FGG Newsletter March 2023

 🥕Food Garden Group newsletter - March 2023 🥕

 We like to grow what we eat 

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In this March 2023 Food Garden Group newsletter: info about food garden visits planned for March and April, last month's visit in words and pictures, pruning tips, what is new on our blogs, info about medicinal herbs, edible weeds, and more.

Carrots - Belgium White, Manchester Table and Cosmic Purple

This month's food garden visit

This month's food garden was shown on Gardening Australia in December.  After seeing the footage I contacted Fiona S, who lives nearby. She approached the owners, who after checking out our FGG blog,  decided that they would be very happy to have our group over for a visit. Thank you Fiona!

On Sunday 26 March at 10.30am you will be welcome in a food garden at Mount Nelson created and run by Michael, Robin, Tracey and Linda.

About their food garden Michael wrote:

We are four friends on a shared property and our garden has evolved over about 12 years starting with a couple of beds on a grassy area on a steep block nestled amongst bushland. We now have a large enclosed vegetable, berry and fruit patch with three glasshouses, 12 raised boxes set up as wicking beds, eight chickens and 2 beehives. Like most gardeners we have borrowed ideas from others and adapted them to suit our circumstances and preferences. 

Being on the top of Mt Nelson we always find ourselves a couple of months behind other gardens at sea level and this year in particular it has been difficult to maintain growth of plants due to the wet and cold periods we have had. One good thing we have achieved this year has been almost no aphids in our glasshouses - we plant dill and Marigolds in the glasshouses along with our tomatoes, chilli and cucumbers to both repel aphids and attract Ladybirds that eat the aphids.

Each year brings a new challenge and head scratching about why something has not worked as well as last year, but that is one of the many wonderful things about gardening. Apart from the occasional full weekend 'working bee’, because there are 4 of us, time spent in the garden is not too onerous.

Our garden is integral to our activities in our Not-for-Profit, OUTSIDE THE BOX – Earth Arts Rights, which was formed to connect, amplify, nurture and support people working at the intersection of environmental protection, the arts and social justice. Have a look at our projects at  https://outsidethebox.org.au .

Contributions for morning tea and the produce table will be much appreciated! 

Please RSVP to foodgardengroup@gmail.com if you would like to attend. When you RSVP please clearly state who you are RSVPing for and provide first names, so we can have a name sticker ready for every person who comes.

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Last month's food garden visit in words and pictures

On a glorious summer's day our group visited Karen's garden at New Town, and boy, what a great garden visit this was.  For words and pictures of the visit see here.

A lot of people loved the Spicy Sweet Potato Loaf that Linda brought to the last Food Garden Group visit. Linda was happy to provide the recipe. You can find it here (thank you Linda and Pauline, who put it on our FGG Extra blog).

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Food garden visits in coming months

On Sunday 16 April you will be welcome at Anna and Marcus's Little Farm at Margate to see their market garden. This visit had to be postponed twice, but we are totally determined that it will take place this time.  That will be the eight's visit of the 2022-2023 season, and the last one.  The 2023-2024 season of food garden visits will start in September.

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Seed Box Update

A 'thank you' to those who added new seeds to the Seed Box at the last food garden visit. More seeds are needed. Everyone, please keep them coming. And, of course, please take what you can use in your garden. The following seeds will be available in our Seed Box at the next food garden visit:

Broad Beans Beans - Bush Beans - Giant of Stuttgart Carrot - Early Nantes Chervil Chilli Choy Sum (Asian Brassica) Collard Greens Cress Fennel - Florence

Eggplant - Ping Tung Long, Melanzana Hollyhock Kale – Russian Red Lettuce - Cos Lovage Parsnip (fresh) Pumpkin – Grey Tomato - Pink Bumblebee, Camp Joy Snowpea Watermelon - Baby

If you would like to contribute seeds, please just add them to the Seed Box at the next food garden visit.
Please put your seeds in little packets and write on each packet the name of the seeds and when they were harvested.
If you can't be at the next food garden visit, please contact Max Bee and arrange to drop off or collect seeds at his place. The email address is foodgardengroup@gmail.com.

