FGG Newsletter August 2022

🌿 Food Garden Group newsletter - August 2022  🌿

 We like to grow what we eat 

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In this first newsletter of the new Food Garden Group season: food garden visits recommencing, what is new and updated on the FGG blog and on FGG Extra, thoughts about pesticides, it is time for curly leaf spray, an Australian biological pest control site, sowing outside and in punnets, what to do in your food garden in August.

A very sculptural Romanesco broccoli grown by Steven F.

It's the start of the 2022-2023 season!

It is great to be back for another season of growing food, learning skills, and building community!  

Is it just me or is every year in our world now more unpredictable and challenging?  Now we don't just have COVID to contend with, and the disruption in supplies of almost everything.  We have a war in Europe that is not going to stop and that is killing innocent people by the hundreds each day. We have crumbling economies. And climate change events mean that we can no longer rely on the shops providing the range of fruit and vegetables most of us are accustomed to.

Learning how to grow your own food must at the moment be one of the most valuable skills you can add to your repertoire of skills! 

Not only will a productive garden make you feel proud and happy.  It also adds to a healthy diet with produce that is more healthy than what you can buy in the shop. Now it gives your household access to fruit and vegetables that may simply not be in the shop at all, or that may be very expensive to buy!  Food security is the official term, and your garden can contribute to making your supply of quality produce secure!

So let's work together for a very productive 2022 - 2023 fruit garden season!

And don't forget the Food Garden Group blog where you can find heaps of food garden info, and our Food Gardeners Tasmania Facebook page where you can ask any question you like, and get a helpful answer!

Before we move on, welcome to the many Tasmanians who joined our group over this winter period! I hope you will soon find your way around our blogs and Facebook page, and join us on this season's food garden visits!  Thank you, Laura R., for looking after new arrivals on our Facebook page!

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FGG visits will re-commence next month!

I hope that next month we will be able to start the 2022 - 2023 series of face-to-face food garden visits.

Every month there will be a visit to someone's food garden. These visits are great opportunities to see how others do things, what they grow and how, learn new skills, meet like-minded people, have a yummy morning tea, bring your surplus plants, seedlings and seeds and go home with new ones. The visits are very popular and a great way to make new friends.

All visits are RSVP only, and they usually fill up quickly. If you have never been to one, you will have the equal chance of attending to those who come regularly, but you may have to RSVP early to get in. To make sure you don't miss out I suggest you subscribe to our newsletter by doing ......

1. In your browser go to https://fggtas.wordpress.com
2. Click on Click here to subscribe to the FGG newsletter
3. Follow the prompts

You will then receive an email with a link every time a new FGG newsletter is out!

Subscribing to our newsletter is the ideal way to stay in touch, especially if you are not on Facebook, or if you are not using Facebook as much as you used to.

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It's great to host a food garden visit!

Here are a few of the comments made by those who hosted a visit of our group to their garden in the past:

• Very helpful demo and explanation of measuring pH during the visit to our garden (Aimee & BJ Nov 2021)

• 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! For those thinking about hosting, it is a great incentive to re-evaluate your garden.  Go on, talk to Max about a date! (Cathy D Feb 2021)

• It was a great day and I am so grateful for everyone's input and assistance. Hopefully it will be an encouragement for others to offer their gardens for visits and show their successes and not so successes! (Serena K. Oct 2018)

Please consider hosting a visit by our group to your garden this coming season! 

Contact Max on foodgardengroup@gmail.com to start the discussion.

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New and updated posts on the Food Garden Group blog

The Food Garden Group blog is our group's main source of food garden info. It is meant for beginners, intermediate and experienced gardeners. I refer to it regularly, because it is hard to remember everything. Blog statistics tell me that people from other parts of the world read it too, but the blog is really meant for Tasmanians and Tasmanian soils and climate, and plants that we grow here.

The Food Garden Group blog has an index. It is a page that has blog articles sorted by a number of main headings such as Introductory, Composting, Fertilisers, Fruit and Berries, Irrigation and so on. This winter I spent some time updating this index to include all the articles that were added in the last twelve months.

