Our Fruitful Record - Crops
Market gardeners in the Campbelltown Council district grew a variety of crops from the earliest days of commercial gardens. The vegetables were grown according to the seasons. The main winter vegetables were celery, cauliflowers and cabbages. In summer, “bunch vegetables” such as onions, potatoes, carrots, turnips, parsnips, beetroots, beans and tomatoes were grown. Market gardeners used to raise their own seed in nurseries before the introduction of hybrid varieties. Some areas were particularly suited to growing celery which was first planted in the Paradise area in the 1920s. Campbelltown became famous across Australia for its celery crops which were transported interstate for many years. New varieties of crops were grown as market tastes changed and sweet corn was introduced in the area. Italian market gardeners grew different vegetables such as fennel, zucchinis and capsicum which were integrated into Australian cuisine.
"…bunch stuff – carrots, beetroots, onion …that’s how [it was] in this street [Graves Street Newton]" - Ilda Cavuoto
Pictured: Emery family, Ford T Truck.
"He worked for Packers and he worked for …and then gradually started working for himself after the War – through the War and at that time, Dad had nothing – no horse or nothing you know… he grew some rockmelons. We used to sell them by the reservoir there and Dad used to take them there with a pushbike." - Charlie D’Angelica
"We had our little packing shed where we used to come in and tomatoes would be all graded, hand graded. My mother used to do a lot of it, and she used to do what they used to call, row and grade. That means put them in rows and grade them, and we used to sell a lot on the old Ghan. We used to go to Alice Springs, and they used to load the trucks and they’d go to Darwin. They’d be ready, almost ready to eat when they got there, because in those days I think it was about four days to get to Darwin." - John Lomman
Pictured: Lorenz family crops, sweet corn and potatoes, circa 1972.
"I started – my garden was going all right and I had grasshoppers turn up and they stripped the whole lot – carrots and lettuce and everything." - Charlie D’Angelica
"What we were growing when I started was onions, potatoes, tomatoes, celery, cabbage, beetroot and trombone and we dropped here, we were growing the tomatoes for Rosella but … eventually it became unviable so we stopped growing tomatoes in ’62 and then we were getting bigger in celery… so we became celery growers really, we started to go up in the ‘60s and ‘’70s and I think our biggest planting year was in 1981. The American variety starting to come in then… we had 222,000 plants we planted that year…" - Paul Emery
"We grew between fifty and sixty thousand cauliflowers in a season, all sorts of varieties that you had to know the correct time to plant the seed and so they followed on in your trade in the garden that you had to have it spot on, you planted seed beds yourself. Nowadays they have all the plants grown for them." - Merv EyPictured: Lorenz family, last load of cauliflowers going to the East End Market, 1973.
"…when Dad was growing cauliflowers, they always saved their seed, they had their different varieties, all the growers had their different varieties that come in different times of the year. They used to save the seed, select the particular selection, and… grew the seedlings in seedbeds, then transplanted them out. We used to run the water down trenches for the cauliflowers, so you used to use a trowel just to pull the wet soil apart and drop the plant in. It was all flood irrigation." - Jim Pierson
Pictured: Armando Matteucci with a cauliflower picked from his garden, 2018.
"I think we had about nine different crops. There was carrots and parsnips and beetroot, they were the bunch, and then we grew a lot of tomatoes, and in the winter we had the caulis and cabbage, and we used to grow a lot of red cabbage. You had to have things that two people could run easily." - John Lomman
"[We grew] mainly lettuce, carrots, onions, beans, normally French beans, runner beans … and root crops like mainly parsnips, beetroot, carrots, all those vegetables grew well because the soil was very good." - Sam Mercorella
"My parents… when they first started they were heavily into ...carrots, parsnips, turnips, swedes those sort of root vegetables because appetites and food preferences were, we were very much a steak and three veg society back then. And that would’ve been in the sixties, the late fifties and the sixties and then as we progressed more into when I was around picking radishes and parsley and spring onions and spinach and silver beet, we were getting more into the leafy vegetables and the shorter cycle time to grow the vegetables so that you were sowing and you were cropping a lot more frequently." - Robert Parletta
Pictured: Emery family, Cyril Emery in the celery shed, circa 1980s.
"South Australia was virtually the only one that grew any amount of celery back in the ‘30s… I think there’s only about one or maybe two celery growers in South Australia at the moment… it’s 92% water …that’s why the river was a big attraction for the growers…" - Paul Emery
"…nowadays we go and buy carrots that are grown in Virginia and some of them come from Tasmania and they come from WA, but if you did a blind test the carrots that are grown in Campbelltown and this area around Paradise, the sweetness and they’re just to die for. So if you did a blind test you’d soon get a lot of people voting as to what the Campbelltown carrots were because they were just very great to eat, hard work to harvest." - Robert Parletta
"…they used a horse, they used a tractor and… they used to put, to make the celery white, the boards along the side of the celery, the watering, they used to pump water from the river into a big tank…" - Maria Matteucci
Pictured: Frank, Edwin, Ron and Dudley Packer picking celery, Paradise, 1947.
"…years ago they used to celery grew taller and they used to put boards on it, either side of the row about a fortnight before they cut it to make it go white, bleach it. And the celery then grew taller and then in later years they brought in what they called American celery was shorter and was supposed to be stringless and you didn’t have to put the boards on that so much, it bleached itself." - Dennis Lorenz
"Arnold sold it to… Timo Angelini, an Italian and Dad became a partner with him …at the end of the ‘60s… Timo and [my Dad] were partners …and they grew only celery… they worked Saturday but not Sunday. Sunday was the only one off they’d have…" - Maria Matteucci
"Then with celery we used to run the water down the trenches. We, again, used to grow our own seedlings, you’d select them out of the seed bed, and leave the weaker plants and feed the best plants, and you’d transplant, you’d cut the tips of the tap root off and cut the tops off, and then you’d finger plant them in the mud." - Jim Pierson
“[We grew] mainly lettuce, carrots, onions, beans, normally French beans, runner beans… and root crops like mainly parsnips, beetroot, carrots, all those vegetables grew well because the soil was very good." - Sam Mercorella
Pictured: Matthew Packer growing celery at Paradise, the boards along the rows keep the celery white.
"There was 102 celery growers in South Australia. And later years I went out to Virginia for 10 years and there was four of us." - Dennis Lorenz