Vegetables

Vegetables run to seed early for three reasons: warmth and longer days, a cold spell followed by warmer weather, and stress. How to delay bolting in each climate zone, and what to do once a plant has bolted.

Carrots that never came up, forked into legs, went hairy or turned green at the top all have simple causes. Here is how to read the root and grow straight, sweet carrots.

The leaves look fine but the fruit is split, sunken, scarred or missing. A guide to the problems that show up on the tomato itself, what causes each one and what to change.

Cauliflower is the fussiest brassica, and the head tells you exactly what went wrong. What tiny buttons, fuzzy curds, brown patches and purple tinges mean, and how to grow a clean white head.

Lush leaves and a stringy nothing underneath. The reasons root vegetables refuse to swell, from crowding and rich soil to heat and late harvest, and how to get proper roots next time.

Onions bulb on a signal from the length of the day, not the calendar. Why the wrong variety or sowing date gives you spring onions instead of bulbs, and how to get it right for your part of Australia.

Big leafy cabbages with nothing in the middle are one of the most common winter-garden complaints. Ten causes, from the wrong season to a cold snap, and the fix for each.