Hot LIps and Flowers of the Night Sky

What’s On The Show Today?

Is that a pest or disease or not in Plant Doctor?Find out which veggie was discovered by accident in Vegetable Heroes, and flowers that last almost all year in Plant of the Week; Lastly, Give our garden tools a good clean in the Tool Time segment.

PLANT DOCTOR

Plant Viruses Uncovered
If your plants look unhealthy but there’s no sign of pests or disease, then chances are the plant has a virus.
Rose Mosaic Virus
On the other hand if you have some unusual patterns on your rose and camellias leaves, these don’t harm the plant and are fine to leave alone. 
Viruses that effect edible plants are a different problem all together. 
Let’s find out about this problem. 
I'm talking with Steve Falcioni General Manager of www.ecoorganicgarden.com.au 

Steve mentioned the "tomato spotted wilt virus" which as the name suggests, affects tomatoes, but it also affects 500 other plants!

The Cucumber mosaic virus affects all members of the Cucurbit family, where the rose mosaic virus only affects members of Rosaceae.

How virus's in plants are spread?

`Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus on Basil Leaves

Sap suckers are the usual vectors of viruses in the garden; these include aphids, leaf hoppers, thrips and whitefly are good examples.
Weeds can also harbor these sap suckers so it’s important to keep on top of the weeding.
The weeds can also have viruses in their tissue.
Also don’t forget to disinfect your garden tools after pruning particular plants and buy plants that are certified virus free.
If you have any questions either for me or Steve you can email us Realworldgardener@gmail.com or write in to 2rrr, PO Box 644 Gladesville NSW 1675.

VEGETABLE HEROES

Endive : Cichorium endivia

Endive-the bitter version of lettuce or is it?
Endive is leaf vegetable belonging to the daisy or Asteraceae family, like all lettuces really.
Because it’s in the daisy family ,should your Endive bolt to seed, or you let a few go to flower, you’ll attract beneficial insects to your garden that’ll control your pest population.
Endive is a green leafy plant that looks a lot like frizzy and crinkly lettuce with a slightly bitter taste

Curly Leafed Endive

Did you know that Endive is a cool weather green, because like hearting lettuce, it bolts to seed in warm weather? 

Traditionally lettuce is eaten raw but Endive can be cooked or used raw in salads.

A bit of history
Belgian endive was first produced in 1830, by accident.
The story goes that Jan Lammers, a Brussels farmer, stored chicory roots in his cellar, intending to dry and roast them for coffee (a common practice in 19th century Europe). 

But when Lammers returned to his farm after serving in the Belgian War of Independence, he found that the roots, had sprouted small, white leaves.
Lammers took a taste and found the leaves to be tender, moist and crunchy.

There are two main varieties of cultivated endive:
Frisée or Curly endive, (var crispum) and Escarole or broad leaved endive. (var latifolia.)
Curly Endive has narrow, curly outer twisted leaves that are firm and bitter to taste. The outside leaves are dark green, while the core can be yellow or white.
It is sometimes called chicory in the United States and is called chicorée frisée in French.  

Broad Leafed Endive

Broad-leaf Endive consists of a bunch of thick broad leaves that are coarse and slightly tough in texture.
This type of Endive is eaten like other greens, sauteed, chopped into soups and stews, or as part of a green salad.

Belgian Endive or Witloof Chicory is really quite different to the other types of endive, with a narrow, lightly packed pointed head that looks like a spearhead.
Witloof as I’ve seen it called, ranges in colour from pale yellowish-green to white.

The Real Chicory

But whatever type of Endive you grow, you’ll find that’s it’s dead easy, like a lot of lettuce type vegetables.

If you grow Endive yourself you’ll save money because it tends to be the more expensive of the greens in the supermarket or greengrocer.

