FGG Newsletter February 2022

🍅  Food Garden Group newsletter - February 2022  🍅 

 We like to grow what we eat 

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And then it was finally summer!

Now that summer has finally arrived our garden is suddenly taking off in a big way. Yesterday I picked a few figs, a cucumber, strawberries, a few tomatoes, peaches, a bunch of carrots and apricots. So different to the slow never-ripening situation that had gone before! I hope you have the same in your garden. In fact, I hope that you can't keep up with picking, preserving, drying, eating and enjoying the results of all your hard garden work, because that is what summer in our food gardens is all about.

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This morning I realised what summer can mean for a plant when I spotted the optimist in the photo on the left below. It is a volunteer tomato that came up a few months ago in the paving at the bottom of our concrete steps. It has had no help from me. In fact, I don't understand how it survived amidst the concrete. It has now produced its first flower (photo on the right). Talking about making the best of a less-than-ideal situation, this plant is an example to us all!  

Will it produce a ripe tomato before the season is over? Place your bets now. If it does produce a ripe tomato, what then does that tell us about the spoiled carefully-curated slow-to-produce tomato darlings most of us have in our gardens?

              

It tells us that at this time of year plants can develop unbelievably quickly and strongly, and they may not need much help from us. All they need is sun, heat and the occasional shower.

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Are our tomatoes really so late this season?

I record all sorts of things in my food garden diary, like what I sow and when I sow it, when things are ripe, and so on, and so on.  It helps me learn from past mistakes.  It helps me remember what I did when something was a success. How long did it take for my parsnips to show above ground last season?  And so on.

I started my garden diary in 2009, so I can now look back at quite a few seasons.  This time I used my garden diary to find out whether there is any truth in the feeling everyone has that it is such a slow and late tomato season.

I found out when our first tomato was ripe in our garden at Rose Bay, Hobart (not in our hot house) for every season since 2009 - 2010. 

In doing so I compared 'apples with apples' (as the expression goes 😅), because every season I largely grow the same mix of cherry and larger tomatoes in our garden.

The dates I found allowed me to put together the following picture:

The vertical axis from 0 to 65 is the number of days from 1 December. In 2011 - 2012, for example, our first tomato was ripe on 23 December, so the bar for 2011 - 2012 is 23. Got it? 🤪

Horizontally we see the seasons since 2009 - 2010. Oops, forgot to record our first ripe tomato in 2015-2016, sorry!  

The graph shows us that ......

• Since 2009 we had three summers in which the first tomato in our garden was ripe in December (the light-green bars)

• The 2021 - 2022 season is up there with other late seasons, but since 2009 there were five seasons in which our first garden tomato was ripe on 25 January or later, so 2021 - 2022 is NOT unusual  

• The last four summers have all not been great for getting ripe tomatoes early

It's good to have all that 'scientifically proven', isn't it?  So now, when we complain about this season's weather, we know that we have the science to prove it! 😇

PS: if you would like to read more about keeping your own food garden diary, have a look at FGG blog post A Garden Diary.

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In My Garden .......

With daily COVID numbers now in the many-hundreds instead of thousands we can begin to dream about a return to life as we used to know it. However, with schools around the state about the resume, trouble may be around the corner. 

The In My Garden series will give us a COVID-safe way of enjoying each other's gardens. In My Garden, for those who joined our group recently, is a series of blog posts in which one of our members takes ten photos in their food garden and tells us something about each photo.

In January there were two contributions to In My Garden:

1. In Karen's garden in New Town and
2. In Max & Gaye's garden in Rose Bay

Both posts give a great insight in what people were doing in their food gardens in January.

There are more In My Gardens already planned for coming months. Thank you, Pauline and Laura, for taking part in the coordination of this series.

If you would be happy to show us your food garden in ten or so photos, please email foodgardengroup@gmail.com. You will then be contacted to discuss when it will suit you to do this. Laura, Pauline or I will put your photos and texts on the FGG Extra blog for you.

