Time to Get Busy in The Vegie Patch!

Favourite Heirloom Tomatoes

Tomatoes are one of the most popular fruiting vegies to grow at home, for good reason. There’s nothing quite like picking a warm, sun-ripened juicy tomato from your own backyard. This spring, why not try growing some interesting, colourful heritage tomato varieties?

If you'd like to give heirloom tomatoes a go, we have a great heritage variety to try. Yates Heirloom Tomato 'Yellow Pear' is an absolute classic, with bite-sized, bright yellow pear-shaped fruit. it's vigorous and productive, with sweet tasting fruit.

If you appreciate a bit of variety, we also have Yates Tomato 'Heirloom Favourites'. It's a special lucky dip selection of heritage tomatoes, in a range of vibrant colours and mouth-watering flavours. These time honoured favourites taste the way tomatoes should!

Tomatoes do best in well-drained soil, in a warm position that receives at least 6 hours of sunshine a day. Tomato seed can be sown direct where the plants are to grow, or germinated in trays of Yates Black Magic Seed Raising Mix and the seedlings transplanted when they’re around 5-7 cm high.

For cool climate gardeners, delay transplanting tomato seedlings out into the vegie patch until the weather and soil warms up, and the chance of frost has passed.

For an extra-productive tomato season, before planting out, enrich the soil in the vegie bed with some Yates Thrive Natural Blood & Bone. It contains NZ seaweed to encourage root growth, as well as being a natural source of organic slow release nutrients.

Once the seedlings are established, feed tomato plants with Yates Thrive Tomato Granular Plant Food. It contains a custom blend of fast-feeding nutrients to promote healthy leaf growth, plus lots of flowers and tasty tomatoes. The controlled-release nitrogen component feeds tomato plants gradually for up to 12 weeks. It also has added calcium and magnesium to make up for any trace element deficiencies.

You can start picking your very own heirloom tomatoes around 12–14 weeks after sowing seed.

Eat the Rainbow

Dwarf beans are a super-productive choice for home growing. They don’t take up much space and do well either in a vegie patch or in pots, so space-challenged home gardeners don't need to miss out on home-grown beans.

Yates Dwarf Bean 'Tricolour Mix' produces a colourful blend of gold, royal purple and deep green bean pods, which are very attractive and turn a meal into a visual feast.

Here’s our Easy Dwarf Bean Sowing and Growing Guide:

• Sow dwarf bean seeds 25mm deep, direct where you want them to grow, in a sunny vegie patch with well-drained soil. Enrich soil with some Yates Dynamic Lifter Organic Plant Food before sowing. Alternatively, seeds can be sown into 30cm or larger pots, filled with good quality potting mix.

• Keep the soil or potting mix only just moist. Avoid overwatering, or bean seeds can rot before they germinate.

• Seedlings should pop up in around 7-10 days.

• To encourage a really great harvest, as soon as the seedlings are established, start feeding each week with Yates Thrive Flower & Fruit Soluble Fertiliser. It's formulated to encourage flowering and bean pod development.

• Dwarf (bush) beans don't need a trellis to climb on, but if long tendrils start to appear, (especially during prolonged cloudy weather), trim these to maintain a bushy habit.

• You can start picking beans 8–10 weeks after sowing. Regular picking will help promote a longer harvest season.

Tangy Tatsoi

Tatsoi is a delicious, versatile Asian green, that we think deserves a lot more attention! The round, crinkled leaves are an attractive, peppery addition to salads. It's great when delicately steamed, or added to a stir-fry. Try it sautéed and tossed with oyster sauce and sesame oil, it's yummy! For cooking, use tatsoi wherever you'd use spinach or silverbeet. Tatsoi is perfect for growing at home; it's compact and fast growing, delivering a supply of baby leaves over many weeks.

Here’s How to Grow Tatsoi:

1. Pick a spot in full sun or part shade, in your vegie bed or in containers.

2. Sow seed 6mm deep direct where the tatsoi's to grow and cover with Yates Black Magic Seed Raising Mix. Give each plant around 30cm of space to grow out.

3. Firm down and keep the soil or potting mix moist. Seedlings will emerge in around 5 days.

4. Feed tatsoi plants each week with Yates Thrive Fish Blood & Bone, a rich fish and humate-based fertiliser. It provides a complete diet for tatsoi and encourages lots of healthy leaf growth.

