“It’s not a tuber!” shouted Arnold Schwarzenegger in the perennial classic Kindergarten Cop. At least that’s what we heard. Potatoes, on the other hand, are tubers. As are sweet potatoes - not related to the potato if you can believe it - as well as yams. But we digress. Potatoes are tubers, they are delicious and they provide consistently high yields for consistently neglectful gardeners.
Sugo day is the Christmas of the edible gardening calendar and, like Christmas, it is something that builds well before the actual event. The key to enjoying the day to the fullest is in the preparation – drinking beer to vacate the bottles, knowing the best source of saucing tomatoes and when to time your run, and of course, having a Nonna on hand to set the scene and the mood.
Garlic has been placed upon a mantle and worshiped for thousands of years. Civilisations have been built upon this cultural building block, including the pyramids and Nonna’s lasagne. There is evidence to suggest that pharaohs were buried with garlic in their tombs. Gladiators ate garlic prior to battle to give them strength, or perhaps it warded off their enemies with their breath. Aristotle even labelled it an aphrodisiac. In today’s veggie garden growers test their patience for the ultimate patch prize.
Gardening can be a lot of fun, but when things don't turn out right it can be a lot of devastating and cruel heartbreak. Last minute pest attacks; fruits splitting last minute; perhaps the onset of some funky disease when everything seemed so right...there's a washing machine of emotions ready to tumble dry you out of your precious crops.
Rather than standing back and hoping for the best, there's some proactive strategies we can use to tip the fruiting odds back in our favour.
Gall wasp is something that nearly every lemon grower in the country has to deal with. In fact, very few trees are exempt. It is a microscopic native wasp that burrows its eggs into the limbs of citrus -primarily lemons and also grapefruit - which then cause swellings or ‘galls’ on the plant, from which the insect hatches.
It’s easy to tell if the wasp has emerged because you will see tiny holes – like a prick from a needle – signifying their departure. Galls without holes means the culprits are still hiding out in the limbs of your plant.
Although gall wasp will not completely kill a tree, it will greatly reduce its health, and more importantly, productivity, when left to spiral out of control.
