FGG Newsletter April 2023

 🍏Food Garden Group newsletter - April 2023 🍏

 We like to grow what we eat 

________________________________________________________________________________

In this April 2023 Food Garden Group newsletter: info about the food garden visit planned for April, last month's visit in words and pictures, biosecurity info for beekeepers, changes to our Facebook page, what is new on our blogs, suggestions for 'infrastructure projects', and more.

Welcome to the April 2023 FGG newsletter! 

This newsletter is the last one for the 2022-2023 season. What a challenging season it has been! With cool cloudy days right up to Christmas many of us even doubted that we would have any ripe tomatoes at all this season. Then, after Christmas, summer started and I would say most of us have picked a nice-enough number of tomatoes by now.

In previous seasons I used to sometimes jokingly ask other food gardeners whether they wanted any zucchinis. I knew what answer I was going to get. Zucchinis galore for everyone!  So far this season we have had just four zucchinis in our garden! La Nina certainly makes for challenging growing conditions. The long term forecast for next season is El Nino, so next summer might be an entirely different story.  

There will be no FGG newsletter in May, June and July. The plan is to publish the first newsletter of the new season on 1 August.

🍏

This month's food garden visit

The last visit of the 2022-2023 season promises to be another really interesting one. On Sunday 16 April at 10.30am you will be welcome at Anna and Marcus's Little Farm at Margate.

About their property Anna and Marcus wrote:

Little Farm Margate is a small vegetable farm using organic and biodynamic methods. We bought a very rocky cow paddock with heavy soil in 2020, and have worked hard on developing soil structure through green manuring, compost addition and limited tilling. More recently, we’ve committed to ‘almost no dig’ by laying 100mm of compost over each bed. This also helps drainage and weed suppression. 

We sell vegetables via a weekly veggie box subscription and to a local organic grocer. We are completely focused on growing vegetables. Earlier in the season we had leafy greens, garlic, beans and carrots. Cucumbers have been prolific this year and we are finally harvesting tomatoes (which were very late this season). The winter veg are planted under row covers to limit cabbage caterpillars. We grow interesting Italian brassicas like spigarello, romanesco, and endives like puntarelle and radicchio treviso. 

Insects, birds and frogs are an important part of the farm - our main line of defence against pests, in lieu of pesticides - so Little Farm has plantings to support beneficial insects and a frog pond for hopping pest eaters. Insects are much loved at the farm and during the food garden visit we hope to talk about some of the insects we have here and what their role is in our farm system. 

You will understand that our farm is a working farm and there are irrigation ditches, irrigation lines and lots of uneven ground, so please wear sensible shoes. We also have hives of bees and beastly European wasps (please bring an epi pen if you are so inclined). 

We have a request: could you please not bring any soil or potted plants for the produce table - we are fastidious about not introducing weeds like Oxalis etc. to our farm.

We look forward to sharing the love of food gardening with you all.

Contributions for morning tea will be much appreciated! For the produce table please bring your surplus vegetables, fruit, berries, fertilisers and clean pots as you would normally, but not anything with soil attached or in soil. We all know that Oxalis and other aggressive weeds, once they invade a garden, are almost impossible to eradicate, so this request for this market garden makes a lot of sense.

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 names if you want to bring others, so we can have a name sticker ready for every person on arrival. Name stickers are our way of making it easy for people to get to know other people.

🍏

Last month's food garden visit in words and pictures

The sun-dappled slopes of Mount Nelson are always beautiful, but today they pulled out all the stops for our visit to an impressive and inspirational garden created by Lynda, Tracey, Robin and Michael. From its humble beginnings as an unproductive divided lot, this 3 ½ acres of land now provides in abundance.

You will find all the info and great photos of this visit here (thank you, Laura, for writing this post).

Thank you Robin, Tracey, Michael and Lynda for opening your property to us, for sharing your stories, for explaining what is working for you and for making us all feel so welcomed!

🍏

Help protect Tasmania against the Small Hive Beetle

Following the detection of a Small Hive Beetle in a hive in the Devonport area some time ago, a General Biosecurity Direction was declared, establishing a 15km Bee Movement Restriction Area around the detection site.

To date, no more small hive beetles have been found. However, Biosecurity Tasmania are only able to inspect and install traps in the hives they are aware of, which is why Biosecurity Tasmania is asking beekeepers and the public to help locate unregistered hives within the Devonport area to ensure they are checked as soon as possible. 

If you are within the Restriction Area and have not been visited by our apiary inspectors, please call 6165 3777. If you know of unregistered hives within the Restriction Area or notice hives that are not taped with biosecurity tape, please report this to Biosecurity Tasmania immediately on 6165 3777.

Registration is now compulsory for all Tasmanian commercial and recreational beekeepers. Penalties may apply for failing to register. There is no cost to register, and registration will remain free until at least 31 March 2025. 

For more information or to register, visit www.nre.tas.gov.au/beekeeper-registration. 

Thanks to Margaret W. for emailing me the relevant Biosecurity Tasmania announcements.

