verging_on_random

Grow local

July 9, 2007 on 10:36 pm | In Uncategorized |

One of the minor joys of winter in this part of the world is that it’s custard apple time. I don’t think supermarkets like custard apples much; they come in unpredictable shapes and sizes, they bruise easily and they go black if they’re stored in a coolroom (which is where supermarkets like to store all their fruit and veg, thus ensuring that things like onions end up slimy and rotten a short time after you get them home … but I digress). Anyway the custard apples you can buy at our local roadside stalls are terrific; whoever named them ‘apples’ had a vivid imagination but the ‘custard’ bit is spot on.

Thinking about local specialities reminded me that there are so many vegetables that should be grown in the semi-tropical regions of Australia instead of all those English things that we’ve been eating since the 19th century. Some that i found did marvellously included okra:

Lima beans (they produce virtually all year round with none of the diseases that hit French beans in the humid weather):

Snake beans (similar comment, although they need hot weather so only do well from December through to May); I used to grow the dwarf variety but can’t find a picture. Others that thrive are gourds,

yam beans,

various eggplant varieties that you rarely see in shops,

and a climbing zucchini called tromboncino.

The best find of all was called Malibar spinach; it grew as a vine and you could eat the leaves raw or lightly cooked. It made a terrific substitute for lettuce in summer, which tends to run straight to seed in this climate.

Oh and tomatillo, which kept producing through autumn when most ordinary tomato plants can’t cope with the humidity,

and soybeans.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few others, but these are the vegetables that people should be growing up here in the warmer months. Yet most of my neighbours used to prod suspiciously at these foreign-looking things, politely refuse the offer to take some home and try them, and keep whining that mildew and rust and other tropical diseases were defeating their efforts to grow the peas and beans and silverbeet that used to do so well in Melbourne. They’d sniff at a beautiful shiny gourd and ask plaintively “But what do you do with it?” “Cook the fuckin’ thing and eat it” I was tempted to reply.

I used to think that sooner or later some enterprising grower would begin producing this sort of local produce and people would learn to love it, just like my parents’ generation learnt how to enjoy exotic stuff like zucchini and capsicum, but I fear it will never happen. It’s too easy to truck things in from other states (or countries) and I’m afraid people will keep buying this imported produce no matter how many concerts Al Gore organises. What’s even more ominous is that some of the seeds I mentioned are no longer listed in the specialist suppliers’ catalogues where I used to get them, suggesting that even home growers are no longer interested.

One day when I retire to my rural paradise I’ll go and haunt the ethnic enclaves of Brisbane. I’ll bet I’ll find seeds there for a whole Aladdin’s cave of exotic semi-tropical delights, all rejected by the masses cos they didn’t come out from Blighty on the First bleedin’ Fleet.