NEWS FROM THE KOANGA INSTITUTE

MARCH 08    

A short newsletter from the tomato trial here in the Whitianga Bay garden…

As we mentioned in the February catalogue Franzi is running a large tomato trial here this year (400 tomatoes). The main aim of it was to trial all 50 tomatoes that have recently been gifted to our collection by Henry Harrington, so we could actually see what we had there and also to run comparative trials with the tomatoes we know well already from our collection.

I’m so excited by what we can see so far that I thought I’d put this up on the website and Franzi can add pictures and comments to this over the next few weeks.

The tomatoes went in far later than they could have gone in here, simply because we were beginning a new garden and it took time.

The first fruit ripened in January and there are many tomatoes in this trial I have never seen before at any of the over seas tomato trials I’ve seen at Diggers in Australia and also Seed Savers in Iowa USA.

We have had a very dry hot season, in February the ground was so hot between the tomatoes I couldn’t walk on the soil barefoot a few days, we had no water for irrigation for most of February as well and it was very interesting to see which tomatoes handled that without a problem and which ones got blossom end rot, a sure sign of water stress!

Some of the vines were in full sun and a few were in the part shade of some willows, early in the season they were slow to get away but once it got really hot, those in the heat suffered and those in the semi shade shot ahead.

We saved seed of the best of our new tomato varieties ad these will be available in the July Institute catalogue. Enjoy them, we certainly have, and a huge thanks to Henry for keeping them alive for us to enjoy.

Tiger melon, Jenny Lind Rock melon and Charantais rockmelon

We have had wonderful eggplants this season with such heat and free draining soil, and I’ve really enjoyed the fantastic melons. The French Charantais Rock melons are hard to beat when they are perfectly ripened and sliced for breakfast, and so are the

Sweet Siberian Water melons and the Od’ham Yellow Meated water melons. We really noticed that although these heritage melons were not quite as sweet as the ones in the shops now they had a lot more flavour. It is also noticeable that the old melons have more seeds in them than the modern ones which are now being bred to be seedless so you don’t have to spit them out when you eat them. Did you know that indigenous people highly valued the water melon seed and it was commonly roasted and ground and served with porridge or pudding etc because it was recognized it contained important nutrition (check out Ferment and Human Nutrition by Bill Mollison).

Sweet Siberian and Yellow Od'ham Meated Watermelons

We are currently making a corn crib, a rua kumara to store the potatoes and kumara when they come in, and a pumpkin shed for the pumpkins, as well as collecting seed for us all.

Arohanui Kay

To read our old newsletters please click on the edition below:

September 2007

May 2007

January 2007

October 2006

March 2006