Gardening, Homesteading, and Growing Food in the Tropics
You can grow a lot of herbs in the tropics, including those normally associated with cooler or Mediterranean climates. There are some special tropical herbs that do particularly well, but you should be able to grow most herbs without too much difficulty. This post gives you a list of herbs that can be grown in … Read more
Growing your own food is not just a hobby, it’s an investment. You are investing in future food supplies, in nature, in sustainability, your health, and in your soil. You can save yourself a lot of money by growing a tropical edible garden, and you’ll be helping the planet at the same time. Lets look … Read more
Pigeon peas are the seeds of the pigeon pea plant and they are edible. The Latin name for the species is Cajanus Cajan or Cajanus Indicus.They are a type of lentil, pea, or seed and the pigeon pea plant is a tropical perennial legume of the family Fabaceae. This makes is a very useful, and … Read more
It may surprise you to know that green chillies and red chillies come from the same plant, just one is ripe,and one is picked early. Of course, there are many, many varieties of chilli pepper plant (chile or chili to our US friends, the double l in chilli is the British English version also used … Read more
June is a great month in the garden, it’s winter in the southern hemisphere and a good time to plant just about anything other than the real heat-loving plants. It’s not a good time to sew snake beans or basil, but brassicas will be much happier in winter. What are we planting and harvesting in … Read more
The grapefruit tree (citrus pandisi) in our garden must be ten years old now and it gives us prolific grapefruit every year. This post is about growing grapefruit, caring for a grapefruit tree, types of grapefruit tree, uses for and harvesting grapefruit and as many other grapefruit tree-related facts I can come up with! The … Read more
What’s growing, fruiting, flowering, germinating, and cropping in our tropical food garden in May? May is the last month of autumn where we are. It’s getting towards the start of the tropical dry season, our winter. We are still getting a little rain, the garden isn’t as dry as a chip, yet. At night it’s … Read more
This post is about my experience and things I’ve learned growing tomatoes in the tropics. Yes, of course you can grow tomatoes in the tropics, but it’s a little different to growing cherry, heirloom, grape, beefsteak and slicer tomatoes in more temperate climates. I grew up growing tomatoes in a temperate environment, where winters didn’t … Read more
The wet season of 2021 was our first wet season at home, in the tropics for 9 years. As such, it was hugely interesting to see exactly which food plants would survive the low light, intense heat, humidity, and torrential rain of the tropical summer. Not just survive, I wanted to see which vegetables, herbs, … Read more
What’s growing, fruiting, flowering, germinating, and cropping in our tropical food garden in December? December is the first month of summer where we are. It’s also the tropical wet season This means it’s going to be super-interesting to see what effect torrential rain, less sun, and waterlogging or even soil erosion will have on what’s … Read more
Can you grow pumkins in the tropics? Yes you can grow pumpkins in the tropics and they grow very well indeed. Pumpkins are possibly the easiest vegetable to grow in a tropical climate and they produce a huge weight of food. You need to choose the right variety of pumkin and know a few tricks … Read more
What’s going on in the tropical food garden in October? October for us, here in the Southern Hemisphere, just 16 degrees south of the equator, is still spring officially, but it feels like full summer to me .October is a month of abundance in the garden, temperatures have climbed so much that we start to … Read more
What’s growing, fruiting, flowering, germinating, and cropping in our tropical food garden in September. That’s the first month of spring where we are. By the end of the first week of September the days were starting to get unpleasantly hot. For the first time I could feel summer coming and dreading it, honestly. There was … Read more
May is the last month of autumn for us but already it’s getting a bit chilly at night. If you can call 20 degrees C chilly! Days are still hot and we’re still having a little rain, but the dry season is around the corner. We’re still eating tropical vegetables and fruits like aubergines (eggplant), … Read more
In November in the southern hemisphere tropics the heat is building for us and rain is scarce at the beginning of the month. By November we’re hiding from the heat indoors and only venture outside very early or around sunset. The rains can arrive in late November but the start of the month is usually … Read more
What’s with snake beans and green ants? As soon as the first flowers appeared on our snake bean plants the green ants were there clustered around the flowers and setting up home in the leaves. Until those flowers appeared ( in July, first bean harvest August for us) there had been no green ants at … Read more
What’s growing, fruiting, flowering, germinating, and cropping in our tropical food garden in August. Remember, we’re in the southern hemisphere, just 16 degrees south of the Equator, you may have to flip the seasons if you’re in the tropics in the northern hemisphere. August is the last month of winter for us and we’re into … Read more
Yes, you can make your own fertiliser for your plants at home, easily. It can even be free. Making your own fertiliser for garden plants using various methods. One of the first steps in gardening is to fix, improve, or at least understand your soil. You won’t grow much with bad soil but there are … Read more
What are we are picking, harvesting, and planting here in tropical Queensland in July. Every year we will update this post as our garden grows and matures, we have a post like it for every month. As we are in the southern hemisphere July is one of our cooler, drier months, mid-winter, but we’ve turned … Read more
Gardening in the tropics is different. It’s not as easy as many gardeners in cooler climates might think. We in the tropics have to deal with phenomenal amounts of rain that can wash away soil and nutrients, change soil pH and leave food plants sitting in a swamp. We have to learn new techniques to … Read more