🐞 Food Garden Group newsletter - May 2022 🐞
We like to grow what we eat
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This month: go for two virtual food garden visits, then find out about plants that sabotage other plants, how to subscribe to this newsletter, preparing for new fruit trees, green manure, what F1 stands for, and what to do about twelve common food garden pests. But wait there is more!
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You can now subscribe to our newsletter!
You may remember that emailing members that a new FGG newsletter was out came to a halt late last year because I was branded a spammer by my internet provider's robot-software that tries to keep spamming at bay.
I am happy announce that I have now up-and-running a way to subscribe to the FGG newsletter via a company called WordPress. The promise is that THEY will email people automatically every time I release a new newsletter. There will be no need for me to send a single email myself. The service will be provided free of charge, so, no, this will not be the start of membership fees!
However .... they don't allow me to just give them a whole heap of email addresses (for privacy reasons). I completely understand that, but that means that YOU will have to subscribe.
So please .....
- Go to the following new Food Garden Group site: https://fggtas.wordpress.com
- At the top of that page click on Click here to subscribe to the FGG newsletter
- and follow the prompts
And then (fingers crossed), you will every month receive a reminder that a new FGG newsletter is out!
Automatic delivery to your mail box will be especially useful if you do not check the Food Gardeners Tasmania Facebook page regularly!
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In My Garden .......
Every month two Food Garden Group members show us around their food garden by taking ten or so photos and telling us some things about each photo.
In April we were shown around these two gardens (click and all will be revealed):
Thank you, Ross, Cathy, Elizabeth and Ward!
There are three more In My Gardens in the pipeline, and then we will have a break.
Thank you, Pauline and Laura, for taking part in the coordination of this series.
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This is the end of the 2021 - 2022 season!
This is the last newsletter of the 2021 - 2022 season. There will be no newsletters in June and July. On 1 August I hope to publish the first newsletter of the new season and announce a return to face-to-face food garden visits in September. Fingers crossed!
If you would be happy to host a food garden visit in the September to December period, please email foodgardengroup@gmail.com .
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Pest-Control Quick-Guide
Do you have a pest in your food garden, but you are not sure what it is, or you don't know what to do about it? Look through the new pest-control quick-guide on the FGG blog, and you may find to-the-point info and photos that may give you the answers!
This blog post will be a work in progress for some considerable amount of time. Initially just some of the more common pests will be covered. More pests, and what to do about them, will be added as time permits.
If you have a nifty pest control solution that you would like to share, please email me at foodgardengroup@gmail.com .
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Other updates on the Food Garden Group blog
Blog post Homemade Pest Control Sprays was updated in a few places.
The text 'Keep spray ingredients and mixtures secure, labelled, and out of reach of children. If you have small children in your household, please do not use soft drink bottles for spray mixes, as this might tempt them to drink the contents!' - is now displayed more prominently.
A mistake in the recipe for garlic spray was rectified (thank you, Sarah), and Baking Soda & Sugar was added to the pest sprays you can make yourself.
Blog post Heirlooms and Hybrids was rewritten and updated. Many food gardeners see heirlooms as 'good' and hybrids as 'bad', but really, both have their advantages and disadvantages, and this is discussed in the blog post.
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leading on from here ....
What does F1 mean?
When the name of a plant on a plant label or seed packet or in a book contains 'F1' you can be certain that the plant is a hybrid. That may or may not be important to know.
If you bought the hybrid plant purely in the hope of getting a great crop in a few months time, then you may have made a great choice.
If, in addition to that, you hope to collect its seed, and sow that next season, then you may have chosen the wrong plant, because seeds from F1 hybrids will rarely give you plants that are true-to-type.
The fact that seeds from hybrid plants are not true-to-type (some people call it true-to-seed) means the seeds will in most cases not give you plants with the same characteristics as the parent plant. You may instead get "a motley mix of poor performers that look nothing like the plant you took seeds from".
Sometimes F1 hybrids produce seeds that are sterile, or they don't produce seed at all. If you want to have the same strongly-performing plants again next season, you will simply have to buy more of the those F1 hybrid seeds or plants.
Seeds can successfully be collected from plants that are non-hybrid, ie. open-pollinated (also called heirloom).
If you would like to know more about the differences between heirloom and hybrid plants, and why both have their advantages and disadvantages, please read Heirlooms and Hybrids on the FGG blog.
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It is time to order your new fruit tree!
Thinking of adding one or more fruit trees to your garden next season? If the answer is 'yes' and you are thinking of an apple, pear, quince, apricot, peach, nectarine or fig, then now is the best time to decide what variety you want, order it, and decide where you will put it.
The cheapest and best way to add a new fruit tree to your garden is to plant a bare-rooted tree in late winter - early spring. Most nurseries will open for orders soon (if not already open). Some varieties will be popular and stocks are sometimes limited!
Most trees will arrive in mid July - early August. If you decide now what you want and where it will go, then you will have time to prepare the spot where the new tree will be.
FGG blog post Fruit - Apples and Pears discusses planning, buying and planting, and gives an overview of apple and pear varieties.
That blog post also discusses how to prepare the spot where you will put your new fruit tree. That info is the same for all fruit trees.
Then there is blog post Fruit - Apricots with info about varieties, buying, planting and pruning.
Fruit - Peach and Nectarine covers similar info for peaches and nectarines.
