FGG Newsletter September 2024

🍋  Food Garden Group newsletter - September 2024  🍋

 We like to grow what we eat 

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In this newsletter: the start of food garden visits in both the North and the South of the state, growing tomatoes, food garden visits planned for coming months, news about biochar, what's new on the Food Garden Group blog, how to espalier, what to do in your food garden in September, and more.

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Food garden visits about to commence!

This season for the first time ever we have both Northern and Southern visits! We welcome Denby to the Food Garden Group team as the Northern organiser of these visits!

Visits in the North will start this month with a visit to Denby's garden at Kings Meadows, but as you will see below, the Northern group already has some real momentum, with visits for October and November on Denby's list for coming months.  Well done Denby!

Just make sure that you RSVP for the right visit!  It's not difficult:

To RSVP for a Northern visit email Denby at fggnorthtas@gmail.com

To RSVP for a Southern visit email Max at foodgardengroup@gmail.com

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This month's Northern food garden visit

On Sunday 22 September at 10.30am you will be welcome in Denby's garden at Kings Meadows.

About her garden Denby wrote:

I purchased my property in June 2023 and it was mainly grassed area with a few plants dotted around. The backyard is quite flat and very open which is great for the sun but it is also exposed to the wind and very heavy frosts. After fifteen months of hard work it now has a reasonable sized productive food garden.

Planning the initial layout was quite daunting but the layout seems to be working. The garden produced really well in its first season with star crops being tomatoes (approximately 200kg) and pumpkins (60).

Fourteen vegetable beds of varying sizes contain lots of leafy green, cruciferous vegetables and a range of other vegetables. A separate bed for perennial food plants includes herbs, asparagus, rhubarb, yacon, skirret and Jerusalem artichokes. Four dedicated berry patches are filled with raspberries, blueberries, strawberries and a thornless blackberry and youngberry. Apricot, cherry, apples, nectarine and peaches are growing in the orchard area.

I planted a lime and lemon tree in the garden that had been growing in pots for many years only to have them badly affected by the multiple heavy frosts this year. My hope is to grow several citrus trees in the garden and I would really appreciate any suggestions you have for providing frost protection.

Other fruiting plants dotted around include some experimental plants (grape, haskap berry, goji berry, pomegranate and a recently acquired aronia berry). These are all new for me in this garden and I am hoping some of them at least will be successful. Any tips for growing these plants will be welcomed.

Also planted are a fig tree, two passionfruit and a hedge of small Tassie berry plants.

It is still a very young garden and I look forward to your feedback and suggestions on the day.

Contributions for morning tea and the produce table will be much appreciated! 

For this Northern visit please RSVP to fggnorthtas@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.

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This month's Southern food garden visit

On Sunday 15 September at 10.30am you will be welcome in Loes's garden at Coningham.

About her garden Loes wrote:

This will be the third Food Garden Group visit to my garden. The first one was in 2015 and the second one in 2017. In the meantime, some of the plantings have changed, and I have added more fruit trees and protection from the hungry birds, but the essential lay-out of the garden is still the same as it was in 2013, when I bought the house!

The reason for this is that it is a near perfect design. The use of the sun, water/rain and wind are well thought out, so there has been no need for big changes. There is a spot for everything to grow and that is what I have enjoyed doing. 

Around the house I planted more low growing native shrubs and added a few bird baths. More small birds are coming in now and are doing a good job in pest control.

At my age (I am 90 years old) gardening is not as easy anymore, but with help from others I still manage. I was looking for adjustments to keep enjoying my garden as long as possible.

The vegetable garden needed an urgent make-over because my body was telling me that bending over is not a good idea at my age. So that is now fixed by making all the vegetable beds higher. Most of the fruit trees are netted and the chickens are still there! They help with the weeding and are laying beautiful eggs. I have a weekly helper in my garden who does most of the weeding. And in the warmer months someone comes to mow the lawn whenever it grows too high.

I’d like to show my garden friends how you can keep enjoying your gardening a lot longer than people try to tell you!

Hope to see you on this first food garden visit of this season!

Contributions for morning tea and the produce table will be much appreciated!

For this Southern visit 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.

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What to expect from an FGG food garden visit

Our visits are about seeing food gardens and meeting other food gardeners.
Everyone arrives just before or at the start time.
If you have surplus food-plant seedlings, seeds or produce, please bring them. It all goes on the produce table, where people give and take without money changing hands.
After seeing the garden and lots of spontaneous discussion 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, ideas for your garden, and produce.

