Fruit

Physalis edulis

With its loose bushy plant habit, this gooseberry bush grows to approximately 1 metre. It yields small marble-like golden berries in netted cases.

Fruit is sweet and juicy, with the heaviest crops arriving in the 1st and 2nd years.

Solanum melongena

This fruit is oblong in shape, and is approx 3 to 5 inches long. Light-green until maturity and turning bright orange. Grow as you would a cucumber. Exotic looking with distinctive long spines on the exterior. Banana-esque fl avour with a slight sour twist but very pleasant.

Squeeze for a great tasting juice, add pulp to fruit salad, use as topping on pavalova or simply eat as a fruit. Not dissimilar to passionfruit pulp but seeds are similar to cucumber and pulp is lime green. Looks great in the fruit bowl.

Cucumis melo var Reticulatus

Honey Dew has a really wonderful flavour that is both sweet and juicy. Delicious served chilled. Flesh is pale green to green.

Prefers hot dry climates. Fruit grows approx 10-12cm in diameter.

Cucumis melo var Reticulatus

Deliciously sweet, orange fleshed melon with a light beige skin covered with fine netting. A popular early maturing melon.

Suitable only for warm climate areas.

Cucumis melo var Reticulatus

A very adaptable variety that requires a long warm season to allow fruit to mature.

Cucumis melo var Reticulatus

The flesh of this sweet melon is creamy yellow to white with a very light pink tinge around the seed cavity.

Melons have a furrowed rind that is a bright canary yellow and were names after the Canary Islands where they were first popularized. Oblong in shape.

Passiflora edulis

Once established this climber will supply good crops of round, plump, purple fruit.

Dark green foliage - good strong grower.

Solanum muricatum

Pepino's are ideal in a container on the deck where it will flower and fruit heavily.  Deemed to be parthenocarpic (does not require pollination to produce fruit) however, a much heavier crop results from self or cross pollination (i.e. grow several plants and attract the bees).   

Rheum rhabarbarum

No garden is complete without a rhubarb patch! Strong, healthy upright growth - produces thick green shaded red stalks.

Plants regenerate quickly after cutting. Sow seeds in spring and autumn.

Cyphomandra betacea

Hidden under a tough skin is a very flavourful golden/pink flesh. Once considered the "lost food of the Incas", tamarillos were commercialised in New Zealand. We are now seen as world leader supplying tamarillo, with the fruit being served at tables all over the world.

Fry them, freeze them, boil them, roast them, blend them, use them fresh - or make into a tamarillo chutney. Requires a frost free location plus shelter from wind.