🎉 Food Garden Group newsletter - December 2023 🎉
We like to grow what we eat
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In this December 2023 newsletter we celebrate the Food Garden Group's 100th food garden visit, you will find out what is new on the FGG blog, why pollination is the name of the game at this point of the season, and more!
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This month's food garden visit
On Sunday 3 December at 10:30am we will visit Pauline and Dirk's food garden at Howden. It was chosen as visit number 100 because it is a great example of a productive food garden, and because it is on a property that in terms of parking and size is large enough to allow a large number of people to come. It is very likely that your RSVP will be accepted!
About their garden Pauline and Dirk wrote:
We moved to Howden in 2014. There was a well-established, European-style garden, but apart from a neglected orchard it had no food plants at all.
It also had a significant amount of native wildlife, keen on partaking of whatever we decided to grow.
We soon realised that the only way we were going to grow anything edible was by excluding the wildlife.
We built a cage over the orchard with sufficient room to start a veggie garden. A few years later we also put up a fence to exclude the wallabies and pademelons from our ornamental garden. This has worked well for years, until a month ago when a large Bennett’s wallaby moved into the area. He easily jumps over the fence and now roams around wherever he wants.
We soon built the second cage in a warmer, sunnier spot. There is tall forest to the north-west, which shelters us from the summer heat and helps to keep the garden green. In winter it means there is a lot of shade, and as a result our garden is always a few weeks later than most other gardens in the Hobart area.
Our third cage is a small cage to protect the stone fruit we planted against the woodshed.
The fourth -and final!- cage was finished in September 2019. It holds a mini-vineyard and more fruit and berries. It also houses our Barnevelder chickens. They free-range in the paddock and forest in the afternoons.
The paddock also holds our apiary, currently with 5 bee hives, under an oak tree.
We now grow several kinds of apples, plums, cherries, pears and currants, as well as medlar, kiwifruit, jostaberries, blueberries, thornless blackberries, loganberries, raspberries, strawberries, and more. Our vegie garden is lovely and lush until late in summer and provides us with plenty of vegetables in season.
Come and celebrate the 100th food garden visit! Contributions to the morning tea and produce tables will be most welcome.
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Last month's food garden visit
This season's food garden visits will be written about by four people: Pauline, Laura, myself and our newest food garden visit writer Mandy! What a wonderful team! Here is Mandy's first food garden visit article:
A cool, calm spring morning greeted our food garden visitors to Rose Bay this month, where we discovered a gorgeous and highly productive garden tucked away in Max and Gaye’s suburban backyard. In addition to the great garden, lovely company and fabulous food, we were also treated to a crash course in all things crop protection!
For the full article + great photos go here.
Thank you Mandy for a great article!
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Food garden visits planned for coming months
January: not sure yet
February: Saturday 10 February - Steven and Kathryn's garden at Clarendonvale
March: available
April: open
Each visit is 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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Happy to host a visit to your garden?
Here are some comments made by people who hosted a visit to their garden in the past:
- Very uplifting to show your garden to people who share your passion. Gee, it was nice to get all that feedback! For those thinking about hosting, it is a great incentive to re-evaluate your garden. Go on, talk to Max about a date! - Cathy in Feb21.
- Such a lovely morning, thanks so much for organising these get togethers, so nice hanging out with other gardeners and share our gardens – Belinda in Dec22.
- Very helpful demo and explanation of measuring pH during the visit to our garden - Aimee & BJ in Nov21.
- It is so nice to have people visit our garden who can appreciate what we are trying to do, and to see it through fresh eyes ourselves. Plus, it was very good motivation to get some lingering jobs crossed off our list! – Ngaire in Sep22.
The amount of work for hosts is small as my partner Gaye and I bring signs, tables, urn etc. and help you set up before the start and take down afterwards.
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Seed Box update
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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New on the Food Garden Group blog
- Find out how to make the most of your cucurbits - cucumbers, zucchinis, pumpkins, squash, marrows and melons - in a new blog post on this subject. The article includes a contribution by FGG member Karen D. Thank you Karen!
- The Pest Control - Quick Guide continues to grow. This time I added how to recognise and take action against Woolly Aphids. I also changed the section on Gummosis because I have now seen two cases where stone fruit trees that were severely affected by Gummosis fully recovered.
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Pollination is the name of the game
Spring is the time to attract insects to your garden and get lots of pollination done, or if nature does not cooperate, do it yourself - hand-pollinate.
On the Food Garden Group blog the subject is covered in two blog posts: Better Pollination, Bigger Crops and Why don't my pumpkins have any pumpkins?
Worth a read if you want to be on track with what you are growing in your garden this season!
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Food garden activities suggested for December
- 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
Vegetables
- Sow in pots iceberg-type lettuce, loose-leaf lettuce, brassicas, leek, parsley, spring onions, salad onions, tomato, capsicum, zucchini, pumpkin, cucumber, corn, celery, Chinese cabbage and Asian greens, Brussels sprouts (for harvest this coming winter)
- Sow in your garden beans, spinach, chard, silverbeet, radish, 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), tomatoes, capsicums
- Remove sleeves from outside tomatoes when the weather warms up
- Put shade cloth over newly-planted seedlings to protect them from hot sun
- Hill potatoes with soil, mulch, compost to protect growing tubers from light
- Minimise damage to brassicas by caterpillars by removing them, netting or sprays
- Hand-pollinate cucurbits early in the morning
- Dig up garlic and allow it to dry before storing it in a cool well ventilated spot
- Remove flower-heads on rhubarb, so plants focus on forming leaves
- Control slugs and snails especially around beans
- Foliar-feed crops once a month with seaweed extract to maximise their health and growth
Fruit trees and berries (* = don't repeat if already done recently)
- Net all your berry bushes well before the birds begin to eat your berries
- Net your stone fruit trees
- Thin fruits on all fruit trees, so fruits become larger and branches don’t break
- Remove excess foliage on fig trees
- Remove and destroy coddling moth infested fruit on apple, pear and quince trees
- Protect apple, pear and quince trees against codling moth
- Add sulphate of potash to the soil under peach and nectarine 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
- Foliar feed fruit trees with fish fertiliser and/or seaweed extract
- Feed each citrus tree a full watering can with a tbsp of Epsom Salts + a tbsp of iron chelate (*)
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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If we don't see you at food garden visit 100 ......
Merry Christmas and a happy 2024! 🎄
Max & Gaye
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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
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