FGG Newsletter March 2024

           🍆 Food Garden Group newsletter - March 2024 🍆

 We like to grow what we eat 

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In this March 2024 Food Garden Group newsletter: info about food garden visits planned for March and April, last month's visit in words and pictures, garden tasks that are perfect for this time of year, what is new on our blogs, a Golden Tomato Award 2024 update, and more.

This month's food garden visit

Please join us on Sunday 10 March at 10.30am in Liz and Mark's garden at Lower Snug. 

About their property Liz wrote:

Hi everyone, I am a new member to the FGG. We moved to The Channel 8 years ago, looking to downsize from acreage and perhaps escape the heat and wet of the subtropics. At that stage, in our mid fifties, we were looking for a retirement block, with enough enthusiastic energy to set up a relaxing home and veggie garden using some of the experience we had accumulated over the previous 25 years of more serious food gardening.

I discovered Permaculture in my late 20’s and fell in love with its messy natural cottage garden look, lower energy input and back to nature organic approach, you know, living in the forest garden of Eden. I am not sure I ever entirely achieved those goals, but I loved what we did and I never hated going to work. 

In our mid thirties and with 3 young boys we moved onto 7 acres on the Sunshine Coast and set up (permaculture) gardens and animal systems. We grew all our own fruit, veg, dairy, honey, eggs and meat, but also explored different farm regeneration practices including innovative animal systems and reforestation of waterways. 

Using our property as the teaching medium for Permaculture tours and education was also a financial mainstay for us and our way to encourage others to care for the environment.

So moving here was to retire, not to create too much work but feed ourselves and enjoy, though I think I still oversized my ageing abilities :). We bought a house on an acre, on tank water and a slightly weedy monotone garden plus an area of eucalyptus giants. After coming to a plan we had to dismantle most of the exotic garden to start again. 

We have slowly been renovating both house and garden but unfortunately being on tank water (which we had to more than double) means unfortunately you may be seeing it at its worst. No spare water to splash around here, we are currently in mild survival mode, watering only existing food plants and enough to keep other plants alive until it rains. 

We have always tried to have an inclusive wildlife habitat property, so it is an ongoing experiment how to feed them and us. We use passive defence for our food (fences and nets) and meeting their needs in other property areas is what we try to achieve. 

I am still learning about Tassie crops and weather planting calendar so I will be asking lots of questions to you all too and ask you to offer information. I hope to share our set up and gardening failures and maybe some gardening differences too. Hope to see you all soon!

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.

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Last Month's food garden visit

Self-sufficiency and enjoyment are the motivations behind the incredibly productive and welcoming Clarendonvale garden that we visited in February. For great photos and words about what Steven and Kathryn have achieved on their suburban block go here. 

Many thanks to Steven and Kathryn for hosting this inspiring food garden visit! Thank you, Laura, for providing a very enjoyable guided tour around this garden!

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Golden Tomato Award 2024

Amazing, unbelievable, never seen anything like it was my reaction when I saw Roslyn's more-than-one-kilo-heavy tomato that is number one on the Golden Tomato Award list per the end of February.

I decided to devote a blog post to all the impressive tomato varieties that have been put forward so far, so in years to come we can look back and choose to grow them in our own garden or hothouse.

Would you love to grow large tomatoes, but wonder which good-tasting varieties do well in Tasmania? New blog post Large Tomatoes on Show shows the varieties that Food Garden Group members put forward for the 2024 Golden Tomato Award, a description of the variety, and where to get seeds and seedlings if commercially available.

I hope that more FGG members will come forward with large tomato varieties that are not yet present in the list, even if they are half the weight of the whopper that is number one on the list at the moment. If you do, I will update this blog post at the end of March and April 2024 to include them. The contest will only be over at the end of this season!

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Don't let them get sunburnt!

To a blog post about tomatoes that I wrote last month I added a section about sunburn because Troy and Jing (we visited their garden in January) had some sunburned tomatoes.

The more we learn about the local climate in our gardens, the better our crops will grow. If you know that particular spots in your garden become very hot in summer, sunburn can be avoided. To find out how, go to Tomato Care and Repair here. 

By the way, lots of fruits can get sunburnt at this time of year. I have seen sunburnt apples, so this advice does not only apply to tomatoes.

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If you are new to food gardening .....

Vegie Patch Basics is a year-round series of blog posts for those who are new to food gardening or want to refresh their knowledge. It discusses how to set up a veggie patch from scratch and suggests what you can do each month for the first full year. The series also discusses composting, irrigation, soil improvement and controlling pests. It starts here.

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A wonderfully-red vinegar

Our group's FGG Extra blog contains many great recipes for preserving, pickling, fermenting, processing, bottling, jams, curds and syrups.  The row of tabs at the top of the home page here will help you find them easily.

This month there is a new recipe for a wonderfully-red Cherry Pit Vinegar.  Thank you Laura R. for providing the recipe and FGG Extra coordinator Pauline S. for putting it in a blog post!

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This time of year is really good for .....

• Collecting seeds, so you can grow the same crops next year without having to buy any seeds. If you follow a few rules, saving seed can be a very rewarding activity. Find out more in Successful Seed Saving on the Food Garden Group blog.

• Pruning stone fruit trees: perfect time for it. Not difficult, if you follow a few rules. Find out more in Quick Guide to Pruning Fruit Trees on the Food Garden Group blog.

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Please help replenishing our Seedbox

Now is a great time to harvest all kinds of vegetable seeds for next season. It is amazing how many seeds some plants produce. If you find that you have far too many seeds, please bring them to the next food garden visit or contact Seedbox-coordinator Elizabeth and arrange to drop them off at her place. Her email address is elizamt54@gmail.com.

Please put your seeds in little bags and write on the bag or on a label what the seed is and when it was harvested. 

Our Seedbox will be at the next food garden visit. It currently contains the following seeds that are available free of charge for anyone to take home and try!

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Food garden visits planned for coming months

After our March visit (see above), the season will end with a visit on Sunday 7 April to Vivien and Mark's garden at Bellerive. You will be amazed at how this garden has matured since our group saw it last, a few years ago.

Food garden visits will pause over winter, but there might be a few other activities. Watch this space! 

The 2024-2025 food garden visit season will start in September.

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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 food gardening,

Max Bee

FGG coordinator

 

 

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The Food Garden Group is affiliated with Sustainable Living Tasmania