Bamboo is a variety of grass. It needs a fertile soil with plenty of moisture, and good drainage. While plentiful in the tropics, it will also do well in Tasmania.

In Asia it is used for food, clothing, containers and even houses.

One bamboo prized for its delicately-flavoured shoots is moso. It is hardly suitable for the home garden though, growing as tall as 25 metres, with canes up to 20 centimetres in diameter.

Its wide-spreading branches and feathery foliage make moso one of the most impressive of bamboos.

Another fine edible bamboo is sweetshoot, known in China by the exotic name of pak-koh-poo-chi.

It grows to a maximum of about 10 metres and has very sweet, tender shoots.

There are many other varieties with edible shoots.

Bamboo shoots should be cut when they are only a few centimetres out of the ground. They should be cut into fine slices after pulling off the outer covering.

Virtually all varieties, with the exception of sweetshoot, have a more or less bitter taste, so it is best to simmer them for six to eight minutes, then change the water.

Further boiling or steaming for 20 minutes will bring out their delicate flavour while remaining firm and crisp.

Serve them as a vegetable hot with butter, in stews or cold in a salad.

This is the time of year when berries bring a splash of colour to our gardens.

Birds are attracted to berries right through winter, particularly when other food is scarce.

Two of the most popular berry plants are cotoneaster horizontalis and cranberry heath, astroloma. Both are evergreen with red berries.

Cotoneasters are fast-growing shrubs or small trees which can easily be pruned to form hedges and screens.

Berberis, or the barberry family, are a group of very adaptable deciduous and evergreen shrubs. They will grow well in semi-shade or full sun.

Their golden or yellow flowers are followed by red or black berries.

Mahonia aquifolium, the Oregon grape, has holly-like leaflets and attractive grape-like deep purple berries in winter.

Ochna serrulata, sometimes known as the carnival bush or mickey mouse plant, is a small evergreen shrub for sunny positions.

It has pretty yellow or red flowers, followed by shiny red berries, which blacken when ripe.

Peas prefer cooler weather to the heat of summer and now is a good time to sow early varieties such as melbourne market.

Planted now, they’ll give you a welcome crop in the spring and then you can pull them out, and plant a new crop of something else.

Like all legumes, peas feed nitrogen into the soil through nodules on their roots, so any leafy vegetables, the cabbage family for instance, are well-suited to follow them.

Ideally the soil for peas should be only slightly acid, so where soil has a pH of less than seven, lime, preferably dolomite, should be dug in first.

This sweetens the soil and enables the nitrogen-fixing bacteria to do their work.

Peas like a good supply of phosphate too, so if your soil is fairly acid apply a mixture of equal parts of dolomite and superphosphate.

Alternatively use a complete fertiliser that has a high P rating in its NPK.

By putting in one row of peas every fortnight or so you will ensure a yield over a longer period.

If there’s a mass of foliage all over the ground, many pods can be lost through mould damage or being eaten by denizens of the undergrowth.

The simplest support is formed by placing a number of short sticks in a criss-cross pattern.