FGG Newsletter May 2020

🍑  Food Garden Group Newsletter  May 2020  🌽

🌿 We like to grow what we eat 🍆

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Welcome to our May newsletter! A month is a long time in today's world. When I wrote last month's newsletter Australia was bracing itself for a really bad time. Now, one month later, some people have lost loved ones and some of us are doing it tough, but we are moving towards a more optimistic place.
In Tasmania we are so lucky to have the space to be able to distance ourselves while it is needed, and so lucky to have gardens that can help us enjoy life and stay sane.
Please, stay safe, stay well, have a great time in your garden, and hopefully this newsletter can help with that!

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This month’s online Food Garden Chat

Our group’s first online food garden chat is planned for Sunday 17 May at 10.30am. The session may last an hour. Theme will be ‘winter in our food gardens’. 

This will be a great opportunity to meet fellow food gardeners, find out what is happening in their gardens, share what is happening in yours if you want to, ask advice, and generally catch up with others, while cup of tea or coffee in hand.

We will use an app called Zoom on desktop and laptop computers that have a camera. Installing and using Zoom is easy. No one in a recently held experimental session had a problem. If you RSVP you will receive easy-to-follow instructions. Further assistance will be available, if you would need it.

Members in the North and North-West of Tasmania will be very welcome to join!

To take part please RSVP to foodgardengroup@gmail.com mentioning Online Food Garden Chat.

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FGG Extra - worth a visit!

Yes, our group has its Food Garden Group blog with many articles about many food garden subjects, but the Food Garden Group’s second blog FGG Extra is becoming more interesting by the day. It now holds:

• Recipes - great contributions by Food Garden Group members who brought the result to food garden visit morning teas and people loved their taste! Many of these recipes are not available elsewhere on the net.  Under the heading Covered on FGG Extra you will find a list of all the recipes!
• Food Garden Visits - Want to look back to a particular food garden visit, perhaps to your garden? Or maybe you remember that a particular subject was covered during a particular visit, and don’t quite remember all the details. The sixty-odd food garden visits are all listed under the heading Covered on FGG Extra!
• In My Garden – is the new series of blog posts that allow you to visit food gardens during these social-distancing times!
• FGG Newsletters – last month for the first time the FGG newsletter was also added to FGG Extra. In the future, if you want to look back at an old newsletter, you will find it at FGG Extra!

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In My Garden … in April

In the absence of actual food garden visits the In My Garden series is a great way to see what is happening in people’s food gardens over the winter months. 

• Melissa at Bellerive shows how she is redesigning her garden in the first year of living there: http://fggextra.blogspot.com/2020/04/in-my-garden-melissa.html 

• Pauline and Dirk at Howden take you on a virtual garden tour and show you what their garden looked like in April: http://fggextra.blogspot.com/2020/04/in-my-garden-dirk-and-pauline.html 

Would you be happy to take ten or so photos around your garden and say a few words about each photo? Doesn’t have to be anything fancy! It can focus on one aspect of your garden, or winter, or just little things in your garden that might be of interest to other food gardeners.

All you provide is photos + texts via email. They will be put on the FGG Extra blog for you!

Please email Max at foodgardengroup@gmail.com if you would be happy to take part. Thank you!

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Worth repeating one more time ….

Published in last month’s newsletter in more detail, here are one more time Eight tips to maintain a sense of wellbeing in these difficult times by SANE Australia:

1. Keep a regular routine
2. Maintain some form of daily exercise
3. Seriously limit your media consumption of coronavirus related news items
4. Read that book or blog you have been thinking about reading
5. Video, call, email or text those you care about
6. Look out for those you know who are likely to be doing it tougher than you
7. Practise gratitude – we are so lucky not to be living in a country with a third-rate health care system
8. Feel free to reach out for support through https://www.sane.org/services/help-centre

The full article can be found here: https://tasmaniantimes.com/2020/03/maintain-human-connection/

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New on the Food Garden Group blog in April:

• Vegie Patch Basics – 1: You are keen to grow your own, but wonder how to start? If you are happy to read, learn, and then put into practise what you learnt, start here! https://foodgardengroup.blogspot.com/2020/04/vegie-patch-basics-1.html

• Vegie Patch Basics – 2: What to sow and plant in April and May in the four beds created in Vegie Patch Basics 1? See https://foodgardengroup.blogspot.com/2020/04/vegie-patch-basics-2.html

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What you can do in your food garden in May

Vegetables

• Bring all unripe tomatoes inside for further ripening
• Bring all pumpkins inside when the weather turns cold and damp
• Dig up potatoes, and hill potatoes that you are going to leave for later
• Remove nets from brassicas when you no longer see any butterflies
• Apply lime where needed so spring crops will benefit
• Apply compost where needed so spring crops will benefit
• Sow broadbeans and peas if your garden does not get heavy frosts in winter
• Sow spring onions either directly or in a seed tray and then plant them out later
• Sow spinach directly in your garden (try sowing some each fortnight)
• Sow Asian brassicas, loose-leaf lettuce, endive and silverbeet in pots
• Sow green manures where soil needs to become more open and friable
• Plant leek and garlic after applying some lime or dolomite
• Wait with planting onion until after the winter solstice to avoid going to seed early

Fruit trees and berries

• Plant blueberries and give them blood and bone and pine needle mulch
• Prune grape vines as soon as leaves have all fallen
• Consider adding new fruit trees and berries to your garden and order them
• Remove coddling moth traps from apple, pear and quince trees
• Spread mature chicken manure or blood and bone under peach and nectarine trees
• Feed peach and nectarine trees blood and bone or mature poultry manure

General

• Now is a good time to remove weeds as new ones will stay away for a while

For a whole-year calendar see http://foodgardengroup.blogspot.com.au/2018/01/food-garden-calander.html

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Planning for new fruit trees and berries

Now is a great time to plan for fruit trees and berries that you may like to add to your garden because nurseries take orders in April - May! You can of course wait until August, but most nurseries can only obtain a set number of each variety, and you may have to choose from the left-overs if you leave it too late. Order now and then pick up stock in August, is the best way to go. Hardware stores will have a new lot of fruit trees and berries from August onwards, but their range is often limited.

For more info about planning for fruit trees and what to buy see for instance:

• Peaches and nectarines - https://foodgardengroup.blogspot.com/2019/11/fruit-peaches-and-nectarines.html

• Apples and pears - http://foodgardengroup.blogspot.com/2019/07/fruit-apples-and-pears.html

Woodbridge Fruit Trees is one example of a nursery that is urging people to order early to avoid disappointment. You can see their range at www.woodbridgefruittrees.com.au