Tag: vegetables
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Ipomoea Batatas – Sweet Potatoes
Pretty (though few) flowers and tasty fruit – Ipomoea batatas or Sweet Potato work well here in this Mediterranean garden. The wild form of Ipomoea batatas is native to Central America. It was imported to Asia by the Spanish and to Africa by freed African slaves. Today it’s grown in almost all tropical and subtropical…
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Zucchini
Zucchini work reasonable well here, although I haven’t had anything like the bumper crops we had in Switzerland. Which is partly a good thing, because we can’t get quite as sick of them as we did there. In my garden, the plants always grow big but many flowers stay unpollinated and fall off or the…
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Summer Green: Tetragonia tetragonioides
In my Mediterranean garden spinach grows very well over winter and into spring but the summer is way too hot for it. Tetragonia tetragonioides or New Zealand spinach is the perfect “summer spinach”. It is a plant from the Aizoaceae or “ice plant” family (mesembryanthemum, delosperma & Co.). Unlike others of this family it is…
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Tomatoes
Tomatoes, well, surely tomatoes grow like crazy in the Mediterranean!? Yes and No. When I first planted tomatoes in the open vegetable plots in 2022 I was shocked to see them turn completely white on one side with “sunburn”. In 2023 I tried shading them but they still suffered and by August all plants were…
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Direct sowing or cultivation in pots?
Coming from a more Northern country I was used to start my seeds in pots on the windowsill before finally putting plants outside in the garden. I’ve tried it here as well but, lacking windowsills in this French-built house, it’s become a bit complicated and not altogether successful. I bought a grow light and rigged…
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Veggies in Winter
I used to be happy when the gardening season was over for the winter. It just gets to damn cold in Switzerland. Looking at frozen radiccio and harvesting brussel sprouts in subzero temperatures is just no fun at all. Here I finally live in a part of the world where even in winter things actually…