FGG Newsletter August 2021

🐝     Food Garden Group newsletter - August 2021    🐝  

 We like to grow what we eat 

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Welcome to the first FGG newsletter of season 2021 - 2022! We are at the start of the Food Garden Group's eleventh season, but our group is not losing any momentum, as you will see further down this newsletter!

This time last year I began to plan a season of Food Garden Group visits to gardens, thinking ‘fingers crossed that COVID will not put a spanner in this wheel’, and it didn’t. We were very lucky to be able to have a full season of food garden visits without any interruptions. 

With that in mind I decided that the threat of Delta was not going to stop me from putting together a complete 2021 – 2022 season of visits and other activities.

Of course there is no guarantee that any of it will take place. In fact, it will be a miracle if Delta does not come here, but miracles have happened before. If COVID would reach the south of Tasmania, all face-to-face interaction will be interrupted, and online activities might take their place. Fingers crossed!

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This FGG season has already started!

This FGG season started on Saturday 31 July with a grafting workshop provided by FGG members Steven F. and Alistair P. 

Everyone learnt a lot, gained important practical experience, and had a great time. Many thanks to Steven and Alistair for providing this workshop!  

You can't really become good at grafting by reading a lot of blog posts and watching a lot of YouTube videos. To learn it, you need to do it. Once you have the hang of it, grafting is fun. Grafting will give you results that you can't buy. Seeing that your first graft is successful is a real joy. 

You can read about this workshop in Grafting Workshop July 2021. To find out more about grafting, including additional notes covering the workshop, go to Food Garden Group blog post A Look at Grafting.

There was a healthy wait list for this workshop. For those who missed out: I hope to persuade Steven and Alistair to offer this workshop once more next winter.

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Interested in keeping bees?

Capsicums and pumpkins and all the other food garden fruits don't appear on plants just out of the blue. Most plants need insects for pollination. This is why bees are seen by many as an integral part of having a food garden.

Food Garden Group members Laura and Frank are experienced bee keepers. Under their guidance the Food Garden Group hopes to do things with those who are interested in the subject or have one or more bee hives.

Please email foodgardengroup@gmail.com and mention 'bee keeping intro' if you would like to know what would be involved in getting and maintaining your own beehive.

Please email foodgardengroup@gmail.com mentioning 'bee keeper exchange' if you have a bee hive and would like to share your experiences with fellow practitioners and learn more.

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Food garden visits and other activities planned for this season

I began to plan this season in mid July. At that stage I was not optimistic that it would all easily fall into place.  Well, per today it is still a work in progress, but it is coming together. This is what my list of events planned for the 21-22 season now looks like  .......

Many thanks to those who will be happy to host! Without you there would be no Food Garden Group program. We really appreciate your generosity!

There will be a newsletter at the start of each month. In it the activities for that month will be publicised. At that time you can RSVP for them. There is a maximum number of people for each event.  For social distancing reasons maximums will be lower than they would be in normal times. To avoid disappointment please RSVP early in all cases.

Activities will be cancelled if there is community transmission of COVID in southern Tasmania. 

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Golden Tomato Award

Tomatoes are the subject of 13 posts on the Food Garden Group blog. That is the highest number of all subjects covered on the blog. It tells us how passionate Tasmanians are about growing their own tomatoes.

This prestigious Golden Tomato Award is handed out every year to the person who is first to provide evidence of having grown their first ripe tomato of the season. There is now a silver and a bronze award for numbers two and three.

Even if you don't feel like taking part in these Tomato Olympics, there is a lot that can be learnt from those who won the award in previous years. For info about who won in previous years and what they did to get there, see blog post Early Tomatoes. 

If you want to know more about raising tomatoes from seed see blog post Sowing in Pots and Punnets.

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'New improved' version of Veggie Patch Basics

If you are new to food gardening or would like to fill the gaps in your knowledge of growing vegetables please read Vegie Patch Basics on the Food Garden Group blog. This series takes you through the first year of growing vegetables in Tasmania, right from setting up your veggie patch to monthly tips for making it a success.

The series has now been updated. It will be a great help in making a good start with your vegie patch.

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Coffee grinds

Many of us are now using spent coffee grinds in the food garden. 

During the winter break I came across an article on ABC iView that published the results of a small project undertaken by a horticulturalist. She conducted trials of using coffee grinds with radishes, leeks, sunflowers, violas and broccoli. She grew some with, and some without coffee grinds, and found that many plants developed considerably less well with coffee grinds. 

Her advice now is to always compost coffee grinds first! Please read The right way to use old coffee in your garden.  

If your experiences are different, please email foodgardengroup@gmail.com or discuss this on our Facebook page.

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What you can do in your food garden in August

There is so much you can do in your food garden in August!  For example:

• Remove weeds now before they begin to grow and become a problem in spring
• Make big changes to your food garden’s bed, paths or irrigation at this quiet time
• Cut up and work in green manures you sowed in autumn
• Repair or replace tools before things get busy again

Vegetables

• Sow in pots loose-leaf lettuce, brassicas, leek, parsley, spring onions and salad onions

• Sow tomatoes in pots inside from late August in a sunny spot or heated propagation tray

• Sow in your garden broadbeans and peas (if you don’t get heavy frosts), spinach, chard and silverbeet

• Plant leek and onion (after applying some lime or dolomite), potatoes and ocas (once the chance of frost has passed), brassica, celery, parsley, loose-leaf lettuce, globe artichoke roots (in a sunny well-draining position)

• Cut off old asparagus stalks, add compost and add new asparagus crowns
• Lift leeks, carrots and parsnips before they go to seed and go woody
• Control slugs and snails if the weather warms up, especially around peas
• Foliar-feed crops once a month with seaweed extract to maximize their health and growth
• Plan roughly what you want to grow this coming season and purchase seeds

Fruit trees and berries                                      (* = don't repeat if already done recently)

• Tidy up strawberry beds, replace 3-year old plants and feed each plant
• Remove all fruit tree litter and loose bark and discard this
• Remove all weeds under and around fruit trees
• Remove old unproductive passionfruit vines
• Tidy up and prune berry bushes
• Prune apple and pear trees if this was not done in autumn
• Prune grape vines back hard while they are still dormant
• Prune citrus trees, if they need it, when there is no longer any chance of frost
• Spray peach and nectarine trees and the ground under them with curly leaf fungicide (this is urgent now!)
• Plant new blueberries and give them blood and bone and pine needle mulch
• Plant new (bare-rooted) fruit trees, berry canes and grapes
• Move a fruit tree, if it needs to be moved, if the tree is still dormant
• Apply dolomite or lime to peach, nectarine, apple and pear trees if pH is below 6.5 (*)
• Apply potash to apple and pear trees - they will love you for doing so (*)
• Give all fruit trees a generous amount of woody mulch
• Spread compost, old manure, complete organic fertiliser around fruit trees and berries
• Put chooks around your fruit trees while they are dormant to get rid of pests
• Protect fruit tree trunks and roots if your chooks are damaging them
• Feed citrus trees a good dose of nitrogen-rich fertilisers from late August (*)
• Feed blueberry bushes a generous amount of blood & bone and mulch them
• Apply whip and tongue grafts to apricot and late plum varieties until mid-August
• Collect scions of dormant fruit trees and store in fridge for grafting later in the season (*)

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Happy food gardening!

Max Bee