5. You can start picking tender young tatsoi leaves from around 3 weeks. The plants will keep growing, so you can repeat harvest. Continuous picking will encourage fresh new leaf growth.

6. Sow additional tatsoi seed every few weeks between spring and autumn, for an ongoing supply.

Pest Watch: like many brassica vegies, tatsoi is attractive to caterpillars and aphids. Protect tatsoi plants with Yates Natures Way Natural Insect Spray, which contains pyrethrin, a natural extract from the pyrethrum daisy. Spray tatsoi plants each week, including the undersides of foliage where pest insects can hide, while pests or new damage are visible.

A Summer of Sweetcorn

If you have a few square metres to spare in a sunny spot in your garden, how about growing your own sweetcorn? Home-grown corn is absolutely spectacular. Once you've eaten it fresh from the garden, it's so hard to go back to store bought.

Yates Sweet Corn 'Sun'n'Snow' produces distinctive bi-coloured cobs with yellow and white kernels, that combine superb flavour with rich, succulent super-sweetness.

Yates Sweet Corn 'Honeysweet' is an early maturing variety, with large, even cobs of sweet golden kernels.

Here’s How to Grow Your Own Corn:

1. Enrich the soil in the garden bed by mixing in some Yates Dynamic Lifter Organic Plant Food. It’s best to grow corn in blocks made up of short rows (rather than long skinny rows), to help improve pollination and yield.

2. Sow corn seeds in pairs, 25mm deep, into moist, well-drained soil. Sow direct where they are to grow. No further watering is needed until the seedlings appear. When seedlings have reached about 15cm in height, the weaker of the two seedlings can be thinned out.

3. Corn is a hungry plant, feed it weekly with Yates Thrive All Purpose Soluble Plant Food.

4. Monitor your corn plants for aphids and caterpillars. When you see these common insect pests, spray each week with Yates Natures Way Organic Citrus, Vegie & Ornamental Spray to control them. Based on natural ingredients, it’s certified for use in organic gardening.

Pro Harvest Tip: Wait until the fine ‘silk’ has just browned off before picking your corn cobs.

Sweet, Sweet Kūmara

Potatoes (sadly) don’t count towards your 5-a-day vegie goal, but kūmara do! Not only are kūmara delicious, they’re also rich in vitamins and minerals, have a low GI and are high in carotenoids (health-supporting antioxidants).

Some of the most common varieties of kumara include ‘Beauregard’ which has orange skin and flesh, ‘Owairaka Red’ with red skin and a streaky white/purple interior, along with golden ‘Toka Toka Gold’.

If you have a warm, sunny site and a frost-free window of at least 5 months, you can grow kūmara. Kūmara plants are vigorous vines that like to spread out, with the edible tubers developing below ground.

• You can start kūmara from tubers, from potted plants (available from garden centres) or from ‘slips’, which are shoots taken from a sprouting kumara tuber.
• Enrich the soil before planting kūmara, by digging in some Yates Dynamic Lifter Organic Plant Food. This provides the establishing plants with gentle, slow release organic nutrients, plus it adds valuable organic matter to the soil.
• Apply more Yates Dynamic Lifter around the kūmara root zone every 6 weeks, to encourage healthy leaf growth and the development of plenty of plump kūmara tubers. As the plants develop, you can pick some of the tender new leaves to eat (they're great steamed or in stir fries, and highly nutritious).
• Keep an eye out for sap-sucking insect pests like aphids and whitefly. If you see them, control them with weekly sprays of Yates Natures Way Vegie Insect Spray - Natrasoap. Spray both the upper and lower leaf surfaces, as insects often hide there.
• After about 5 months (or once the vines start to yellow), you can start to gently feel around in the soil for tubers. Be careful not to bruise any tubers you're leaving in the soil for later; continue to harvest as you need them.

Pro Space-Saver Tip: in smaller gardens, you can grow a few kūmara plants up and along a trellis. They'll need to be tied gently to the trellis as they grow, as they prefer to grow along the ground. You can also grow kūmara in a large, well-drained container, if you ensure the soil is kept moist and the plants well fed.

Home-Grown Caesar Salad?

