FGG Newsletter December 2024

 

Food Garden Group  Newsletter December 2024  We like to grow what we eat

Max and Gaye wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy 2025!

This December newsletter is early because the next Southern food garden visit is to be held on 1 December. In this newsletter - what to do in your food garden in December, this month's Northern and Southern food garden visits, last month's visits in words and pictures, thinning fruit, your food garden this winter, food gardening for beginners, and more.

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This month's Southern food garden visit

On Sunday 1 December at 10.30am you will be very welcome in Jennie and Russell's garden at Sandfly.

About their garden Jennie wrote

Our garden is part of an 18 ha farm ‘Enkidu’, where we produce organic and ethically raised animals and produce for our own self-sufficiency and for direct order sales (although this has changed with the closure of the Cradoc Hill abattoir and Huonville butchery). We have a small herd of Murray Grey cattle, Dorper sheep, two Jersey house cows and chooks that all graze on our organically-fertilised paddocks. We are not certified organic and have occasionally used ‘roundup’ to ‘cut-and-paste or spot spray' weed species where necessary and have used antibiotics when animal health is involved (fortunately, this has been rare). We have systematically re-vegetated patches of bush on our farm and along Cooks Rivulet, while maintaining arable farmland. We have also completed wallaby-proof fencing our pastures while allowing native animals access to our areas of bush and steep hillside (Land for Wildlife).

The garden includes ornamental, native and productive areas. We designed the garden to have the less flammable vegetation (fruit trees, vegies and cottage garden) on the western side of our Federation farmhouse to minimise the fire risk, with natives on the eastern side.

The vegie garden and orchard have changed and expanded during the 40 years we have lived on Enkidu farm. In the 1990’s, we constructed a glasshouse (too small of course). Our climate at 300m above sea level means that the glasshouse is necessary to successfully grow tomatoes, corn and basil. We added a bird/possum/labrador-proof exclosure with raised beds and paving 6 years ago. That increased our self-sufficiency enormously. More recently, we have added another exclosure for a lime tree, plums and more raspberries. We have also expanded our vegie garden beds and created an asparagus bed. 

We use a mix of animal manures, spent mushroom compost, compost and biochar to fertilise the garden and use crop rotation and manure crops. We have found the addition of seaweed beneficial. Unfortunately, our long-term use of aged animal manure has resulted in our vegie garden beds becoming quite alkaline and we are currently trying to bring the soil back to be closer to neutral pH.

We grow quite a few heirloom varieties of vegies, often from seed. However, this year we have had to buy more seedlings. 

We also have some espaliered apple and pear, walnut and hazelnut, lemon, lime and olive trees, and grow numerous berry and currant fruits. Our aim is to be as self-sufficient as possible and this includes preserving much of our excess produce (jams, chutneys, pickles, butter, cheeses, bottled & frozen fruit) – we both like to cook. We ‘trade’ some of our farm produce with friends. 

We look forward to sharing our garden with you. 

Please bring something for morning tea –we will have the always popular Enkidu labneh cheese as well as Jersey cream if there are scones or similar! 

Contributions for the produce table will also be much appreciated! 

This Southern visit will be at Sandfly, 10.30am on Sunday 1 December

If you would like to come please RSVP to foodgardengroup@gmail.com  

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 Northern food garden visit

On Sunday 8 December at 10.30am you will be very welcome in Gareth and Tanya's garden at Kings Meadows.

About their garden Tanya and Gareth wrote:

We moved into our current house and 3000m2 garden 3 years ago about 8 months after we purchased it. It took that long to make the house liveable as it had not been lived in or maintained for over 3 years. We have a tendency to take on neglected properties that others think we are crazy to, as they need so much work. However, we always see potential and have a vision as to how beautiful they can be with a bit of hard work. 

This place has been hard (but fun) work as it was totally over run with weeds (blackberry, cape ivy, ivy, cotoneaster, dock, wild plums etc), rubbish and dominated by pasture grasses up to our armpits. Initially we commuted between Westbury and Kings Meadows, home renovating and slowly bringing over reclaimed building materials and plants to build our new garden. There was no initial garden plan, it has developed over time from observation and necessity. We started at the top of our sloping block near the house and worked our way downslope to improve access by reinforcing and building new terraces, paths and planting beds. We have been fortunate to have quite a few loads of free woodchip from an arborist friend to use on our paths. As we have no vehicle access to the back of the block all mulch and materials have been moved (and loads of rubbish removed) by hand, shovel and wheelbarrow.

