting experience.  This blog post summarises a brainstorm session of Food Garden Group members that recently took place during a visit to a rural property where new owners are starting with a blank canvas. It may assist others in the similar circumstances.

Ten Tips and Hints

This month ten tips and hints that may help you make your food garden even better.

Complete Organic Fertiliser - Suppliers

Complete Organic Fertiliser (COF) is the name given by Steve Solomon (former seed farmer and publisher of food gardening books) to a mix of organic ingredients that he tailor-made to improve  Tasmanian soils.  This blog post documents some of the Tasmanian businesses that sell ready-made COF in  February 2019.