Cos Lettuce, aka Romaine lettuce, is the traditional leafy basis for delicious Caesar salad; probably due to its distinctive taste, which pairs well with parmesan cheese, croutons and dressings. Yates Lettuce 'Cos' delivers a delicious mix of crunchy sweetness, with subtle peppery zing. Cos also has thicker, crisper leaves, that grow into tall, upright loose heads. Leaves can be picked individually as needed, or the whole head harvested.

Cos Lettuce grows happily in a sunny vegie bed, or in pots. Seed can be sown in temperate zones during October. In cooler zones, delay sowing until November.

Here’s How to Grow Your Own Cos Lettuce:

• Before sowing seed into your vegie bed, improve the soil first with some Yates Dynamic Lifter Organic Plant Food. The rich organic matter in Yates Dynamic Lifter absorbs water like a sponge, helping to keep plants moist and also provides vegies with gentle, slow release organic nutrients as they establish.

• When growing in pots, use a good quality potting mix like Yates Premium Potting Mix and a pot that drains well.

• Sow seed 3mm deep direct where you want the lettuce to grow, keep the soil or potting mix moist and seedlings will pop up in 7-10 days.

• Once the seedlings are established, apply some Yates Thrive Natural Fish Seaweed+ Plant Food around the root zone. It’s a complete plant food for vegies like lettuce, that encourages lots of healthy leaf growth.

Seed Raising Tip: you can also sow Yates Cos Lettuce in punnets of Yates Black Magic Seed Raising Mix and transplant the seedlings into their final position when they’re 3-4cm high.

Aphid Watch: these sap-sucking insect pests find the soft tender young growth on lettuces very attractive. They can adversely affect plant health and reduce your harvest. Aphids are easy to control with Yates Nature’s Way Natrasoap Vegie Insect Gun, an insecticidal soap spray that that's certified for use in organic gardens.

Pay Off Your Mortgage...with Tomatoes?

There are a few different versions of the origin story of the Mortgage Lifter heirloom tomato, but the most popular is based around a man known as ‘Radiator Charlie’. In the 1930s, Marshall Cletis Byles worked at a repair shop in a small town in West Virginia in the United States. His specialty was repairing truck radiators and his nickname became ‘Radiator Charlie’. Desperate financial times during the Great Depression forced Marshall to look for additional income, so he decided to try to breed an extra-large tomato to help feed hungry families. Despite minimal horticultural experience, he started to cross pollinate different tomato varieties, and eventually developed a very large, tasty tomato. He had great success selling the seedlings and was able to pay off his mortgage with the proceeds. The tomato became famous as ‘Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter’.

Yates Tomato 'Mortgage Lifter' Heirloom produces very large, great tasting pinkish fruit, that can weigh up to 1.5kg. Yes, 1.5kg! Seriously impressive. Mortgage Lifter is a prolific fruit bearer, so it must be staked or propped up inside a tomato cage.

How to Get Your Yates 'Mortgage Lifter' Tomatoes Started

• Seed can be sown direct into a sunny vegie patch that’s had the soil enriched with some Yates Thrive Natural Blood & Bone, or sown into seedling trays filled with a good quality seed raising mix.

• Sow seed 6mm deep, cover it lightly with seed raising mix and water it gently.

• Keep the soil or seed raising mix moist and seedlings will start to emerge in 5–7 days.

• Seedlings raised in trays or punnets can be transplanted into their final home when they’re 5cm tall.

• Water in with some Yates Thrive Natural Seaweed Tonic. to help reduce transplant shock and get seedlings off to a great start.

Caring for Your Yates 'Mortgage Lifter' Tomatoes

• Once the seedlings have been in the garden for about a fortnight, start feeding each week with Yates Thrive Tomato Liquid Plant Food; a balanced diet of nutrients to promote lots of healthy growth, with additional potassium to encourage flowers (which will turn into delicious tomatoes).

• Protect plants from insect pests like fruit worm caterpillars, aphids and tomato potato psyllid (TPP) by applying Yates Mavrik Insect & Mite Spray over the foliage every 7–14 days.

• Control common tomato diseases, like powdery mildew and blights by spraying plants with Yates Nature’s Way Fungus Spray every 10–14 days, ensuring good coverage of foliage.