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Pruning berry bushes

Traditionally berries were pruned in early winter after they had lost their leaves. However, pruning-wounds heal better when the plants are not yet dormant, so it is now recommended that bushes are pruned after fruiting has finished, and before they lose their leaves and go dormant.

There recently was a discussion on our Food Gardening Tasmania Facebook page about pruning berries. Out of that discussion came some really interesting comments that prompted me to add them to  the Food Garden Group blog post on the subject and re-write the blog post. Thank you, Margaret W. and Marg. M. for your contributions!

Would you like to know what Marg. M.'s radical black currant pruning method is?  Have a look at Food Garden Group blog post Pruning Berries!

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Food gardening tips and hints

The Food Garden Group blog contains many tips and hints that may help you improve your food garden. For instance it discusses ..

• Variety is the name of the game
• Be careful with soil and manure
• Prune hard!
• Keep grass away from tree trunks
• Foliar-feed regularly
• Know the difference between lime and dolomite
• Rotate your crops
• How to get those carrots to germinate
• Don't take on too much too soon
• Make the width of your garden beds just right

Have a look at FGG blog post Ten Tips and Hints for more details.

There are other worthwhile tips in relation to soil  .....

• Compact your soil as little as possible
• Adopt the no-dig approach
• What to do about compacted soil
• Never leave soils bare
• Never let soils dry out
• Use fresh non-chlorinated water if you can
• Fertilise your compost heap, not your soil
• Look after your microbes
• Organic matter matters
• Try not to use chemicals to treat garden pests
• Manure your compost heap

These points and more are discussed in FGG blog post Twelve simple food-gardening practices.

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Save seeds for next season

Sowing seeds collected from your own food garden can be fun and successful if you stick to a few basic rules. Taking control of the whole cycle from seed to crop and back to seed can be very satisfying. Seed saving allows home gardeners to play a role in preserving valuable heritage varieties, and it saves money!

Blog post Successful Seed Saving introduces a few concepts that will help you make the most of seed saving this season. It discusses how to save seeds of peas and beans, capsicums and peppers, tomatoes and lettuce. It also discusses what plants not to save seed of, and why not.

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Things you can do in your food garden in February ...

• Water regularly to make sure your soils don’t dry out
• Make sure your food garden is well mulched to conserve water
• Keep weeds at bay and don't allow them to go to seed

Vegetables

• Sow in pots loose-leaf lettuce, parsley, celery, Chinese cabbage, Asian greens, endive, leeks

• Sow in your garden radish, spinach, silverbeet, carrot, parsnip, turnip, swede, beetroot

• Plant loose-leaf lettuce, iceberg-type lettuce, parsley, celery, brassicas (provide protection against caterpillars), leek and onion (after adding some lime to the soil)

• Put shade cloth over newly-planted seedlings to protect them from the hot sun
• Dig up potatoes and hill the ones that you are leaving for later
• Hand pollinate pumpkins, cucumbers and other cucurbits early in the morning
• Foliar-feed crops once a month with seaweed extract to maximise their health and growth
• Cut off tips of cucurbit vines that have two fruits so the fruits become larger
• Put something under pumpkins that rest on the ground so that they don’t rot
• Minimise caterpillar damage to brassicas by manual removal, netting or spraying
• Tie up or provide support for climbing crops such as beans and tomatoes
• Remove laterals on tomatoes and limit plants to 3 or 4 branches
• Remove flower-heads on rhubarb so plants focus on forming leaves
• Collect seeds from heirloom varieties of crops you would like to grow again next season
• Sprinkle sulphate of potash once a month around vegetables that form fruits

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

• 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 all fruit trees, so fruits become larger and branches don't break (*)
• Cover fruit trees with netting to avoid fruit-damage by birds
• 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
• Apply bud grafts to all types of fruit trees in the first half of this month

Happy food gardening!

Max Bee