When to Grow

• Are you asking when shall I put in the seeds of Endive ? 
• For Tropical, sub-tropical and Arid areas, sow your endive seeds from April to July, 
• In temperate zones, March until May, then again in early Spring, and in cool temperate districts you had March, possibly still try in April, but unless you have a greenhouse of some sort, wait until September, October. 
• Endive is best planted at soil temperatures between 15°C and 25°C. and should be ready to pick in 10-11 weeks. 
• Endive seeds are very fine but try and spread the seeds as thinly as possible directly into the garden. 
• Cover the seeds with a very fine layer of loose soil or seed raising mix. 
• Water lightly, and keep soil moist. 
• Thin plants to 15cm apart, in rows 45cm apart. 
• Tip: Some people sprinkle the seeds on top of a fine soil, and just water them in. 
• You can start endive in punnets or trays just as you would for heading lettuce and transplant later if you want to. 
• If you’re doing the punnet thing, spray them daily with a fine mist of water until the seeds germinate, transplanting them about 20 - 30 cm apart 

  

  Endive seedlings

Like other greens, endive tastes best when it grows quickly and steadily.
Make sure it gets enough water and fertilizer.

Now here’s the tip on reducing the bitterness.

• Endive has a slightly bitter taste which can add zing to a salad bowl but if you’re not into bitter tasting lettuce, you can take out the bitterness by blanching. 
• Not in boiling water, but out in the garden. 
• Blanching is a technique used in vegetable growing. 
• Young shoots of a plant are covered to exclude light, so that they don’t produce as much chlorophyll, which is that green stuff in leaves. 
• The result is leaves that are paler in colour. 
• Blanched vegetables have a more delicate flavour and texture than unblanched vegetables. 
• You can also blanch your Endive by tying the leaves together when a rosette begins to form or cover with a large pot for about 3 weeks. 
• Tip: An easy way to blanch your endive is to cut off the top and bottom of a milk carton and pop it over your Endive plant 1-3 weeks before they are ready. That should be about 7 weeks after you sowed the seeds, so put a note in your diary. 
• That way, the stems will be whitish and not so bitter. 

Why is it good for you?
Endive is rich in many vitamins and minerals, especially in folate and vitamins A and K, and is high in fibre. Endive is low in saturated fat and cholesterol, a great addition to your weight loss program.

THAT WAS YOUR VEGETABLE HERO FOR TODAY

Petunia Hot Lips

PLANT OF THE WEEK

 Petunias: New Varieties

Some gardener, myself included, have tended to think that these next flowers are mainly for Summer, and get replaced with the likes of Pansies, Sweet Peas and others for the cooler months.
These plants are often sold as potted flower colour, but you can start them off as seed, although be warned, the seed is as fine as dust.
Now there’s heaps of new varieties that are worth trying and will flower for longer.
Let’s find out about them.
I'm talking with Karen Smith, editor of www.hortjournal.com.au and Jeremy Critchley owner of www.thegreengallery.com.au

Petunia Hot Lips, Potuna and Night Sky are all perennial petunias and ones to watch out for.
Perennial Petunias have the advantage of lasting a few years in the garden as opposed to their annual counterparts.

Interestingly Jeremy mentioned that even though these plants are propagated by tissue culture; in other words are clones, they sometimes change colour on the same bench.

Petunia Hot lips flowers sometimes changes to all white or all maroon, whereas Petunia Night sky sometimes loses its stars! But the stars do come back.
 

Petunia Night Sky

They have excellent cold tolerance, are renowned for being tough with weatherproof blooms.
If you have a question either for me or the plant panel, why not drop us a line to realworldgardener@gmail.com or write in to 2RRR PO Box 644 Gladesville NSW 1675

TOOL TIME

Cleaning Gardening Tools: A Refresher
What do you do at the end of a few hours’ worth or even a day’s worth of gardening?
Do you remember to put the tools away?
More importantly do you give your tools a wipe down to remove all the gum and gunk after pruning?
We gardeners sometimes overstretch ourselves when we’re out in the garden and some of those finishing tasks get neglected.

