The home veg rennaisance: Of Broadbeans and Fennel

Well it's high time I started picking some of the broadbeans but of course, I have no idea what's involved or when the right time to pick them is. Some forums I read said to wait till the pods have black spots on them. In the end I just picked the ones that looked like they weren't really going to get any bigger. I then searched around for details on how to prepare them. It turns out it's not as straight forward as you would expect if you're thinking it's just like any other bean (climber type). I found a good you tube video on it - Fava Beans 101 . So we had a go at it and it's really not that difficult. The beans are quite tasty. Much better than eating one raw, which I tried a few weeks ago and it was bitter.

The passionfruit vine is growing quite nicely but I wasn't sure if I needed two in order to get fruit (some plants have to have two different types of the plant in order to set fruit (Avocados & Apples to name some). So it turns out that the passionfruit plant doesn't need two, however if has a few challenges stopping the fruit from forming. The pollen is quite think and heavy so it doesn't tend to get blown around by wind. Each flower on the passionfruit has both male and female bits but it seems that the flowers are known is self-sterile, which basically means the naughty bits can't dance on the same flower. They can only work with the opposing naughty bits from another flower. So anyway, I found a couple of nice videos on you tube that demonstrate the procedure for hand pollinating the flowers. This should get the fruit setting much more reliable. I also ready that some of the types of passionfruit have flowers that open in the mornings, some in the mid day. One column suggested that the pollinating needs to be done within 2 hours of the flower opening. I'm not sure if this is right or not. Anyway, I'll report back once I start seeing some results on my handy work.

Passionfruit flower showing male and female bits

Video on hand polinating passionfruit flowers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eicamZk1qis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4huk5yXX74&feature=related

Lastly, moving onto my toms; I have been doing some reading about whether or not to prune the toms, if pruning, what to prune and why. SO far it seems the main school of thought is that pruning out certain growth can reduce the effect of blight or mildew as less dense growth will enable the air to circulate and keep himidity levels down. Also pruning can focus the plant on creating a smaller number of larger fruit as well as keeping it growing up and not across and spread out everywhere which becomes pretty unruly if you have very healthy tomatoes. So the basic rule as far as keeping your toms upright is to either stake them, build a mesh cylinder that you put over the tomatoe plant, or to use a string line. There is a really good demo of the string line method here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJgA4n-sCE8

This year I've grown plants from heirloom seed which I purchased from diggers.com.au. I have about half a dozen plants of:

Wasipinicon Peach

Reisentraube

San Marzano

Mixed Russian heirloom

These all seem to be indeterminate type tomatoes, which basically means that don't just grow up like a small tree, but the send out long creeping branches almost vine like. These are called suckers and the removal of them improves the fruit size and growth habit is easier to manage.

Also, built a cage to put over the strawberries today. Alex and I lashed it up out of dead branches we'd collected and some brick laying string. After wrapping some wire mesh around it, the cage fits perfectly over the strawberries. That should stop the birds from making off with my fruit.