Berry Interesting Summer is the only time I really make any effort in the vegie garden. If you know me well, you know I’m easily distracted, so a well-tended vegie patch with subsequent plantings and a continuous crop of fresh vegetables really is in the too hard basket. Come spring when my raspberry canes begin to sprout, and the strawberry plants dotted throughout my garden flower, I keenly dig in. I’ll plant several tomato plants, simply because I can’t choose between cherry, beef steak or Roma, and then I’ll be enticed by the heritage varieties. Did I mention I’m the only one in the family that eats tomatoes! Courgettes and cucumbers will be plonked in along with maybe a capsicum or chilli and my annual attempt to grow a watermelon or the
largest pumpkin for the Great Pumpkin Carnival. It turns out, with my annual planting, I turn my little suburban plot into a berry farm each year and I’m not talking about the raspberries and strawberries I let go wild. The botanical definition of a berry is a fruit produced from the ovary of a single flower in which the outer layer of the ovary wall develops into an edible fleshy portion. Think about this: this means tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, melons, pumpkins, chillies and capsicums are all berries. It also means those raspberries and strawberries are not true berries! With this info in mind, I decided to see what else I could learn about my favourite summer produce and asked Gus Tissink from Bidfresh Hamilton to give me some insight into what’s new and how he enjoys his summer berries.
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