Throughout European history the Solanaceae family has been synonymous with poison. Only witches and fairies dealt with tomatoes and sunberries. One bite of their deadly fruits was known to strike children dead. The Europeans didn’t know that in other parts of the world, sunberry leaves were being sautéed as green vegetables and tomatoes were being made into salsa. Solanaceae comes from the Latin word solamen which means ‘quieting’.
All members of the Solanaceae family have a flower shape that is easy to identify. Each flower has five united or partially united petals forming a symmetrical wheel shaped corolla; five stamens are attached near the base. The cultivated species of the Solanaceae family are self pollinating, honey bees are not fond of the flowers, however other insects are and crossing sometimes occurs.

POTATO (Solanum tuberosum)
Back-order: Orders received from 1st December to 30th May, sent out in June. Orders received from 1st June to 30th November, sent out weekly while stocks last.
These potatoes are the best of all those we've trialed so far.
They are all very old varieties that often have come to me with many different names from different places, all over the North and South Island, Stewart Island and the Chathams. Urenika is the most widespread; Pawhero, Karoro and Whataroa are also very widespread. All are good croppers given the right conditions.

Please note not all of these potatoes are available for sale each year. Kowiniwini, Urenika, Whataroa and Karororo are available through Koanga Gardens shop www.koanga.co.nz or 09 4312 732.

Each year some of the other varieties will be available to Koanga Institute members. These will be on the shopping cart and also listed in the Koanga Institute catalogue.

CULTIVATION TIPS
Some people find potatoes easy to grow, while others find them very difficult. In Northland they are very blight prone and with heavy soils we have a hard job on our hands, a bit like growing tomatoes.
I have found the following things very helpful: I plant potatoes into trenches of wilted comfrey leaves, and if possible seaweed straight from the beach or seaweed meal - this means you can't plant your main crop potatoes until early November, which is the best time to plant them in terms of missing early and late blight. Mulch heavily or hill up (this stops the potato worm getting into the potatoes and infecting your eating and seed potatoes, and your ground!).

A weekly foliar spray of fish with liquid nettle, cleavers, horsetail or any herb that concentrates silica, which grows strong cell tissue that helps prevent fungal attack. Keep on hand some Cutonic Copper or Sulphur 800WP, in case you have a wet, humid season and it feels as though they'll get blight anyway. Some people prefer to put on a precautionary copper spray to prevent blight, and this does seem to work well. If you want to plant early or late season potatoes, the Phyter, copper or sulphur will probably be essential in the north anyway. Use compost, well-rotted manure, seaweed, etc. for early crop potatoes, as you won't have comfrey available.

HARVESTING AND STORAGE
When harvesting potatoes, choose a dry, windy day. The potatoes need to dry in 1 day so they are not sitting in the sun going green and poisonous. As you pick them up, divide into 3 containers: those that are damaged and, therefore, need to be eaten first; those that are good seed potatoes (select for whatever characteristics are important to you, e.g. size, shape, health of plant, size of crop on individual plant, etc.); and those that are suitable for storage.
Those you are storing for eating need to go into a paper-type sack, like a rubbish bag, that keeps out the light, but which breathes (a thick hessian bag will also do). Store them in a cool, dry place.

SEED SAVING
Those you are storing as seed potatoes need to be hung up in an airy place, out of the sun but in the light, in an onion bag (or string type bag that lets the light in and stops them from sprouting.
This will discourage the shooting of the sprouts until you wish to plant them, when you take them down and put them in a tray in a dark place for a week or two. I suggest you keep your very best potatoes for seed - not ones smaller than the size of an egg. You can cut large potatoes up before planting, so long as you leave a shoot or eye on each piece and dip the cut side in wood ash or leave to dry in the sun.
If you have trouble with moths laying their eggs in the eyes of the potatoes when they are in storage (you can tell this is happening by the tiny little round things coming out of the eyes that look like eggs but is actually "caterpillar poo," connected together with a spider web like thread), you can make up a bucket of garlic and pyrethrum spray, or maybe neem oil spray, or may be wormwood liquid tea, and dip your onion bag of potatoes into it to kill the little caterpillars or the eggs.

