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Susan Parsons: How to grow a one kilogram tomato in Canberra

Susan Parsons

Mario Serenellini's giant tomatoes from January 2015.
Mario Serenellini's giant tomatoes from January 2015.Jamila Toderas

October is tomato-seed sowing month. In January, in the community garden in Cook, I spied some huge tomatoes not yet fully ripe.

At the time I asked a Canberra Times photographer to take an image of them. The grower turned out be Mario Serenellini, whom I first met at Festa della Repubblica, in the grounds of the Italo Club in Forrest in 2008. I At the same event in June this year, he and wife, Orietta, were serving pizza.

Mario says he supposes that most of the tomato seeds from treasured Italian plants have, in the distant past, come "accidentally" to Australia. He doesn't investigate their origins when he receives them from members of Canberra's multicultural community, who are not only Italian.

"Natalie", contemplates some kitchen garden DIY.
"Natalie", contemplates some kitchen garden DIY.Susan Parsons
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Mario has called the variety, which he grew last season in Cook, Furlan. It produces a lot of thin-skinned fruits that are very large, weighing up to one kilogram and tasty and can be used in salads and to make tomato sauce.

Meanwhile, the Opa's Brandywine tomatoes supplied by Canberra's Adrian van Leest to his workmates and to readers of this column, continue to attract attention.

Berin Smithson, a reader of The Canberra Times in Melbourne, emailed us in August to say he has been looking for a non-potato leaf Brandywine strain of tomato to try this year and van Leest has posted a packet of the Opa's Brandywine seeds to him.

Win a selection of organic seeds for spring sowing
Win a selection of organic seeds for spring sowingSusan Parsons

For his Austrade colleagues, he has sown four boxes (around 80 plants per box) of tomato seeds. He had a super stud plant last year, whose seed he is using exclusively for 2015-16.

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Busy bees

Mandyam (Srini) Srinivasan, the Professor of Visual and Sensory Neuroscience from the University of Queensland who gave a talk at the National Portrait Gallery in July, has emailed from Brisbane.

Win Mat Pember's book DIY Garden Projects.
Win Mat Pember's book DIY Garden Projects.Supplied

He says, "Bee-friendly gardening is becoming popular here. Many people are also starting to keep colonies of stingless bees in their gardens - something that is not possible in Canberra, unfortunately, as they would not survive the winter there."

At the Queensland Brain Institute, where the laboratory is set up, the scientists continue to extract honey from their experimental beehives and give it away to colleagues and friends.

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In Britain, Royal Mail's British Bee Stamp collection was released last month. It features a series of stamps depicting bumblebees and honeybees and has been released to educate customers about the huge variety of British bees, the unsung heroes of local ecology, pollinating food crops, keeping farms in business and enabling parks, gardens and the countryside to thrive.

Carolling about Nature's Way.
Carolling about Nature's Way.Susan Parsons

In London during August, at the new urban landscape and Skip Garden at busy Kings Cross, The Honey Club launched a bee trail app that takes you on a journey of discovery and citizen science.

It demonstrates that bees need places to live, eat and work as much as human inhabitants.

Our great spring giveaway

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Spring brings our annual Kitchen Garden giveaway to readers this week and there is an eclectic collection on offer.

For the winner there is Mat Pember's book The Little Veggie Patch Co's, DIY Garden Projects (Hardie Grant Australia. $45) suggests 38 step-by-step activities for edible gardening. Pember has had seven years' experience in building garden structures and, with Fabian Capomolla, he founded The Little Veggie Patch company with its wooden garden bed boxes, some of which are being used in the community garden at NewActon.

Now you can construct an X-factor hops tower, upcycle a cable drum as a table planter and make a vertical garden hanging milk crate planter.

Because Pod Food in Pialligo is growing microherbs in Hill of Grace wine boxes, we have acquired a wooden wine box from Bordeaux. Coat the inside of the box with black paint, drill a few holes, fill it with superior potting mix and sow Yates organic parsley, spring onion or sweet basil seeds which are part of the prize.

For the winner and four runners-up there apple green carry bags filled with packets of Yates heirloom Black Krim tomato seeds and organic dark green zucchini seeds, Thrive Easy Pods, little pillows of soluble fertiliser, spray guns of Yates Nature's Way Vegie & Herb Spray, an organically certified insecticide and Citrus Spray to control aphids and caterpillars.

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Pember says the five top plants for kids to grow are lettuce, mint, carrots, radishes and sunflowers so we have packets of Yates Sunflower Dwarf Sensation which can be grown in a pot and they attract bees.

How to enter: send an email to bodenparsons@bigpond.com and tell me what you are planting for spring, whether you are using seed or seedlings, and what recipe you plan to use for your edible harvest later in the year. Please include your name and address.

Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.

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