Italian gardener

I guess I look a bit like an old Italian fella. When I was younger I was often spoken to in Italian...especially in Fremantle.

I sometimes feel like an Italian when I go on a tomato growing bender. The last house we owned had raised garden beds with limestone block walls and the ground was pure market garden earth. I had so many cherry tomatoes that we had to make tomato sauce regularly.
Our current house, which we plan to make our last residence, has not been kind to gardener Kev. My passionfruit vine has plenty of flowers, but no fruit. My tomatoes are an embarrassment. We do lack a north facing vegie garden and I'm blaming that for my lack of success.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I burnt a large patch of lawn by covering it with plastic sheeting when painting some timber lattice. It looked dead, but as it was couch grass, the rhizomes were still OK and after a bit of de-thatching of the spongy stuff on top it is back nice and green. This de-thatching is a new thing to me, but I am assured that it is necessary to give new life and stop the spongy effect. I enquired about hiring a machine to do the whole lawn and it is hired @ $74 a day. It is too late in the season to do it now and so I will do the job in spring.

Years ago I was talking to a English chap about lawns and he called couch grass couch; as in the lounge chair. Was he correct and all of Australia has it wrong?