FGG newsletter September 2020

🍑  Food Garden Group Newsletter  September 2020 🍑

 We like to grow what we eat 

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Welcome to the September 2020 newsletter and the start of the new food garden visit season!  The garden our group will visit this month is large, so that will make social distancing easy. This month's visit is also a first because this is the group's first visit to a commercial market garden.

Food garden visit this month 

You are invited to come and see Liz's garden at West Hobart on Saturday 12 September.

About her garden Liz wrote:

I have lived here for about 30 years. My garden was initially just a big field when I started growing vegetables, and it had six beds.

About 15 to 20 years ago I planted espaliered apple trees in the front garden.

In 2001 I started growing vegetable seedlings, herbs and cottage plants with my neighbour. We sold from the front garden once a week, and at the All Saints market once a month.

In 2010 I began to do it on my own, and over time my customer-base grew. I now sell from home on Sundays 10am - 4pm and at the All Saints market once a month (at the moment there is no market). I now sell over 2000 tomato seedlings during the season.

In 2014 I grew 50 tomato plants in my front garden and sold the fruit to the restaurant Ethos, along with other excess vegetables I happened to have. From this point on I began to sell to more restaurants and to increase the number of vegetable beds. I now sell to six or so restaurants and have 32 vegetable beds ranging in size from 4.8m x 1.2m to 7.2m x 1.2m. With this the garden is now full.

I have a lot of material for compost and rats can be a problem, so last year I built a 3-bay rat proof compost bin. I use the finished product on the garden beds and in a 50/50 mix with potting mix for my perennials.

My market garden is a good size for me, but it is smaller than most market gardens. Therefore, to make it financially viable, I mainly grow high yielding crops with shorter days to maturity and a good price per kilo. I grow a lot of kale and other brassicas, spinach, baby leaf lettuce, tomatoes and a few other things.

For fertilizer I use a mix of blood and bone, potash, kelp meal and magnesium. I also use lime and Seasol and Power Feed.

I have chooks because I like their company and eggs.

So far I have been working quite long hours, but I feel I have reached a point that things will now be easier because of a combination of finally having most of the infrastructure in place and also refining what I grow and the methods I use to make it more efficient.

If you would like to take part in this visit ....

To be COVID-safe and to comply with COVID guidelines there will be two sessions, each with a maximum of twenty people:

• Session 1: starting Saturday 12 September at 9.30am and finishing at 11am
• Session 2: starting Saturday 12 September at 11.30am and finishing at 1pm.  

Please RSVP to foodgardengroup@gmail.com as soon as you know that you would like to take part.

This is the first time we have two sessions on one morning. It will be easier if you do not specify which session you want to be in, but let me put you in the first or second session, depending on how many people have RSVPd at the time. 

Please realise this visit is on a Saturday, not on a Sunday!

If, after RSVPing, you gain a spot, you will receive a confirmation-email that will say which session you are in. It will also provide address details, how to get there, and more.

If both sessions are full you will receive an email saying that you are on the waitlist.

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Food garden visits in the COVID-era 

We are so lucky that we can have food garden visits, but if we want to stay safe, we can't escape having a few rules.  Here is what we will need to do to try to make our food garden visits COVID-safe:

• On arrival please use the bottle of hand sanitiser on the table at the entrance.
• Please adhere to the 1.5 metre distancing rule.
• Please bring your own thermos + cup + morning tea. Sorry, no sharing of food and drinks. The host will not provide coffee, tea or food.
• It will be great if you have surplus produce, food plants or seeds that you are happy to give away via the produce table. The produce table will operate as usual, but there will be bottles of hand sanitiser on the table, and you will be asked to take it home if you touch it.

Food garden visits will only take place while there is no community transmission.

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SeedBox update

Seedbox is a seed-exchange box that will contain the seeds mentioned below and sits on the produce table at food garden visits. Like everything else in the Food Garden Group, the seeds are free of charge. People can add their surplus vegetable seeds to the box, or take seeds that they would like to use.
If on the day you bring seeds that you would like to contribute to SeedBox, please put the name of the seed and date the seed was collected on your seed bags. Thank you for making your seeds available to others!