🍏

Our Food Gardeners Tasmania Facebook page

The FGG's Food Gardeners Tasmania Facebook page now has over 1500 members. Just last week 24 new people joined.  Welcome to the Food Garden Group to those who joined in March!

It is unlikely that this influx of new Facebook members will stop anytime soon and that is great. To keep the process of vetting new applicants workable, Facebook page moderator Laura and I sat down a few weeks ago and simplified the process for both us and applicants.

There are also some changes at the top of the Facebook page. Next to the rules that apply to the site there are now links that tell people where the FGG and FGG Extra blogs are and a link to the site where you can subscribe to this newsletter.

The rules that apply to the page have not changed, but are now better worded and more prominently displayed. When you click on the Show all rules button you see: 

There is a lot of food gardening info on the internet for mainland Australians. The Food Garden Group has always been by Tasmanians for Tasmanian conditions. Rule no.3 above may seem a bit harsh, but it is there so we don't have confusing discussions about crops, climate and soil conditions that don't apply to Tasmania. 

A big thank you to Laura for moderating Facebook page membership applications since May 2020 and for being happy to continue doing so with me from here on!

🍏

Making apple cider vinegar on the FGG Extra blog

Lian T. recently mentioned on our Facebook page that she had made her yearly batch of apple cider vinegar.  FGG Extra coordinator Pauline contacted Lian, keen to find out how she did this, so others can also make apple cider vinegar with their surplus apples. The resulting new FGG Extra blog post can be found here.

🍏

Winter is the best time to think 'infrastructure'

Ever tried to put down irrigation hose in your vegie beds in the middle of summer? Thanks to out-of-hand pumpkin monster plants, gone-rogue tomato bushes and out-of-control climbing beans this can be a nightmare. 

The ideal time for adding new raised beds, laying down irrigation lines, making new pathways and improving other 'infrastructure' is the middle of winter when some beds may be empty, and the plants that are there behave themselves so much better.

Here are some FGG Blog posts that may help you improve infrastructure in your garden this winter:

• Set up a food garden from scratch with Starting a New Food Garden and A Blank Canvas 
• Build a hothouse with Sharing our Hothouse Skills no.1
• Build a new raised bed with Adding a Raised Bed 
• Revitalise a raised garden bed with Renewing an old raised garden bed
• Find out why wicking beds are becoming really popular with How to build a wicking bed
• Choose between many types of irrigation with Improving your Irrigation
• Go on holidays while your garden continues to be watered with Automating your Irrigation 
• Build a compost enclosure that works for you with Making Compost - part 2

🍏

A whole year of food gardening tips for newcomers!

Vegie Patch Basics is a series of FGG blog posts that takes you on a year-long tour around the vegie garden, suggesting tasks for each month of the year, starting in April-May. It's a great way to improve your food garden skills. You can find it here.

🍏

Using the FGG blog on your mobile

Only recently did I fully realise that some, perhaps many, of our members do not use computers very often, but do most, if not all, of their stuff on their mobile phone. With that in mind I am going to reorganise the Food Garden Group blog this winter. The aim will be to make it much easier to find everything that is covered on the blog when using a mobile phone. More about this in next season's first newsletter on 1August.

🍏

Food garden activities suggested for April

• 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 spring and salad onions

• Sow in your garden winter varieties of spinach (try sowing one row every fortnight),  broad beans and peas (from late April if you don’t get heavy frosts in winter), 

• Sow in your hothouse herbs like coriander and dill for use this winter and spring

• Plant leek, garlic, spring onions and salad onions (after adding some lime to the soil), Chinese cabbage, Asian greens

• Foliar-feed crops once a month with seaweed extract to maximise growth before it slows down
• Collect seeds from heirloom varieties of crops that you would like to grow again next season
• Put something under pumpkins that rest on the ground so that they don’t rot
• Take pumpkins inside when the weather turns cold and damp
• Bring all unripe tomatoes inside for further ripening if the weather turns cold
• Remove flower-heads on rhubarb so plants focus on forming leaves
• Remove beans and other summer crops when the weather turns cold
• Take beds to their next stage in your crop rotation plan
• Control slugs and snails after rain if the weather is still warm
• Dig up potatoes and hill the ones that you are leaving for later
• Sow green manures where your soil needs to become more open and friable

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

• 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
• Remove and destroy coddling moth infested fruit on apple, pear and quince trees
• Trap and kill coddling moths on late apple, pear and quince trees
• Check existing coddling moth traps and replace and refresh where needed
• After harvest feed peach and nectarine trees blood & bone or mature poultry manure (*)
• Consider adding new fruit trees and berries to your garden and order them from nurseries

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.

🍏

Wishing you happy and productive food gardening this winter,

Max Bee

 

 

To subscribe to this newsletter go to https://fggtas.wordpress.com and follow the prompts

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/

To join our Facebook page search for Food Gardeners Tasmania and apply for membership

The Food Garden Group is affiliated with Sustainable Living Tasmania