Gardening Resources 2 – Fruit & Veg A to Z
Deb
This page is a work in progress – a place to store useful info I find for growing our favourite fruit and veg. Mainly so I can find them again! But hopefully they’ll be useful to others too.
Broccoli
- Tui Gardens Broccoli growing page
- Garden Grow’s Broccoli growing page
Last time I went up to our original vege patch, up behind our shed, the broccoli had signs of life, but nothing that could be harvested. We didn’t plant them far enough apart, so I’m not expecting an exceptional harvest, but we’ve been hoping for at least a bit of something.
Then it rained a lot for a while, and in between I went away for a few days, and when I went up to look today, I found that there were some small heads just big enough to eat, but two of them had started flowering.
So onto Duck Duck Go to see if they are still edible, as I know other veges are not nice once they’ve bolted. According to this page, they can still be eaten but they are not as nutritious. Some people like to eat the flowers, but don’t steam them. They are better eaten raw, or cooked another way. You can still eat the stems, buds and leaves, though the leaves are better eaten before the crowns develop. More on that here.
Going back to the first page, it also has a video on how to collect seed. The plant shown in the video is about 4 years old and enormous and apparently feeds them all winter long! I’m told that if you just cut the crown off to eat, more will grow. And another video on how to collect seeds is here.
Brussels Sprouts
A vegetable that will never pass my lips, but I’m not the only one in the household(s), so we gave some a go.
We planted seeds before Xmas some time, and planted the seedlings early February, and then sadly neglected them for a while. After looking at the Tui Gardens page and the Garden Grow page, I see we planted too early, didn’t space them far enough apart and didn’t look after them very well. I sloshed a bit of the liquid from our worm farm on a couple of times, and we weeded a little, but that’s about it.
To make things even more confusing, it looks we mixed them up with the broccoli when we planted them out, so for months we weren’t sure which was which.
I’ve heard horror stories about how hard they are to grow and that the slugs and snails eat them all, so I was quite thrilled to discover that at least one of the plants has a row of little babies under a large leaf, as you can see from my rather blurry photo.
This year we’ll just make the best of it, but next year we’ll be sure to read full instructions before getting started.
Butternut Squash
(June 22) We really got into planting a bit late this autumn and now in June, we have three small Waltham Butternut seedlings which probably wouldn’t survive planting out into the garden. But we just bought a VegePod and grabbed some VegeBags at the same time. So I went online to find out if they could be grown in containers, and apparently they can. Although it’s the wrong time of year, a VegeBag will hopefully keep the soil warmer, so in the spirit of experimentation, we’re giving it a go. By the time the plant gets big enough to need staking, it should be warm enough to open the bag up. Fingers crossed!
- This link is a good intro to growing squash in containers
- This one also has good info about what sort of support they might need
- This one goes in depth into all aspects
Choko
I just learnt a little about chokos aka chayote. Apparently they just about grow wild in Wellington and it’s common to have them growing all over the edges of paths. Who knew? I’ve never eaten any and there are differing opinions about how to best eat them. If they’re that easy to grow, we’ll have to try them out next season. According to the Garden Grow page, we need to plant in December and they’ll be ready about April. Tui Gardens say they need plenty of room to sprawl.
Kumara