If you would like to donate vegetable seeds, but can’t come to our food garden visit, please contact Seedbox-coordinator Elizabeth Thomas at elizamt54@gmail.com  .

The following seeds will be available at the upcoming food garden visit:

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New this month on the Food Garden Group blog:

• Vegie Patch Basics - 4: This fourth episode in the Vegie Patch Basics series looks at the many things that can be done in Tasmanian vegie gardens in August and September, months that on our island surrounded by southern oceans, are often dominated by an unpredictable mix of wind, cold weather, sun and rain.
• Online food garden chat August 2020: On Sunday 16 August 2020 the Food Garden Group's last online food garden chat for the 2020 winter season took place. We talked about snow peas and peas, beans, biochar, green manure, Oxalis, citrus fruit, Chilean Guava and the layering propagation method.

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New this month on the FGG Extra blog:

• In My Garden - Clodagh - August 2020: Clodagh's lovely garden in Lindisfarne was visited by our garden group in December 2013. Come join her for a virtual walk in mid winter and see what she has growing at the moment.
• In My Garden - Denby - August 2020: Denby's garden in Lindisfarne experiences very heavy frosts and we’ve certainly had some this year! Despite this, Denby has a lot of food growing in her garden at the moment, and much more to come. Winter is also the time for big decisions, changing beds, building new ones and so on. Join Denby on a virtual walk through her August garden.

Thank you, Clodagh and Denby for your contributions, and Pauline for putting it on FGG Extra!

Would you be happy to take ten or so photos in 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, a new project, or just little things in your garden that might be of interest to other food gardeners.

All you provide is photos + texts via email. Pauline then creates the FGG Extra blog for you.  

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

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Food garden visits in coming months:

You will be given info about each visit in the newsletter at the start of the month the visit is in. At that time everyone can RSVP to take part in the visit.
Would you be happy to host a visit to your garden? - please email foodgardengroup@gmail.com  

These visits are a great way to meet people and get ideas for your patch.

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Sowing in pots and punnets is fun!

Blog post Sowing in pots and punnets discusses

• why sow your own instead of buying seedlings?
• why sow in punnets rather than straight into the garden?
• what are the best circumstances for seeds in punnets?
• what to do when seedlings emerge?
• how do I make my own seed-raising mix?
• how to do the actual sowing?

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What you can do in your food garden in September 

• Mulch after good rains so moisture is retained when temperatures go up
• Cut up and dig in green manures you sowed in autumn

Vegetables

• Sow in pots loose-leaf lettuce, brassicas, leek, parsley, spring onions, salad onions, celery, Chinese cabbage, Asian greens

• Sow in pots inside tomato, capsicum, zucchini, pumpkin, corn, celery

• Sow in your garden spinach, chard and silverbeet, broadbeans, peas, spinach, chard, silverbeet and radish

• Sow in your garden from mid-September carrot, parsnip, turnip, swede, beetroot

• Plant loose-leaf lettuce, iceberg-type lettuce, chard, spinach, silver beet, celery, parsley, potatoes, ocas, leeks and onions (after adding some lime to the soil), brassicas (provide protection against caterpillars), asparagus crowns (after adding compost to the soil)

• Control slugs and snails, especially around peas
• Minimise caterpillar damage to brassicas by manual removal, netting or spraying
• Foliar-feed crops once a month with seaweed extract to maximise 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)

• Apply whip and tongue grafts to apple, pear and cherry trees
• Plant a new citrus tree. Now is the best time.
• Stop having chooks around your fruit trees once the trees are out of dormancy
• Feed citrus trees a good dose of nitrogen-rich fertilisers (*)
• Feed each citrus tree a full watering can with a tbsp of Epsom Salts + a tbsp of iron chelate (*)
• Put in place protection measures against codling moth for apple, pear and quince trees
• Get rid of pear and cherry slug by covering pear and cherry leaves with ash or lime
• Add sulphate of potash to the soil under peach and nectarine trees (*)
• Foliar feed all fruit trees with fish fertiliser and/or seaweed extract
• Prune citrus trees if they need pruning

The food garden calendar for the whole year can be found here.

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Happy food gardening, 

Max Bee