🍐 Food Garden Group newsletter - March 2021 🍐
We like to grow what we eat
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In this newsletter .... info about the March food garden visit, what new posts there are on the Food Garden Group blogs, what seeds are now available in Seed Box, what you could do in your food garden this month and other food gardening news.
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Food garden visit this month
About her garden Fiona wrote:
We have been here for 25 years now, but the food garden has only really had energy invested over the past 5-10 years, as the children have flown the coup and I have had more time.
We face due north which is brilliant for sun. We are on the summit (350m) and exposed to the full force of the wind (my second season persimmon had its centre blown and snapped off this summer). The soil profile is shallow, and we waver between bog and drought. The raised beds help this, but the watering system needs tweaking to manage the distribution of water to areas of greater need. I invest a lot in improving the soil and incorporate as much organic matter as I can lay my hands on. I feel like I have succeeded when I find worms galore while planting out seedlings. Our local wallabies are cute but diabolically devastating.
Each year as I learn more, I extend and improve the garden. Visits to other gardens encourage me to make better use of the space I have and to extend the range of plants I grow. What started as three raised beds, has grown to many more. I have also grubbed out a ridiculous number of agapanthus as well as other plants not useful in a food garden. I wish I had made the beds longer without gaps between, but I have since improvised and I am filling them in.
I love growing food that is less commonly available (Gravenstein apples) or best fresh from the garden (coriander, basil, salad greens). So, as well as apples, citrus, plums, quinces and pears, I have pomegranates, a medlar, goji berry and a half a persimmon. Berry fruits thrive in my garden. I am interested in aesthetics too and like to have a garden that looks as well as tastes good. I am slowly creating a Chilean Guava hedge, which has been developing from 3 cuttings from a friend 6 years ago. It is an exercise in patience. Plants I took home from the FGG produce table are also gems in my garden: a loquat, a pine nut tree, a fig, Jerusalem artichoke, yakon, skerrit and mashua nasturtium.
I am trying to work smarter and not harder. I am mulching as much as I can to suppress weeds and keep the moisture in the soil. The chooks are my composting and shredding system and flowers bring in birds and beneficial insects.
I am looking forward to welcoming you to the garden and benefiting from your collective wisdom.
Contributions for morning tea, the produce table and Seed Box will be very welcome.
If you would like to take part, please RSVP to foodgardengroup@gmail.comPlease note that this food garden visit is on a Saturday, not a Sunday!
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Last month's food garden visit
North Hobart is a beautiful part of Tasmania with some gorgeous old homes nestled within well-established gardens. On Sunday 14 February in bright sunshine, we were very lucky to be able to spend a couple of hours enjoying Cathy and Ward’s little piece of paradise there.
For great photos and very nice commentary see visit to Cathy & Ward's garden.
Thank you, Cathy and Ward, for opening your garden to us and making us all feel so welcomed, and also a thank you to all those who came, made this food garden visit a success, and contributed to our produce and morning tea table!
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Happy to host a food garden visit next season?
Following the visit to her garden Cathy wrote on our Facebook page ...
I really enjoyed the visit to our garden and feel a bit bereft now everyone has gone! For those thinking about hosting, it is a great incentive to re-evaluate the garden and tinker with the areas you may have neglected or want to rejuvenate. Max gives you a good long lead-in time, so you can quietly prepare over several months and then relax on the day. It is very uplifting to show your garden to people who share your passion. When I think about it, I don’t get much feedback, which shouldn’t matter because we garden for ourselves, but gee it was nice! Go on, talk to Max about a date!
With just two visits to go (March and April) the Food Garden Group will soon finish its tenth season! There will then be a winter break, and food garden visits will resume in September. During the winter break I will be putting together a list of visits for the 2021 - 2022 season. If you would like to explore with me the possibility of a visit to your food garden, now is a great time to email me at foodgardengroup@gmail.com
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Who will continue Mandy's garden?
Our group visited Mandy's food garden at Snug in 2017 and 2019, so many of our members will remember the great wildlife-proof garden Mandy created there.