By-pass secateurs needing a good clean

Let’s see how we can fix all that on tool time. 

I'm talking with Tony Mattson, General Manager of www.cutabovetools.com.au

Tool time covered sharpening secateurs in a previous segment and you can hear the podcast of that segment by putting in sharpening secateurs in the search bar on www.realworldgardener.com
Are you surprised about steel wool not being so good to use on the blades of your pruning tools?
Encouraging rust to grow is not what we want at all so those soft brass brushes are the ticket for giving your secateurs a good clean.
Now that they’re nice and sharp let’s resolve to keep them nice and clean each time we use those pruning tools.
Then we coat the blades with some sort of machine oil based, such as sewing machine oil or even some olive oil.
The silicone based oils dry without leaving a coating so are not that protective of your gardening tools.
Apologies to all those conscientious gardeners, who have the energy to religiously clean first and then put their pruning tools away at the end of the day.
If you have any questions about cleaning or sharpening your garden tools, when not write in or email me atwww.realworldgardener.com

Allsorts of Gardening

SPICE IT UP

Have you ever wondered where the confection licorice comes from?
Did you ever think that it came from a plant?
Perhaps from a plant’s leaves, the stem, the flower or the roots?
Does the name licorice make your mouth water thinking about the soft mostly sweet confection.

Perhaps you think of your favourite, the Licorice Allsort.
Just imagine if you had a swag of recipes with licorice.
Would they belong in some dream world for the sweet of tooth?
But if manufacturers didn’t add all that sugar and flavour could you use licorice in savoury dishes?
Let's find out by listening to the podcast with Ian Hemphill from www.herbies.com.au


Did it surprise you that Roman soldiers were chewing the dried licorice root all that time ago to give them endurance?
To make confectionary licorice, the licorice root is boiled to make a sort of molasses called Pontifract cakes which is very bitter and very strong.
Apparently you can buy Pontifract cakes in England!

Certainly if you chew the dried root, it’s definitely not the same experience as eating the confection but there is that definite licorice flavour.

Dried licorice root is used to make a Chinese Master Stock.
To make this Master Stock, boil soy Sauce, water and sugar and boil for a few hours with Fennel, Star Anise, Chilli, Black Pepper and Licorice.
Powdered Licorice root can be used to make Licorice Ice-cream.
If you have a herb garden, why not give the licorice plant a go.
It certainly will do well in frost prone areas because it dies down over the winter months and re-shoots in Spring.
If you have any questions growing Glycorrhiza glabra or licorice plant, or have some information you’d like to share, why not email realworldgardener@gmail.com or write in to 2RRR P.O. Box 644 Gladesville NSW 1675.

 

VEGETABLE HEROES

This weeks Vegetable Hero is the CHILLI - Chilli peppers or Capsicum annuum or Capsicum chinese.
Have you ever witnessed someone, perhaps a fellow diner at a restaurant, gulping lots of water or waving their hand in front of their mouth because their mouth feels like it’s on fire?
Maybe you were that diner at an Indian restaurant.
Apparently Columbus accidently discovered the chilli pepper.
Was that from taking a bite out of one I wonder?
The chilli pepper comes from a pod-like berry of various species of the capsicum family found in Latin America.
Where Does The Heat Come From In Chillies?
Want to know the best way to get rid of the burning sensation?


The heat in chillies comes from the compound “capsaicin.”
Capsaicin is hydrophobic, meaning it doesn't dissolve in water but readily dissolves in fats and oils.