Jersey Bennes NZ

This is the well-known traditional early Xmas potato. It is particularly famous in the South Island, where our seed potatoes are coming from. This is an outstanding line. A kidney shaped potato with very white skin and flesh and shallow eyes. The flesh is very soft and sweet. A good boiler or steamer, as it does not fall apart like many other early potatoes.
Plant as soon as danger of frosts is over. Approx 12 weeks to harvest. We plant in August to harvest mid December.

Karoro NZ
This is a creamy skinned potato, with a creamy coloured, very waxy flesh. Deep eyes. It is a small, round, hard potato, excellent for potato salads, and just simply steaming. Beautiful in a hangi. I have been told this potato was traditionally grown early around the Banks Peninsula area and also around the Hauraki Gulf and Great Barrier Island. The harvested potatoes were then taken out as a staple food by those going mutton birding, apparently to complement their diet of seafood and mutton-birds. This is a gourmet potato, similar in texture and flavour to several other very famous Irish and English potatoes (e.g. Pink Fir, and Ladies Finger). Although the texture and flavour is similar to these varieties, however, the shape of the potato is quite different.

Kowiniwini NZ
This one is round with indented white eyes, and the flesh is very similar to Whataroa. I use them in the same way. They are very good keepers.

Maori NZ
This is quite different to all the above listed potatoes. It is very round and large, with no inset eyes. It has white flesh and a bright purple skin, is an early potato and is an excellent one for baking in the jacket (it comes out nice and fluffy). Or, if you have to have a potato for mashing and you only grow old potatoes like us, then this one can be peeled, and it mashes really well. It is not good for boiling, chipping, sautéing, etc., because it falls apart. It was commonly grown as an early potato.

Pink Fir NZ

A traditional Irish potato. The name 'fir' is Gaelic for 'man.' An elongated potato with pinkish skin and yellow flesh. Retains its excellent, firm flesh when cooked. Outstanding waxy variety. Heavy cropper.

Urenika NZ
A long potato with dark purple skin that retains its colour when cooked. Waxy when small, floury when large. Great boiled or steamed. Once they have been kept for a few months and the skins get tough, scrub and boil with the skins on, then peel when cooked. For sauté' or potato salad, skin comes off easily.
Urenika or, as it is often called, Tutai Kuri, is widespread over the whole of NZ and Chatham Islands. Produces huge crops and requires a long growing season. These are good keepers. This is the potato that scientists discovered had many many times the antioxidant levels of modern white potatoes.

Whataroa NZ

I actually found this potato on the West Coast of the South Island at a place called Whataroa. We used to call it West Coast but now see on the potato chart that Whataroa is the generally accepted name! I have been sent this potato by many people, calling it many different names; however, around the North it seems to have been very commonly called Waikato.
It has a quite large, irregular, round to oblong shape with a light purple and cream blotchy skin and yellow waxy, firm flesh with purple streaks throughout. It is a wonderful potato for making oven-baked chips and appears to have a very high sugar content. Especially good cut up into wedges or chunks baked with olive oil and soya sauce, but also steamed, or in a hangi. One of the best old potatoes and always a heavy cropper. Also a really good keeper.

Scotts NZ
This is an old potato sent to us by a Scotsman, who says it came to this land with his family from the homeland. It is large and round with pink skin and white flesh and has good flavour. Very floury - excellent mashed potato.

Pawhero NZ

Long sausage shape, purple skin, very white floury flesh, best in a hangi!

Old Blue NZ

Short sausage shape purple skin, very white flesh with a very strong purple mandala in the cross section, best boiled.

Kereopa NZ

Smooth white skinned with distinctive purple
netting, great roasted or boiled

Koanga Early NZ

Similar to the well known early commercial variety called King Edward and previously called King Edward here. Oval shape smooth skin white with pink streaks, early potato good for boiling.

Stewart Island NZ

A pink skinned deep eyed roundish potato I found growing on the cliffs there years ago, floury rather than waxy, good cropper.