On a computer you access the index by clicking on the Index tab under the page heading. 

On a mobile you hit the words Food Garden Info under the page heading, and then Index.

At the end of last season I made a start with blog post Pest-Control Quick Guide. Over the winter I have expanded that blog post, so it now describes and covers pest control actions for .....

aphids, brown rot, cabbage white butterfly, caterpillars, coddling moth (new), curly leaf (new), downy mildew, earwigs (new), gummosis, leaf miners, mildew, pearled blister mite, powdery mildew, scale, slaters (new), slugs, snails, whitefly (new)

Photos shown with each pest may help you identify a pest, if you are not sure what you are dealing with in your garden.

If you have a pest in your food garden that you would like to covered in this blog post, please email foodgardengroup@gmail.com and I will see what I can do!

I also updated Asparagus - a worthwhile long-term project. This is a good time of year to make an asparagus bed, or move or make changes to an existing one!

Looking for info on something on the Food Garden Group blog? You can find things in a number of ways: 

1. On a computer screen it has a keyword index in the right column. In that same column it also has a search function - find info on ..
2. On a computer or a mobile you can look on the Index page (described above)

Please email me if you have expertise on a particular subject that you would like to share. I will be very happy to add it to the blog with you. 

Please email foodgardengroup@gmail.com if you would like a new subject covered!

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About pesticides

Blog post Five Reasons to Grow your Own on the Food Garden Group blog discusses why growing your own fruit and vegetables is so worthwhile:

1. Home grown food often tastes better
2. Your household eats pesticide-free food, if you don't use pesticides
3. It's a great hobby that improves mental and physical health
4. No food miles, so fewer fossil fuels are used
5. Produce your own fruit and vegetables that are not available in the shops or that are too expensive

With reason number two in mind, Pest-Control Quick-Guide mentions control-measures in order of their effect on the environment, lowest impact first. It is suggested that you choose a no-impact or low-impact method, see what the effect is, and then move to a method further down the list if no progress is made and further action is needed. 

Highly toxic broad-spectrum pesticides are not mentioned, because 'why grow your own if you use highly-toxic pest control substances?'

Yates Success is a popular product that effectively eradicates a number of pests. Some FGG members have reported that it is quite successful. After finding out that its main component Spinetoram is highly toxic to bees, dogs and fish, and that its effects can not simply be undone by spraying at night 'after the bees go home' I decided to not include this product in the blog post any longer. This decision is based on info provided by credible sources such as the US Environmental Protection Agency in Pesticide Fact Sheet for Spinetoram.

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New on our FGG Extra blog

FGG Extra is the Food Garden Group's second blog. It covers visits to food gardens, the In My Garden series where people show their food garden, FGG newsletters live here, and delicious recipes of things people brought to our food garden visits are there for anyone to use.  Thank you, Pauline S., for coordinating this blog!

This winter three items were added:

In My Garden - Jan is a delightful look at Jan's winter garden at Dynnyrne in July.

Recipe Gazpacho shows how to make a delicious cold tomato soup - thank you Frank S. for donating this recipe!

In My Garden - Dirk and Pauline took us on a great tour around their very successful and inspired food garden in May.

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Last chance to do something about Curly Leaf!

Have the buds on your peach, nectarine and almond trees not opened yet? I reckon it is going to be an early spring this season. Now may well be your last opportunity to spray against Curly Leaf!

This is because you need to spray your trees before buds open! Once they are open, you are too late and there is little you can do to prevent or overcome Curly Leaf for the whole season!

For info on what to do see the Curly Leaf section of Pest-Control Quick-Guide.

If you want to make your own Curly Leaf spray look at the Bordeaux Mix or Burgundy Mix sections of Homemade Pest Control Sprays.

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An Australian biological pest control site worth looking at ....

I found a site that I reckon is worth making you aware of: www.goodbugs.org.au lists all the beneficial insects that are commercially available in Australia and New Zealand for biological control of food garden/agricultural pests.