Chilli selection Photo David Little

And this explains why, something with a lot of fat in it - like yogurt or milk - is going to dissolve the compound and wash it away, and not water.
Ian Hemphill from Herbies Spices, recommends a spoonful of sugar to take the heat away.
Did you know that there are over 2000 different varieties of chillies most of which have some degree of pungency, hotness or fieriness.
Chillies come in various colours, sizes and states of smoothness or wrinklieness.
They can be yellow, red, brown and green, long short, round, bell shaped, tapered and thick or thin.
TIP:The colour of chillies is no guide to their hotness
All chillies begin life green and turn yellow or red as they ripen.
As a rule red fresh fruit are two or three times hotter than green fruit, and dried pods are up to ten times hotter than fresh pods.
Generally, the smaller chillies are the most pungent or hotter giving you the most burning sensation.
Did you know that most of the heat is in the seeds and the membrane, so if it's your first time trying chillies, or you don't like too much heat, get rid of this part.
Soaking a chilli in vinegar also dilutes this effect.
If you then throw out the first lot of vinegar and soak the chillies again, you’ll further reduces the heat.
But wouldn’t you just use a milder chilli?

Now the burning question, how is hotness of the chilli measured?

The unit of hotness is the SHU or Scoville Hotness Scale.
Wilbur Scoville was an American chemist who devised a test based on repetitively diluting an extract of the pepper with sugar water until the heat was no longer detected.

Hot chillies Photo David Little

By the way, now testing is more carried out using accurate laboratory equipment, like a chromatograph, and equating 15 parts per million (PPM) of capsaicin with an increase of 1 on the Scoville scale.
The heat comes from that same chemical compound called capsaicin which I’ve mentioned already,(the active ingredient in chillies), this intensifies as the chilli matures..

There is a theory that the heat in chillies caused by capsaicin was an adaptation to prevent animals from eating chillies so that birds, which are a better distributors for their seeds, can eat them. Birds don’t feel the heat of the chilli.

How to Grow and When to Sow your chillies.

Sowing chilli seeds can be done throughout the year in Tropical and sub-Tropical climates. Lucky guys.
Being a warm season plant the season is shorter in temperate climates only fruiting over the summer months and dying back in winter.
They’re totally not suitable in areas where frosts occur but if you really are determined to grow chillies, perhaps try them in a pot and place it a very warm verandah.
Because warm conditions over a five-month growing period are necessary for any good quality fruit.

Chillies need soil temperature of 15–30°C to germinate so if you’re in a cool temperate or even a temperate climate, start off your chilli seeds in a punnet or tray or pot using seed raising mix.

Chillies need a slightly warmer temperatures than tomatoes or cucumbers.
For good fruit development, night temperatures of 15–17°C and day temperatures of 24–30°C are best.
Make sure your Chilli plants are in a position that receives a good amount of light.
Chilli seeds can be tricky to germinate taking anything from 1 to 6 weeks so don’t give up.
To grow chillies well, add lots of high nitrogenous matter, like Nasturtium or comfrey leaves to the soil as well as compost and manures, so you won’t have to fertilise with chemical fertilisers.

There’s no special soil or potting mix that they need, just start to add a side dressing of fertilise when you see the flowers develop and don’t let them dry out too.

Protect your chilli plants from wind by tying them to supporting stakes.
There’s quite a few pests that like chilli plants like aphids and spider mites. Spraying with a horticultural or preferable a botanic oil to suffocate them, is the best solution.

The most common species of chilli peppers are:
Capsicum annuum (common varieties such as bell peppers, paprika, rating of 2 out of 10,
jalapeños rating of 6)
Capsicum frutescens (includes cayenne and tabasco peppers having a rating of 8-9)
Capsicum chinense (includes the hottest peppers such as habaneros having a 10 out of 10 on the heat scale.
Capsicum pubescens (includes the Thai chilli with a rating of 9)
Capsicum baccatum (includes the South American aji peppers). 
Worm Farms and Chillies are Partners
If you really like your chilli peppers and want to get the most heat out of your home grown plants, then you’ll need to start a worm farm and apply worm tea or worm juice to your chillies.

That’s according to Mark Peacock, a plant scientist from the University of Sydney, who in 2011 helped to cultivate the world's hottest chilli, the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T.

