Take a look at this.
It's a pulse - a protein-rich seed,
and it's used to make a common form of Indian daal.
And it comes from this plant. The pigeon pea.
Let me show you.
Dried pigeon peas like these can be boiled and made into daal.
But when the pods are green, they're good as a vegetable as well.
It makes sense growing pigeon peas in Brisbane's climate.
And that's what I wanted to show you today.
Some useful edible plants that are adapted to the subtropics
that are better suited than their more conventional
cool-climate counterparts.
I've grown some really good crops of sweet corn here.
But apart from being a bit slower growing,
pigeon pea beats corn at every turn in Brisbane.
Corn needs regular moisture to perform.
In drought, that means watering it every single day,
whereas pigeon pea would be killed by that amount of water.
In drought, pigeon pea needs one drink a week.
And then there's fertiliser.
Pigeon pea is a legume.
It fixes its own nitrogen from the atmosphere.
All it needs is trace elements just to cover your bases
in case there's anything missing from the soil.
But to get an equivalent crop of corn,
I'd have to apply a whole bag of poultry manure over the season.
And that costs money.
The first crop of peas the plant bears is the biggest.
So I grow pigeon pea as an annual, replacing plants each season.
They're not fussy about soil type,
but dig it well and add organic matter if it needs it.
My soil is fine as it is.
Now, these are big plants,
so you plant them three metres apart.
At the time when I bought the seed,
they supplied me with the inoculant.
Now, this contains the bacterium that allows pigeon peas
to fix atmospheric nitrogen, and it's very specific.
So you add this to the seed before sowing.
This is winter melon, Benincasa hispida,
and it's a member of the cucurbit family.
Many gardeners grow pumpkin and zucchini
as familiar summer crops.
They're temperate-climate cucurbits.
But in the subtropics,
they can suffer from diseases like mildew and root rot.
Plus, the most common complaint is in hot weather
they produce only male flowers and no fruit.
Well, Benincasa hispida comes from South and South-East Asia.
It laughs at the heat.
In fact, it needs heat to really get going.
The immature fruit is fuzzy
and it has a sweet, white flesh.
By maturity, the fruit develops a white, waxy coating,
giving rise to the other common name - wax gourd.
This coating enables them to keep for a long time.
These fruit are almost a year old.
They taste a little bit like zucchini or marrow,
and they can be baked, boiled,
stir-fried, curried, or added to soups.
You can also eat the spare flowers, leaves and shoot tips.
October to December is the usual sowing time.
They really need heat to grow.
I germinate two to three of the small seed in pots.
Once they've settled in, I select the strongest plant.
I can't begin to tell you how much I love
the nutty flavour of celeriac.
I've tried growing crops of this during our cool seasons,
but unlike this store-bought specimen, mine have been no larger
than a hen's egg.
In our warm soils they get root rot,
and in summer they get bacterial leaf infection.
And it's a similar story with conventional celery.
But I'm not beaten yet.
Enter par-cel.
It's a variety of celery.
The 'par' in par-cel stands for parsley
and the 'cel' for celery.
It has the flavour characteristics of both plants and is used
in the same way as either celery or parsley.
I ordered seed online and sowed it last summer.
They've had full sun and have grown to fill their pots.
I planted some of them out a fortnight ago
and they're doing very well in the conditions I have in my garden.
Why try to fit a square peg into a round hole?
If a traditional variety of vegetable is not doing well
in your climate,
then try something similar that's better adapted.
Experiment!