Getting the best out of your fig tree is a two-part series that tells you what a fig needs in terms of soil and position, best varieties for Tasmania, and how a fig tree is best maintained.
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Plants that sabotage other plants
Flowers in and around our food gardens attract insects and may lead to better pollination of our fruit-producing plants, and more plentiful crops. It also makes our food gardens look pretty.
I sowed some sunflower seeds this spring, and when six of them came up I decided to plant a row of them in a bed where I already had two pumpkin plants. The result looked really nice.
The pumpkin plants within a metre or so from that row of sunflowers did not produce any pumpkins. That is a bit unusual, but it can happen, so, oh well, I did not pay much attention to it. You win some, you lose some.
Then I found out that sunflowers are allelopathic (pronounce that! 😓).
Sunflowers spread growth-inhibitors to other plants around them. Sunflowers give off toxins from all their parts that impede the growth and seed germination of other plants. Substances called Terpenes and Phenolins are produced in their roots, leaves, stems, flowers and seeds. It is the plant's way of keeping competitors of different plant species away.
If I remove these sunflowers now, these growth-inhibitors in the soil will decompose over winter, and my compost heap will safely break down the toxins in the sunflower stalks, leaves and roots, so the damage is not permanent.
Then I found out that there are in fact a whole series of plants that are allelopathic.
For years our blueberry patch produced far less blueberries than it should. This winter I dug out all the roots that the Rhododendron next to it had sent into this patch, and put a galvanised-iron barrier in the soil, so roots could no longer invade this area. I now realise that those roots not only took a lot of food out of the soil. Like sunflowers, Rhododendrons are allelopathic, so the Rhodo had actively inhibited the growth of the blueberry bushes.
Conclusion: have lots of flowers and flowering plants in and around your food garden, but put plants that are allelopathic in separate beds or in pots or in containers - away from other plants that you want to grow well.
For more info about this, including a list of plants that are allelopathic, see What is allelopathy?
Another source of my info was the too-sensationally-titled blog post When Sunflowers kill .
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Placing comments on the Food Garden Group blog
The Food Garden Group blog is aiming to be a reference guide for Tasmanians in their food gardens. I myself personally (😁) regularly look up posts I wrote in the past, to find out details that I have forgotten! Very handy!
The Food Garden Group blog has recently been targeted by spammers with hundreds of junk comments. Luckily my blog-settings were that all comments need to be approved by me before they appear on the blog, so I was able to stop all these attacks. However, to stop this, I had to decide to no longer provide the opportunity to place comments on the blog, for the time being.
That is a pity, because for the past 10 years it allowed people from anywhere in Australia or elsewhere to comment, and they did from time to time, and that has been useful.
If you ever see anything on the Food Garden Group blog that you would like to comment on eg. you have some info that other readers might benefit from, or that you believe the blog is wrong, or incomplete, then please feel free to email foodgardengroup@gmail.com.
Those who did so in the past, or left a comment on our Facebook page, know that in many cases I will then correct or update or extend the blog post, so it provides the best possible info.
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Fill those empty spots in your garden!
I find that at this time of year I have open spots in my food garden - areas where I will plant or sow things early next season, but for now, they are empty. I used to just cover them with mulch and let them lie empty for a while, and there is nothing wrong with that, but recently I have taken to doing something else.
Last year I bought a kilogram of mustard seeds at a business that caters for farmers and small holders (Hollander Imports - for those who live in & around Hobart). I now try to get into the habit of sowing mustard seed wherever there is an empty spot at this time of year, for two reasons.
One - I can cut-into-bits and dig-in this greenery at any time when I need the space, and improve the soil structure and feed the soil.
Two - mustard contains a substance that is very much disliked by nematodes. I found that root crops sown after mustard have considerably fewer nematode bites in them than previously.
If you can't get mustard seed, how about you empty all your out-of-date old seed packets and use that seed. I did that in the past and was amazed what came up. It is fun too!
For more info about green manure see Why Green Manure? on the FGG blog.
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What you can do in your food garden in May
- Water regularly until there is enough rain
- 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 spring and salad onions
- Sow in your garden broadbeans and peas (if you don’t get heavy frosts in winter), winter varieties of spinach (try sowing one row every fortnight)
- Plant leek, garlic, spring and salad onion seedlings (after adding some lime to the soil)
- Bring unripe tomatoes inside for further ripening
- Harvest pumpkins with stem attached if they sound hollow and stalk starts to die off
- Gradually dig up all remaining potatoes and store in a dry, cool, dark spot
- Remove nets from brassicas when you no longer see white butterflies
- Apply lime where needed so spring crops will benefit
- Apply compost where needed so spring crops will benefit
- Foliar-feed crops once a month with seaweed extract to maximise growth before it slows down
- Plant new blueberry bushes
- Feed all blueberry bushes a generous amount of blood & bone and mulch them
- Prune apple, pear, quince, cherry and stone fruit trees once their foliage stops growing
- Prune grape vines back hard after they have lost their leavers and gone dormant
- Consider adding new fruit trees and berries to your garden and order them
- Remove coddling moth traps from apple, pear and quince trees and destroy them
- Spread mature chicken manure or blood & bone under peach and nectarine trees (*)
- Feed peach and nectarine trees blood & bone or mature poultry manure (*)
and don't forget, you can find out more in .....
and
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