The web site is hosted by The Association of Beneficial Arthropod Producers Inc (ABC Inc) - better known as the good bug producers. See About for more on the group.

The release of beneficial insects is now a mainstream component of Integrated Pest Management (IPM), most notably for citrus, strawberries, nursery, cut flower and glasshouse vegetable crops, sweet corn, and macadamia nuts.

The site lists all the commercially available beneficial insects in Australia and New Zealand. 

More detailed information is available from suppliers and their web sites.

Go to By crop to see the beneficial insects typically important in your crop.

Locally occurring natural enemies are more and more being recognised as a significant componenet in IPM programs.

The site also has an introduction to Integrated Pest Management (IPM) - including suggestions on how to start using beneficial insects in your crops.

There are also tables listing the toxicity of commonly used chemicals to a range of beneficial species.

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It's all about sowing

The Food Garden Group blog has two blog posts that will be especially useful in coming months when there are so many things you can sow for the coming season:

Sowing in Your Garden covers covers why you would want to sow instead of buying seedlings, what to look for when buying seed, preparing your soil, when to sow, what to actually do when sowing, how to look after sowed areas in your garden, and thinning.

Sowing in Pots and Punnets covers why in some cases it is better to sow in punnets than straight into the garden, what ideal conditions are for punnets, what to do when seedlings emerge, how to make your own seed raising mix, how to go about the actual sowing, and hardening off.

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And here are a few things you could do in your food garden in August ....

• Remove weeds now before they begin to grow and become a problem in spring
• Make big changes to your food garden’s bed, paths or irrigation at this quiet time
• Cut up and work in green manures you sowed in autumn
• Repair or replace tools before things get busy again

Vegetables

• Sow in pots loose-leaf lettuce, brassicas, leek, parsley, spring onions and salad onions

• Sow tomatoes in pots inside from late August in a sunny spot or heated propagation tray

• Sow in your garden broadbeans and peas (if you don’t get heavy frosts), spinach, chard and silverbeet

• Plant leek and onion (after applying some lime or dolomite), potatoes and ocas (once the chance of frost has passed), brassica, celery, parsley, loose-leaf lettuce, globe artichoke roots (in a sunny well-draining position)

• Cut off old asparagus stalks, add compost and add new asparagus crowns
• Lift leeks, carrots and parsnips before they go to seed and go woody
• Control slugs and snails if the weather warms up, especially around peas
• Foliar-feed crops once a month with seaweed extract to maximize 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)

• Tidy up strawberry beds, replace 3-year old plants and feed each plant
• Remove all fruit tree litter and loose bark and discard this
• Remove all weeds under and around fruit trees
• Remove old unproductive passionfruit vines
• Tidy up and prune berry bushes
• Prune apple and pear trees if this was not done in autumn
• Prune grape vines back hard while they are still dormant
• Prune citrus trees, if they need it, when there is no longer any chance of frost
• Spray peach and nectarine trees, and the ground under them, with curly leaf fungicide a second time
• Plant new blueberries and give them blood and bone and pine needle mulch
• Plant new (bare-rooted) fruit trees, berry canes and grapes
• Move a fruit tree, if it needs to be moved, if the tree is still dormant
• Apply dolomite or lime to peach, nectarine, apple and pear trees if pH is below 6.5 (*)
• Apply potash to apple and pear trees - they will love you for doing so (*)
• Give all fruit trees a generous amount of woody mulch
• Spread compost, old manure, complete organic fertiliser around fruit trees and berries
• Put chooks around your fruit trees while they are dormant to get rid of pests
• Protect fruit tree trunks and roots if your chooks are damaging them
• Feed citrus trees a good dose of nitrogen-rich fertilisers from late August (*)
• Feed blueberry bushes a generous amount of blood & bone and mulch them
• Apply whip and tongue grafts to apricot and late plum varieties until mid-August
• Collect scions of dormant fruit trees and store in fridge for grafting later in the season (*)

For a list of food garden activities recommended for other months of the year see Food Garden Calendar.

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Happy food-gardening,

Max Bee