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New on the Food Garden Group blog

When a few months ago our group visited Belinda Robson’s garden at Dynnyrne, we noticed a great variety of herbs and were impressed by Belinda’s knowledge on their use for both culinary and medicinal purposes. Most of us grow and use herbs for cooking, but know little about their uses beyond the kitchen. I invited Belinda to tell us about the medicinal properties of some commonly-known food garden plants.  The result is new blog post Medicinal Herbs in the Food Garden.

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Weeds you can eat

Some of the plants featured in Medicinal Herbs in the Food Garden barely rate higher than weeds for  lot of people.  That made me remember that there is a post on the FGG blog that actually features weeds.  Inspired by the book Weed Forager's Handbook, FGG member Lian T. wrote in 2017 a blog post that puts the spotlight on six plants that most people would say are weeds, but that in fact can be eaten. Weeds you can eat is worth a read.

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It's amazing what you can find on FGG Extra

Are you aware that our group has not just one, but two blogs?  There is the Food Garden Group blog that has 130+ articles about all aspects of food gardening, and then there is the FGG Extra blog that contains ...

• Recipes of delicious sweet or savoury home-made treats that people brought to FGG events
• The In My Garden series in which last year fifteen members shared what was happening in their gardens during the COVID lockdown
• All the monthly FGG newsletters since April 2020
• All the articles covering visits to food gardens and workshops since 2013
• Info on lots of food garden subjects discussed in food garden visits and workshops.

All these things are easy to find if you look in the blog's index under the heading Covered on FGG Extra. So if you would like to look back to an FGG visit to your garden, or what a good recipe is for Rhubarb cake, or what was said about rainwater collection, have a look in the index on the FGG Extra home page, and all will be revealed!

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The Big Weekend of Sustainable Living Ideas

Sustainable Living Tasmania is turning 50 years old, and to celebrate this, The Big Weekend of Sustainable Living Ideas will be held on Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 March in the Brighton Civic Centre and Bridgewater Botanical Institute.  

It is a free family event with demonstrations, workshops & activities, exhibits & stalls, forums & discussions, entertainment & food, clothing, book & toy swap, 'waste 2 art' exhibition, kids activities, nature walks & talks, electric vehicles and more. A weekend of connection and inspiration.

This event will be on the same weekend as our food garden visit, so you could decide to go to this event on Saturday, and RSVP for our food garden visit on the Sunday. That will make an altogether great weekend!

For more info go to www.slt.org.au/events

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It is time to prune your stone fruit trees 

The best time for pruning stone fruit trees (peach, nectarine, apricot, plum) is after you have picked the fruit, and when the growth of the tree begins to slow down in anticipation of losing leaves and then going dormant.  That means early autumn, March, NOW!

Some of you may be hesitant to prune your fruit trees, or you may not be sure how to go about it. For you Quick Guide to Pruning Fruit Trees on the Food Garden Group blog contains general fruit tree pruning hints.

Not every fruit tree should be pruned in the same way. That same blog post contains specific tips for pruning of Apple and Pear, Apricot, Citrus, Fig, Loquat, Peach and Nectarine, and Plum trees.

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Food garden activities suggested for 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

Vegetables

• 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

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 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

Many of the topics mentioned above are discussed in posts on the Food Garden Group blog.

For a complete list of suggested food garden activities for every month of the year see Food Garden Calendar on the Food Garden Group blog.

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Happy & productive food gardening,

Max Bee

 

 

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Lots of food gardening info can be found at https://foodgardengroup.blogspot.com/

For past food garden visits, recipes and past newsletters see https://fggextra.blogspot.com/

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The Food Garden Group is affiliated with Sustainable Living Tasmania