Chatham Island NZ

The old potato that used to be grown commercially on the Chatham Islands and exported to NZ and around the Pacific, similar to Whataroa, a very good one, waxy yellow, hard, flesh, great roasted, and the best of all late in the season when all the potatoes are sprouted and the new ones are not ready to dig!

PEPPERS

Burpees NZ

This is a heirloom from the Bay of Plenty. It was sent to us by Ezilda Cummings, the daughter of Haywood Wright NZ's famous plant breeder. It is a pepper from Haywards Wright Collection. It's a very round flat, blocky, thick walled, segmented Sweet pepper with good flavour. It does really well for us.

Jimmy Nardello 

This is our hardiest, easiest to grow,and most prolific sweet pepper. It is a long, thin, tapered, red, thin- walled, frying pepper, and is delicious added to everything that requires a cooked pepper. Each bush produces up to 50 fruit and they begin cropping earlier and continue later than most others.

TOMATOES (Lycopersicon)

We find that tomatoes somehow attract more attention than any other vegetable. We've trialled around 100 varieties over the last few years. It has amazed me that so many New Zealand heirloom tomatoes have come out of the woodwork and that they stand up with, and usually surpass the very best selections from all around the world in terms of taste, disease resistance and yield. We also have our own tomatoes to cover all the specific end uses: - drying, canning, freezing, bottling whole (Alma); pasting and saucing (Oxheart) and the wonderful eating tomatoes Guernsey Island, Latimer Beefsteak.
We receive a lot of comments about disappointing heirloom tomatoes. It is important to understand that an Heirloom probably is only useful if it is your own environment that it has been selected for. There are many varieties of organically grown Heirloom tomato seed available in this country today that are heirlooms from around the world that have been grown and selected in California recently where the average humidity is 10%. Our humidity is around 90% here in Northland in the summer. Our own tomatoes, selected in high humidity environments perform far better in our trials than any overseas heirlooms.
We pride ourselves on our outstanding organic tomatoes, it is no mean feat in Northland, and this is how we do it. We had two very wet periods this season and we are still picking Alma tomatoes late May. We used a copper spray only twice.

• Plant lupins in autumn on next season's tomato beds, add rock phosphate, dolomite, manure and seaweed.
• Plant tomato seed at optimum time. Late September early October, into 7.5cm deep seed trays and water tray with fish and phyter.
• Plant cleome seed in a warm spot to germinate earlier than it would outside.
• Prick out week later at 4.5cm diagonal spacing, 7.5cm deep trays. Phyter.
• Plant out 3-6 weeks later into beds prepared 8 weeks earlier by scything down lupins and take away to make compost, U Bar the bed, then add 2cm of compost, use a watering can with a sprinkle head to water the bed with fish and phyter (to help keep the blight away) and put the stakes in at 50cm diagonal spacings.
• Plant tomatoes at the same time as cleome plants (it is important that cleome is flowering when 2nd generation of shield bugs arrive) and mulch.

WEEKLY PROGRAM FOR TOMATOES.

• Delateral and tie up only on a windy dry day, never a humid still day.
• Delateral by bending out very small laterals with clean fingers.
• Once first tomatoes begin sizing up, weekly liquid feed with comfrey (Ideal nutrient mix for tomatoes).
• Fortnightly foliar spray with Ocean Organics foliar seaweed.
• Fortnightly foliar spray with fish and phyter if necessary to keep blight away (in a humid wet summer) or in extremely wet conditions a Copper spray or summer disease control maybe used.
• Monthly fish and phyter on roots with watering can to keep blight away.
• Once tomatoes begin ripening, and if bottom leaves are affected by blight I cut the leaves off with sharp clean secateurs and put sulphur powder on the cut so blight can not enter. If you have large cuts to make in the delateriling process sulphur is good here too. I put the sulphur in an old piece of nylon stocking and just tap it on the wound, the sulphur powder comes through the stocking.
• It's worth the effort when you get an enormous crop to dry, paste and bottle so that they will keep you going for the rest of the year.

Alma NZ

Our very own drying tomato, originally an Italian tomato, but when it came to NZ with the Daly gardeners it became the Dalmatian tomato. Small eggshaped, ideal for drying.