Mandy is now going to build a new home on the Eastern Shore, and her Snug property will soon go for sale. I do not normally mention real estate sales in this newsletter, but because Mandy has such a great food garden (see FGG blog posts A wildlife-proof garden and Visit to Mandy's food garden) I thought it might be worth alerting our food gardeners. Mandy's fully wildlife-proof food garden at Snug deserves a new enthusiastic food gardener to keep it thriving and productive. For more info please contact Mandy on 0409 793 745.
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Seed Box update
The following seeds will be available in the Seed Box at the next food garden visit:
Broad Beans Bush beans (green) Capsicum – 2 varieties Kale | Lettuce Lovage Parsnip Silverbeet Spring onion Swiss chard/silver beet |
Please take from this box on the produce table whatever seeds you can use in your garden.
If you would like to contribute seeds, please add them to the Seed Box at that point in time.
If you won't be at the next food garden visit, please contact Seedbox-coordinator Elizabeth via elizamt54@gmail.com and arrange to drop off or collect seeds at her place.
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New on the Food Garden Blog ...
The Vegie Patch Basics series of Food Garden Group blog posts takes those who are new to food gardening or are inexperienced through the first year of setting up and looking after a food garden.
The series is now complete with Vegie Patch Basics - 7 (Feb - Mar) completing the first year. It discusses what to do in your food garden in February and March, and explains what to do at the end of the season to get ready for the next one.
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New Food Garden Group activities in coming months
After the March food garden visit the Food Garden Group's tenth season will end with a visit to Kate's garden (last but not least!) at Cygnet on Sunday 18 April. Info of this visit will be in the April newsletter. At that time you can RSVP to take part.
There will be no food garden visits over the May - August period (too cold for outdoor group events), but there might be a workshop during this time. More will be revealed in the April newsletter.
Food garden visits will resume in September. Please email foodgardengroup@gmail.com if you would be happy to host a visit to your garden next season.
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Recommended things to do in your food garden in March ...
- Water regularly to make sure your soils don’t dry out
- Make sure beds are well mulched to conserve water
- Keep weeds at bay and don't allow them to go to seed
- Sow green manures where your soil needs to become more open and friable
- Sow in pots loose-leaf lettuce, parsley, celery, brassicas, Chinese cabbage, Asian greens, endive, leeks, loose-leaf lettuce, endive and parsley, spring and salad onions
- Sow in your garden carrot, beetroot, parsnips, swedes, radish, silverbeet, winter varieties of spinach (try sowing one row every fortnight)
- Sow in your hothouse herbs like coriander and dill for use this winter and spring
- Plant loose-leaf lettuce, celery, parsley, garlic and onion and leek (after adding some lime to the soil), celery (if your garden gets little frost in winter), brassica (provide protection against caterpillars)
- Minimise caterpillar damage to brassicas by manual removal, netting or spraying
- Foliar-feed crops once a month with seaweed extract to maximise growth before it slows down
- Collect seeds from heirloom varieties of crops you like to grow again next season
- Remove flower-heads on rhubarb so plants focus on forming leaves
- Dig up potatoes and hill the ones that you are leaving for later
- Put something under pumpkins that rest on the ground so they don’t rot
- Sprinkle sulphate of potash once a month around vegetables that form fruits
- Put nets over apple and pear trees, if not already done
- Remove runners on strawberries and put in pots so you have young plants next season
- Thin fruit on apple, pear and quince trees, so fruits become larger
- Remove and destroy coddling moth infested fruit on apple, pear and quince trees
- Trap and kill coddling moths on apple, pear and quince trees
- Check existing coddling moth traps and replace and refresh where needed
- Feed after harvest peach and nectarine trees blood and bone or mature poultry manure (*)
- Feed each citrus tree a full watering can with a tbsp of Epsom Salts + a tbsp of iron chelate (*)
- Remove small figs so remaining ones grow to full size
- Prune apple, pear, quince, cherry and stone fruit trees once their foliage stops growing
For a calendar that covers every month of the year see Food Garden Calendar.
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May your food gardening be happy and productive,
Max Bee
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