How do I know that this corn is ripe?
Well, there's a few things that tell me one the tassel or female flower on the top has dried out.
Two a good feel reveals that it's nice and hard and filled out all the way to the top.
But if that is still not enough, then there's a few other things you can test.
One you can strip down the top part of the covering of the cob and have a check on the kernels.
As you can see, nice and yellow and tight.
But even then you can test for rightness.
All you have to do is get your thumbnail and piece one of the kernels.
If the liquids clear, it's not right. But if it's milky like this, perfectly right.
Can you ripen tomatoes off the plant at the end of the season?
Well, if they've got any color on the fruit take them inside and they'll ripen naturally.
But if you've got the bushes laden with green fruit and you need to pull the plants out to make room
for your new season's crops, you can actually pull the plants out roots and all
and hang them up, like I've done here in the carport.
Now, this was done a few days ago.
And already you can see that some of the fruit will ripen and then I can pick it and take inside.
It might not work for all the fruit, but it certainly gives you more fruit than you'd get otherwise.
When you buy a punnet of veggie seedlings,
they'll normally be a label that specifies the planting distance between plants.
For example, these egg plants are specified to be planted 50 centimeters apart,
that is it important to follow this information?
Well, it's a very good idea.
Because if plants are overcrowded, they are likely to get stunted
and also you increase the risk of pest and disease issues.
If you feel it's a waste of space to have all that room in between them until they grow.
You can always squeeze in some quick growing crops like radish, Asian greens or open hearted lettice.
And you can make the most of that space until the plants grow on.
See that, that is a sucker from the rootstock of a passionfruit.
It's the wild growth that comes from under the graft.
And it's a useless piece of thing because it goes hysterical.
The thing about a passionfruit vine is there's the rootstock, that's the one you don't want.
But have a look at that.
There is the leaf of the true fruiting passionfruit that's the thing you do want.
If you don't get rid of those suckers and all of this growth from this poor old pomegranate tree that's there.
It'll completely smother that pomegranate.
You should prune this back as soon as the danger of frost has gone.
Get rid of all that passionfruit vine, make sure you pull it up, get on top of it early.
How do I thin seedlings without doing damage to those remaining plants?
That's a fantastic question.
And my answer is a pair of scissors.
When you yoink out the plants you don't want, you can do damage to the root systems of the others.
With scissors, you just select the strongest plant the one you want to keep
and then you just get down low and snip away the others.
It's great for punnets of seedlings but also great for crops that are growing in the ground
that detest having their root systems disturbed.
And in particular, it's fantastic for thinning carrots,
and you can get down nice and close and snip away the plants you don't want.
Why do you often see a lot of small fruit having fallen to the ground
from your lemon tree or any citrus tree?
The answer can be in it might have got too hot and you might have forgotten to water the plant
or you've given it a lot of highly nitrogenous fertilizer.
So, the answer is watch the watering and watch the fertilizer
not too much nitrogen on those lemon trees.
When do I have this my Jerusalem artichokes?
Well these amazing root vegetables died down in winter.
So that's the time to dig them up.
But if you're lucky enough to live in a frosty area.
Wait till after the first frost because they're meant to taste sweeter.
How big a pot do you really need to get growing food?
Well, the truth is you can start really small something like this a 30 centimeter pot or even an old bucket.
Well that's perfect for some Herbes or some lettuce, some of those smaller plants,
you just need to remember when you're growing, you need to match the amount of soil that you containing in the pot
with what you want to grow up top.
So if you want to grow something larger, perhaps a fruiting plant like a tomato,
or even a blueberry, you need to go to a larger container to keep that consistent supply of moisture and nutrients up to the plants.
But once you get growing, there's no end to the experiments.
So have a go.
How do you know when your persimmon fruit is ripe?
Well, they'll ripen in the winter period and the tree will lose all its leaves
and the fruit will go a bright orange.
Now there are two types of persimmon, they're are estringent types
and non estringent types.
The non estrogent type like this Fuyu here will ripen hard on the tree
and then you can pick them off and eat them just like an apple
and they'll give you a crunch and sweetness.
The estringent variety needs to be blettered on the tree,
meaning the fruit needs to be soft and squishy before it's ready.
Now if you're in an area where birds or possums are a problem,
pick your fruit off a little bit under ripe and put it in a brown paper bag with a little bit of banana peel.
This will speed up the bletting process.
Now if you have a ripe looking orange piece of fruit that's still hard,
and you're wondering whether it's a estringent or non estringent variety.
Try it.
I guarantee you'll know.
This is a meddler.
A fairly uncommon fruit tree which is weird because they grow well.
They have few pests and diseases problems and the fruit is divine.
They used to be popular in the past.
They're an essential fruit tree for a mediaeval orchard,
and they're referenced in many great literary works like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Don Quixote,
and many of Shakespeare's plays, including Romeo and Juliet.
Why did they lose their popularity, growers started to go for their quick pick cousins,
apples and pears, because you see, meddler of fruit take time,
they need to be blettered on the tree.
The fruit need to go soft and squishy before they're sweet and ready to pick.
Maybe people just lost patience.
Onions are a really great home garden crop.
There are different varieties that will grow in different climates almost all year round,
which means you can continually harvest and some of them are really well suited to sewing straight from seed
but a lot of people start with seedlings and they can be really fiddly to plant.
They like tiny little bits of string, don't get a simple method to make it a lot easier for you.
So you just need to separate the onions out.
I've soaked them in water to help and then carefully tease apart the little strings.
And then instead of sticking every single onion string in one hole,
you can lay them down on the side of a trench, just put the roots in the bottom and lean the onions all over one side.
I'm putting them about five centimeters apart,
because in a few weeks, when they're getting a little bit bigger,
I can harvest every second one.
While the onions might look a little sad when they first go into the ground over the coming weeks,
they'll actually pull themselves up vertically,
and that means they're going to grow straight and sweet for your kitchen.
If you garden in the subtropics,
Easter is an important time in the gardening calendar.
You should so or plant your tomatoes now, and the reason is simple.
The optimum conditions for tomatoes is 23 degrees C 70% humidity
and it's pretty much that all the way through our winter.
So plant them and sew them now if you want almost trouble free tomatoes