Yellow Stuffer NZ

Outstanding tomato for stuffing - firm walls, flat bottom, hollow centre.

Russian Red NZ
This one is well known in the North for its disease resistance and the ease with which it is grown because it is not a very vigorous variety. It crops very heavily with medium size fruit but does not requires much effort to keep it delateraled and does not grow as tall as other varieties. It has a potato type leaf. Flavour is very good.

Guernsey Island NZ
A New Zealand heirloom tomato originally from the Guernsey Islands. Medium sized round fruit, top flavour, streaky red and green when ripe. Excellent disease resistance. This is not a slicing tomato, it is best served cut in 1/4's in salads, because it's quite a watery tomato, but with outstanding flavour.

Yellow Cropper NZ
A heirloom from Southland but does surprisingly well up here. Huge crops, round medium-size fruit. This one scored 10 out of 10 for production!

Humboltii OS
Large trusses of small round yellow fruit with a little nipple on the bottom did very well for us this past season. Good flavour huge crop.

Scoresby EC
Dwarf early commercial variety This one is a good one for those who don't like tying tomatoes up. In the north it's better to tie them up out of the moisture and dampness on the ground but in many other parts of NZ dwarf or bush tomatoes do really well. The tomato has a good flavour is meaty red, and flat and lobed.

Latimer Beefsteak

Northern Heirloom from the Latimer family. Classic beefsteak type  with good flavour and disease resistance. This tomato has been organically grown on the north shore for two generations!

Watermouth  NZ

An heirloom from the Bay of Plenty this is large red meaty tasty disease resistant tomato that could  easily become your favourite.

Lebanese NZ

This is a large flat red tomato with good flavour and excellent disease resistance.

Oxheart/Dalmatian NZ

These are the old Oxhearts we’ve had for years. Recently I had a women in asking if we had any of the old acid free Dalmatian tomatoes. She told me all about her father’s garden and the veges he grew and this was her favourite tomato. The only one she can eat now at all! It was the same as our Oxheart. They are large and very firm fleshed with almost no seeds, and are perfect for slicing or processing in any way. Very sweet, and are called low acid .

Reisentraube Red and Yellow NZ

These were originally saved from seed from tomatoes found at the Riccarton Markets! These are small large cheery tomatoes, with a very pronounced nipple on the end. They grow on the most unusual enormous racines of flowers. There are hundreds of flowers on each racine and they set huge amounts of tomatoes on each hand. A real novelty.

Mexican Midget NZ 

This has proved to be one of the best tasting and also possibly the most disease resistant of all. It’s a tiny wild type bush tomato. Children will love it!

Gardeners Delight EC

This is an early commercial cultivar that I love. It has long racines of small to medium size red fruit with a very good flavour.

Logan NZ

A rare orange cultivar medium size great flavour.

Carlton Victory NZ

Beefsteak type, excellent flavour, disease resistant.

Watermouth NZ

Another beefsteak type, good flavour, disease resistant.

Broad ripple Yellow Currant OS

Excellent tasting strong grower with bushy form. Tiny super sweet yellow tomatoes, good early and late. Kids love them.

Potentate EC

This is an early commercial tomato bred for glass-house growing.

Pineapple tomato NZ

Very large beefsteak type with multicoloured flesh and skin (red, orange, yellow) - delicious! From a Dalmatian line.

Waimana NZ

This tomato has been in our collection for many years, but not until this season did I feel as though I know it. In our trial of 40 tomatoes that were in our collection but relatively unknown or ungrown by us we found that around 10 of them were the same as this tomato. It’s overseas name is Peron. In New Zealand it has been called a great many other names but the one we use is Waimana because we have found that to be the best seed line and it’s a long loved line from a Waimana (Bay of Plenty) family. It is round and red medium size, very prolific, good flavour and super disease resistant.

TOMATILLA OS

Tomatilla are South American members of the solanaceae family and are commonly eaten raw in salsas, just like tomatoes. They can also be cooked in salsas and chutneys.

They look like large cape Gooseberries and are ripe when the fruit finally bursts out of the ‘cape’  and turns a golden yellow (from green).They are easy to grow and prolific and will inevitably self seed.