🌱 Food Garden Group newsletter - November 2023 🌱
We like to grow what we eat
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In this November 2023 newsletter: info about the next food garden visit, the October visit in words and pictures, how to avoid disappointment when buying soil, how to improve your food garden soil and more.
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| a bee on a blackberry flower |
This month's Food garden visit
Please join us on Sunday 5 November at 10.30am in Max and Gaye's garden at Rose Bay. This will be the 99th food garden visit since the first one on 29 May 2011.
Here is some info about our food garden
Our food garden was never drawn as a diagram on paper, then built and then used for ever thereafter. Instead it grew organically, from just one bed in the middle of a lot of grass to what it is today, two decades later. It is actually still growing and changing, because just recently we changed the shape and size of our asparagus bed.
As I look at our garden now, I see that what we gradually created is a garden that gives us a lot of yummy produce, but that also looks nice, or at least we try to make it look nice, and we love just walking through it and exploring. And as you do so, you may come across some flowers or a little statue, some ceramic or a narrow path that you did not realise was there.
Our approach of for ever creating new bits of garden without a grand plan has not been without problems, and when you visit our garden we will talk about what is working well and what has not worked so well.
The main part of our garden behind our house (roughly 10 x 20 metres) is a mix of fruit and vegetables. We have Trixzie dwarf peach/nectarine trees, two apricot trees, grapes, raspberries, strawberries etc. Most raised beds are rotated between legumes, green vegetables, root crops and potatoes/tomatoes and we try to have as much diversity as possible, if not a lot of quantity.
A hothouse constructed from second-hand materials gives us a nice crop of tomatoes and cucumbers most seasons and two compost bays provide the much-needed home-made compost.
All this in an area that is no larger than your average suburban backyard, but most people who see our garden are surprised how much there is to see and how much is grown there. Others with suburban-size gardens might be interested to see how it was done.
Having seen many gardens over the last thirteen years as part of organising food garden visits for our group, I find that the saying ‘as is the gardener, so is the garden’ is often really true. So please come and see our garden, and you may find out who we are.
We look forward to meeting you in our garden and share our experiences.
Contributions to morning tea and the produce table will be very welcome.
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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If you have never been to an FGG food garden visit ....
It is great to have new people at every food garden visit. If you RSVP soon after the FGG newsletter comes out, your chances to make it onto the RSVP-list are high.
Our visits are about seeing food gardens and meeting other food gardeners. Everyone arrives at the same time just before or at the start time. If you have any surplus food-plant seedlings, seeds or produce, please bring them. They all go on the Produce Table, where people give and take without any money changing hands.
After seeing the garden and lots of spontaneous discussions we share morning tea. It would be great if you brought something for morning tea, but this too is optional.
You may go home with new food-plants and ideas for your garden and interesting produce. It’s all about sharing, learning from each other, and community.
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Last month's food garden visit
On a cracker of a spring day, a large group of club members gathered at Val’s gorgeous property in Howden to talk about plants, share a cuppa, and enjoy the morning. For a virtual tour around this garden including great photos click here.
Thank you Val for showing us your great garden, and thank you Laura for writing about it for those who could not come, or would like to see it all one more time!
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Food garden visits planned for coming months
Sunday 7 January: Marg and Sweis's garden at Lenah Valley
Saturday 10 February: Steven and Kathryn's garden at Clarendonvale
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.
The December FGG newsletter will be out early (25 November is the aim) because the December food garden visit (number 100!) will held be on Sunday 3 December to avoid the silly season.
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Seed Box update
Thank you, Elizabeth T, for taking back the coordination of our Seed Box. Elizabeth gave me the following list of seeds that will be available free-of-charge in the Seed Box on the produce table at the next food garden visit:
If you would like to contribute seeds, please just add them to the Seed Box at the next food garden visit. If you can't be at the next food garden visit, please contact Seedbox-coordinator Elizabeth and arrange to drop off or collect seeds at her place. Her email address is elizamt54@gmail.com. Thank you Elizabeth!
