Tropical Food Gardening
with Yvonne Cunningham

The gardening guide was developed based on the need for information on growing food in northern Australia. The aim of this guide is to encourage garden projects within the community and to assist the home gardener in developing skills that are slowly disappearing.

I hope the garden guide will encourage people to participate in growing and eating fresh healthy food in a sustainable lifestyle.

I appreciate the extraordinary work done by Maya Smitran, Senior Health Promotion Officer and Kathleen Dryden, Primary School Health Promotion Nurse from Healthier Great Green Way, Chronic Disease Placed Based Initiative, in assisting with collating and designing the layout for the  first garden guide".
‘I wish to thank Ruth Lipscombe for her encouragement and advice for the new edition’

Hopefully this new editon is useful with examples of growing food all year in the tropics

In the New Edition...

Hot humid and wet weather limits the variety of vegetables that can be grown at this time of the year. However, there is a wide range of delicious tropical vegetables that will grow.
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January in the garden

Grow your own medicine
Page 22

The medicinal benefits of many herbs, fruits and vegetables are well known and with just a little change of our habits we might be able to ease many of the ills that seem to be afflictions of modern life.

Drying tropical fruits
Page 25

When you are faced with a surplus of fruit a dehydrator is a useful tool, not only to preserve the excess fruits but also to convert the fruits to a form that is useful as a delicious snack or an addition to  fruit-cakes and muesli.

Planting by moon phases
Page 28

"When people first started growing food crops 10,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (Iraq and Iran), it was not long before they observed that moon phase influenced the quality and quantity of their horticultural harvest"

Tips

Did you know?
'Overhead watering in the late afternoon or at night can cause fungal problems like rots and downy mildew?'

Herbs
Page 41

The Mediterranean diet has been touted as the ideal diet for Australians. When you examine the key ingredients one thing stands out, the use of fresh green herbs, lots of rosemary, cups of shredded parsley, basil, mint, coriander, oregano and more.

Recipes

Summer is mango madness time in the tropics. After I fill my freezer with mango ice-cream and frozen mango cheeks I make mango jam. This is one of the easiest jams to make full of complex flavours, or if you prefer, just use the basic ingredients. The jam will still be a success.

Green mangoes are high in pectin, which helps the jam set

Feast your senses with a perfumed garden
Page 55

The intoxicating scent of the popular Dracaena fragrance fills the Spring air in tropical gardens all over northern Australia

Compost
Page 56

Compost is the secret to growing a supermarket in your backyard. Good compost will allow you to grow your own vegetables. The weekly shopping will dramatically be reduced; money saved.

Garden helpers
Page 62

Insects are active in the warmer weather and before you use an insecticide, it is important to recognize the beneficial insects in and around the garden.

Garden munchers
Page 67

Christmas beetles are active in summer and often  swarm in large numbers. The larvae live underground and also have voracious appetites for plants.
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80 pages packed full of information about gardening in the tropics
including delicious recipes, natural remedies and living with insects.
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