It’s all about sharing, learning from each other, and community.

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Last month's Espalier workshop

On a day when solid early morning rain would have persuaded most organisers to cancel their events, presenter Steven and I decided to go ahead with a planned Espalier workshop. I am glad we did, because further rain held off until mid-day, and that gave us just enough time. As we ended, the rain returned.

There is a lot of material about Espalier on the internet, but seeing a garden full of espaliered fruit trees, and hearing what Steven learned while working with many fruit tree varieties over the years, really set this apart from any YouTube video.

Blog post Espalier Workshop on the FGG Extra blog will give you a good idea of all that was said on the subject on the day.

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Food garden visits planned for coming months

South - Sunday 13 October: Gemma and Geoff's garden at Otago

South - Sunday 17 November: Karen's garden at Blackmans Bay
South - Sunday 1 December: Jennie and Russell's garden at Sandfly

North - Sunday 20 October: Charles and Irene's garden at Hillwood

North - Sunday 17 November: Steve and Araina's garden at Punchbowl

A big thank you to these FGG members for being happy to host a visit!

Please be aware: dates and gardens may change! Each visit will be advertised in this newsletter at the start of the month the visit is in. At that time you can RSVP, 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

• Blog post The Importance of rotating crops has been rewritten and updated. What to do for hothouses, pots and grow bags has been added.

• Success with Blueberries now tells the reader which varieties are considered to go well together to get good cross-pollination.

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It might be time to talk 'tomatoes'

The weather over the last week is making it very clear that there is no hurry to get your tomatoes going. In Tasmania, if you don't have a hothouse, it is best not to sow tomatoes any earlier than September. This season, hhhmm, is shaping up to be cool at the start. You can sow tomatoes as late as the end of December, and you will have ripe tomatoes before the season is over, because the second part of the season is nearly always more consistently warm than the first half.

There are no less than 16 blog posts on the Food Garden Group blog about tomatoes. That is because Tasmanian food gardeners, including me, are obsessed with growing tomatoes, whereas for 'mainlanders' tomatoes are just another summer crop.

Below are some Food Garden Group blog post that will help you hone your skills in regard to deciding which varieties to grow, how to raise tomatoes from seed, how to look after seedlings, pest management and more.

Sowing in Pots and Punnets - to find out how to sow tomatoes and how to look after them when they germinate.

Early Tomatoes - what varieties are early and how members of our group were able to get their tomatoes to ripen early in the past.

Large Tomatoes on Show - to find out which large tomato varieties do well in Tasmania.

Tomato Care and Repair - to find out how to make the most of your tomato plants, how to avoid diseases and how to solve other problems your precious darlings may have.

Better Pollination, Bigger Crops - to find out how to maximise  your tomato crop.

For even more info on tomatoes see the Keyword Index in the righthand column on the Food Garden Group home page here.

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Where to get biochar for your food garden

In 2017 Christina Giudici (from FIMBY and Mercury garden columns) and a local saw miller started a project to turn saw mill waste into a quality product called biochar that would be available via nurseries for gardeners to use to improve their food-garden soil.

If you are not sure what biochar is, what its purpose is, or how it is used, have a look at Food Garden Group blog post Beneficial Biochar.

You can make your own biochar (see Food Garden Group blog post Backyard Biochar) or use charcoal from your own wood heater if you have one, but a lot of people will not have the time or the inclination to do so and be really happy to hear that this biochar project has now progressed to the stage where bags of The New Black biochar are for sale once a month at garden supply company Best Mix at Mornington.

Later in 2024 The New Black biochar will be available via a number of distributors around Tasmania.  For more information have a look at The New Black web site here.

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Try these 12 food gardening practices!

In an FGG workshop in Southern Tasmania some years ago presenter Letetia Ware proved to be an ardent advocate for organic soil care.  She mentioned 12 food-gardening practices, most of them simple to adopt, that make food gardens much more successful.

It's worth looking up what they are in Twelve simple food gardening practices on the Food Garden Group blog.

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Food garden activities suggested for 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 (*)
• Put in place protection measures against codling moth for apple, pear and quince trees
• 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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Happy food gardening,

Max Bee

FGG coordinator

 

 

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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