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Buying soil for a new garden bed
Grow healthy soil and you will have healthy vegetables is the motto of many food gardeners, so, when starting a new veggie bed, people want to buy the best soil they can get. Many food gardeners, however, have been disappointed with the quality of soil that they bought. The aim of this new blog post is to give people a few ways of checking the quality of soils before buying, so they can make the best possible start with their new veggie bed. You will find it all here.
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Caring for and improving your soil
- Want to find out what pH is, what the ideal pH is for your veggie garden soil, how you can measure it, and how you can improve it? Read Acid or Alkaline.
- Home-made compost is a great way to improve soils, but in Australia, because it is such an old continent, adding compost is often not enough. Find out what to do about this, and what the letters COF stands for in Soils ain't soils on the Food Garden Group blog.
- Blog post Complete Organic Fertiliser discusses a more elaborate recipe of COF for those who really want to give their garden the best they can.
- Complete Organic Fertilisers - Suppliers may tell you were to purchase it if you don't want to make COF yourself.
- Well known Tasmanians Steve Solomon and Letetia Ware have a lot of expertise in soil biology and creating healthy soils. They have different approaches to it, but we can learn a lot from both. And now improve your soil biology discusses both approaches and how they are really part of one and the same soil biology triangle.
- Learn to make your own seed-raising mix in Sowing in Pots and Punnets.
- Learn how to make perfect potting soil: see under A homemade potting soil in Microbes in your soil.
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A whole year of food gardening tips for newcomers!
Veggie 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.
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How to become a member of our group?
Someone asked me how their friend could join our group. Well, because the Food Garden Group does not have a membership fee, membership cards, and all that kind of formal rigmarole, it is all really quite simple. We have a self-serve membership:
- Explore the Food Garden Group blog at https://foodgardengroup.blogspot.com/
- Join our Food Gardeners Tasmania Facebook page if you are a member of Facebook. It is a great way to meet other Tasmanian food gardeners online and ask anything you would like to know re food gardening.
- Subscribe to our monthly newsletter by going tohttps://fggtas.wordpress.com and click on To subscribe click here
- RSVP for a food garden visit advertised in the FGG newsletter, so you can see a food garden up close and personal , learn on the spot, and get inspired!
No problems! Easy!
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Food garden activities suggested for November
- Make sure your food garden is well mulched to conserve water
- Monitor soil-moisture levels and water if needed
- Keep weeds at bay and don't allow them to go to seed
- Sow in pots iceberg-type lettuce, loose-leaf lettuce, brassicas, leek, parsley, spring onions, salad onions, celery, Chinese Cabbage and Asian Greens
- Sow in pots inside tomato, capsicum, zucchini, pumpkin, cucumber, corn and celery
- Sow in your garden beans, spinach, chard, silverbeet, carrot, parsnip, turnip, swede, beetroot
- Plant loose-leaf lettuce, iceberg-type lettuce, chard, spinach, silver beet, celery, parsley, late potatoes, ocas, leeks and onions (after adding some lime to the soil), brassicas (provide protection against caterpillars)
- Plant outside when the weather is consistently warmer - tomatoes and capsicums
- Protect outside tomatoes and capsicums against cold snaps with sleeves.
- Minimise caterpillar damage to brassicas by manual removal, netting or spraying
- Control slugs and snails especially around peas and beans
- Foliar-feed crops once a month with seaweed extract to maximise their health and growth
- Put nets over all berry bushes just before berries begin to show colour
- Thin fruits on all fruit trees soon after they form
- Protect apple, pear and quince trees against codling moth
- Remove and destroy coddling moth infested fruit on apple, pear and quince trees
- Get rid of pear and cherry slug by covering pear and cherry leaves with ash or lime
- Check peach and nectarine trees for leaf-curl and remove and destroy affected leaves
- Prune peach and nectarine trees when they have woken up out of dormancy
- Add sulphate of potash to the soil under peach and nectarine trees (*)
- Foliar feed all fruit trees with fish fertiliser and/or seaweed extract
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 food gardening,
Max Bee
FGG coordinator
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
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