Like all fertilisers, 'worm juice' is rich in nutrients like phosphorous and nitrogen, but what makes it particularly effective for bringing out the heat in chillies are the bodies of insects that have decomposed in the worm farm.
The insects in there are living and dying pretty rapidly, and bits of their shell will break down.
When you apply the juice to the plants' roots, the chilli plant responds as if it’s getting eaten by insects."
This in turn makes the plant produce more of their defensive compounds like capsaicin.
Why are they good for you? 

More chilli Photo David Little

Don't include too many chillies in your diet if you're interested in: Weight gain.
Chillies contain more vitamin C than citrus fruits.
Also when you cook with chilli, it only loses one third of its vitamin C content so you don’t have to worry about eating them raw!
Chillies are also thought to help buffer pain from arthritis, and headaches
Chillies are high in Vitamin A, Vitamin K, Vitamin B6, Potassium, Copper, Manganese, Dietary Fibre, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Folate, Iron, Magnesium and Phosphorus.
One Chilli divided into a dinner for four doesn’t cut it though but you’ll get a small proportion.
Capsaicin in chillies will cause an unpleasant burning sensation to eyes and skin. Try to avoid handling them too much, wear gloves if possible, and be sure not to touch your face or eyes during preparation.

AND THAT WAS OUR VEGETABLE HERO SEGMENT FOR TODAY!

TOOL TIME

Talking with Tony Mattson, General Manager of www.cutabovetools.com.au

What do you do at the end of a few hours’ worth or even a day’s worth of gardening?
Do you remember to put the tools away?
More importantly do you give your tools a wipe down to remove all the gum and gunk after pruning?
We gardeners sometimes overstretch ourselves when we’re out in the garden and some of those finishing tasks get neglected. Let’s see how we can fix all that on tool time.

Tool time covered sharpening secateurs in a previous segment and you can hear the podcast of that segment by putting in sharpening secateurs in the search bar on www.realworldgardener.com
Are you surprised about steel wool not being so good to use on the blades of your pruning tools?
Encouraging rust to grow is not what we want at all so those soft brass brushes are the ticket for giving your secateurs a good clean.
Now that they’re nice and sharp let’s resolve to keep them nice and clean each time we use those pruning tools.
Then we coat the blades with some sort of machine oil based, such as sewing machine oil or even some olive oil.
The silicone based oils dry without leaving a coating so are not that protective of your gardening tools.
Apologies to all those conscientious gardeners, who have the energy to religiously clean first and then put their pruning tools away at the end of the day.

PLANT OF THE WEEK

Xanthostemon chrysantha, Golden Penda
Just imagine if you were looking at plants at a plant fair and you saw something that you were pretty sure had never been seen anywhere else before?
If you love yellow in the garden, especially yellow flowers, you’ll want this shrub.
The flowers have been described like a golden powderpuff, or like the flowers of a bottlebrush but round.

The leaves are in whorls around the stems.
The flowers are pretty showy so let’s find out what it is.
Talking with the Plant Panel; Karen Smith editor of www.hortjournal.com.au and Jeremy Critchley owner www.thegreengallery.com.au

Golden Penda is in the same family as all Lilly Pillies so the powderpuff like flowers are no surprise.
What is a surprise is that if you live in cool temperate climates, you can grow this tree indoors.

No need to worry about it reaching for the roof because you can hard prune it every year to keep it bushy.
In a garden situation it only grows to 5m but more in it's natural habitat.
Golden Penda is a spectacular, medium to large rainforest tree with a dense, spreading crown of  dark green, glossy foliage and contrasting reddish new growth.
The bark is rough and scaly with showy, dense clusters of golden yellow, fluffy flowers on the ends of the branches during summer, autumn and winter.
The flowers attract nectar feeding birds.
To grow Golden Penda, plant in any well drained soil and keep well watered.
Prefers warm to hot conditions, but tolerates light frosts and subtropical climates.