FGG Newsletter September 2023

   🌸 Food Garden Group newsletter - September 2023   🌸

 We like to grow what we eat 

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In this September 2023 newsletter: this month's food garden visit, what is planned for this season, what is new on the Food Garden Group blog, seed box update, why and how to sow in pots and punnets, what to do in your food garden in September, and more!

flowering ANZAC peach

This month's food garden visit

Our group's last visit to Ross and Elizabeth's garden at Lindisfarne was in February 2018. That is five years ago! Since then Ross and Elizabeth made many changes and improvements, so it is high time for another visit. And now they are selling, so let's explore this fine garden one more time before we lose the opportunity!

On Sunday 10 September at 10.30am you will be welcome in Ross and Elizabeth's garden at Lindisfarne.

About their property Ross wrote:
My wife Elizabeth and I purchased the property about 21 years ago. The back yard was a mess when we arrived as the previous owners used it as a dump. We found car bits, broken glass, old batteries and tyres etc. The grass was very tall, hiding almost every known bug and snails by the hundreds. When I mowed the little lawn that was there I cut two additional swathes and then cleared the rubbish from another two. 
 

Eventually I reached the bottom fence and started building chook pens and a few small garden beds. What started as a few garden beds quickly got totally out of control and we now have 7 major beds, 6 minor beds and 6 cut-down half water tanks plus over 22 fruit, grape and berry trees, two chook pens and up until a few weeks ago we also had two bee hives. 

 

We have a dingy for trout fishing that we haven’t used in two years, a new caravan plus access to three friends shacks that we hardly ever use, so something has to give in order to cut down on the 40 hrs per week we spend in the garden. We want to see our grandchildren more often (they all live in Qld, Vic and WA), so we reluctantly decided to sell our home and our great garden.

 

We still want to live on the eastern shore but we need a flat block, room for our cars, boat, trailer and caravan, a small chook pen and some garden bed, but not as much as we currently have. 

 

If you attend this garden visit you will see our garden as a no-weed, no-grass-out-of-place, almost pristinely-presented totally-unrealistic garden due to it being on the market when the FGG visit comes around.

 

Feel free to brings heaps of home-cooked food for the morning-tea table as I rarely get breakfast on a Sunday ..... too busy normally! 

 

There will be plenty of seeds of 23-year-old climbing bean available for give away to whoever wants any, plus our club’s seed box and produce and seedlings people bring for your perusal.

If you are interested in turning your home into a green, energy saving house, then talk to us on the day.

We look forward to seeing everyone at the first food garden visit of the 23/24 season.

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.

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Food garden visits planned for coming months

Sunday 8 October: Valerie's garden at Howden
Sunday 5 November: Max and Gaye's garden at Rose Bay
Sunday 3 December: Dirk and Pauline's garden at Howden

Sunday 7 January: Marg and Sweis's garden at Lenah Valley

Saturday 10 February: Steven and Kathryn's garden at Clarendonvale

This is the plan, but it may change as circumstances during the season change. A big thank you to these FGG members for being happy to host a food garden visit! 

Each visit will be advertised in this newsletter at the start of the month the visit is in. At that time you can RSVP for the visit, not before. 

There is a maximum number of people that can attend each visit. To avoid disappointment please RSVP early in all cases.

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New on the Food Garden Group blog 

Growing potatoes can be quite rewarding, especially when you eat your own home-grown potatoes fresh from the garden. New blog post All About Spuds will help you produce a nice crop of good-size potatoes, perhaps even more than once a year! 

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Seed box update

We have our seed box on the produce table at every food garden visit for the free exchange of seeds between FGG members. The following seeds will be available at the next food garden visit:

Beans - Purple Columbine Bok Choy - Choy Sum Broccoli - Raab Rapini Capsicum - Mini Sweet Yellow Chilli - Rococo Yellow Cress Dill Eggplant - Melanzana, Violetta Fennel

Hollyhock Kale – Russian Red Lovage Melon - Spanish Nasturtium - mixed colours Parsley - Italian, Flat Leaf Parsnip Pumpkin – Grey

If you would like to contribute seeds, that would be great! Please put your seeds in little packets and write on each packet the name of the seeds and when they were harvested. Then just add them to the Seed Box at the next food garden visit. If you can't come to the next food garden visit, contact Max at foodgardengroup@gmail.com , so the seeds can be dropped off or picked up.

I would like to very much thank Elizabeth for looking after the seed box for the last year or so. With the sale of their property and moving house in the next few months, Elizabeth will gladly hand over the coordination of seeds to someone else if someone puts their hand up. This is not a large task, but one that needs someone who is happy to keep things organised and tidy. If you would be happy to consider taking over and would like more info please email Max at foodgardengroup@gmail.com.

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Sowing in pots and punnets

With all the long-term weather forecasts pointing towards an El Niño season this 2023 - 2024 summer, September will be the perfect time to sow in pots and punnets summer crops such as tomatoes. 

Then in early October it will be the perfect time for sowing cucumbers, zucchinis, pumpkins and other summer crops - unless of course you have a hothouse and plan to grow these crops there, in which case you can sow them all now.

-  But why sow your own when you can buy ready-to-plant seedlings?

-  And why sow in punnets rather than straight into the garden?

-  What are the ideal circumstances for seeds in punnets?

-  And is there anything you should do when seedlings emerge?

-  How do you make my own seed-raising mix?

-  And how do you go about the actual sowing?

Good questions! You will find out how easy it all is in Food Garden Group blog post Sowing in Pots and Punnets.

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Things you can do in your food garden in September

• Mulch after good rains so moisture is retained when temperatures go up
• Cut up and dig in green manures you sowed in autumn

Vegetables

• Sow in pots loose-leaf lettuce, brassicas, leek, parsley, spring onions, salad onions, celery, Chinese cabbage, Asian greens

• Sow in pots inside tomato, capsicum, zucchini, pumpkin, corn, celery

• Sow in your garden spinach, chard and silverbeet, broadbeans, peas, spinach, chard, silverbeet and radish

• Sow in your garden from mid-September carrot, parsnip, turnip, swede, beetroot

• Plant loose-leaf lettuce, iceberg-type lettuce, chard, spinach, silver beet, celery, parsley, potatoes, yacons and ocas, leeks and onions (after adding some lime to the soil), brassicas (provide protection against caterpillars), asparagus crowns (after adding compost to the soil)

• Control slugs and snails, especially around peas
• Minimise caterpillar damage to brassicas by manual removal, netting or spraying
• Foliar-feed crops once a month with seaweed extract to maximise 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)

• Apply whip and tongue grafts to apple, pear and cherry trees
• Prune or tip-prune fig trees in the early part of the month just before they break dormancy (*)
• Plant a new citrus tree. Now is the best time.
• Stop having chooks around your fruit trees once the trees are out of dormancy
• Feed citrus trees a good dose of nitrogen-rich fertilisers (*)
• Feed each citrus tree a full watering can with a tbsp of Epsom Salts + a tbsp of iron chelate (*)
• Get rid of pear and cherry slug by covering pear and cherry leaves with ash or lime
• Add sulphate of potash to the soil under peach and nectarine trees (*)
• Foliar feed all fruit trees with fish fertiliser and/or seaweed extract
• Prune citrus trees if they need pruning

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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May your seeds germinate,

Max Bee

FGG coordinator

 

 

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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