We inherited a number of mature fruit (raspberries, figs, lime, mulberry, olives, loquats, cherry, apple, peach) and nut (walnut and chestnut) trees and a wired off berry/veggie area which was a great start and really what sold us on this place. We have planted more fruit trees and also transplanted large blueberry and currant bushes from Westbury into the berry enclosure with added drip irrigation to help the crops grow over summer. 

We have established two large mainly vegetable growing areas one with drip and the other with overhead irrigation. We do tend to merge the boundaries between veggie and flower gardens with all our big flower boarders having edible plants incorporated into them and all our veggie areas being infiltrated by flowers. We leave lots of decorative edibles such as parsley, coriander, parsnips, lettuce, brassicas, chard and leeks to self-seed throughout the garden so there is always, always plenty to forage, eat and enjoy.

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

This Northern visit will be at Kings Meadows on Sunday 8 December at 10.30am

If you would like to come please RSVP to fggnorthtas@gmail.com

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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The food gardens visited in November

On Sunday 17 November the Northern Food Garden Group visited Steve and Araina's garden at Punchbowl. You can read all about this visit and the garden we visited here.

On Sunday 17 November the Southern Food Garden Group visited Karen and Dan's garden at Blackmans Bay. You can read all about it here.

Many thanks to Denby and Nicki (North) and Mandy (South) for writing up these food garden visits. With only a few days between the visits and the release of this newsletter, they didn't have a lot of time. Well done, great effort!

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Food garden visits planned for coming months

South

Sunday 12 January: Libby and Tim's garden at Glenorchy
Sunday 16 February: Marian's garden at Taroona

Sunday 23 March: Ailsa's garden at Mornington

Sunday 13 April: Maria and Michel's garden at Ferntree

North

Sunday 19 January: Michael and Suzanne's garden at Punchbowl

Sunday 23 February: Kate and Roy's garden at Grindelwald

Sunday xx March: David and Deb's garden at Youngtown

Sunday 13 April: Nicki's garden at Ravenswood

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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Thinning fruit

Now is the perfect time to thin the fruit on your fruit trees if you have not already done so.

You may think 'but why should I?' and 'won't the wind do the thinning for me?'.  I admit that I don't like the task much either, but if your fruit trees are laden with small fruits at the moment, thinning that fruit is absolutely worth the time because:

1. Thinning allows the remaining fruits to become bigger and tastier.
2. If you don't thin, you may have a large crop of small fruits this season, followed by a much smaller crop next season. It is called 'biennial bearing'. Trees produce well one year, not much the next, the year after that they produce well again, and so on. Early and rigorous thinning results in more even crops over the years.
3. Chances of Brown Rot taking hold are much larger if there is no space between fruits.
4. The weight of too much fruit can break branches, in particular on young trees. 

I ruined a fruit tree by allowing a far too heavy crop to come to maturity without thinning. One day a major branch collapsed under the weight. It nearly split the tree in two.

Ideally you thin fruits when the fruit is quite small. You can thin later of course, but the longer you leave it, the more energy the tree spends on fruit that you are going to remove. Growers spend a lot of time thinning early in the season. 

I get clusters of five or more fruits on each branch of my dwarf peach tree. I remove at least three, sometimes four out of five fruits. After removing a bucket full of fruit, there is still ample left on the tree and the fruits become much bigger and juicier.

Imagine the size fruit you would like, and make space between the fruits, so ideally, when fruits develop to full size, they still don’t touch.

In addition to thinning fruit you may also want to thin leaves on trees that have a dense foliage. That will provide better ventilation on warm humid days (there are likely to be some this summer) and that will keep Brown Rot away.

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New to food gardening or to Tasmania or want to learn more?

Veggie Patch Basics is the name of a series of Food Garden Group blog posts that take you through the first twelve months of having a food garden in Tasmania's unique climate conditions. It discusses how to set up your food garden and make it a success right from the the word 'go'. The series starts here .

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What would you like to grow this winter?

It is December - early summer! Why would you think about your winter garden at this point in time? Well, it may be hard to believe, but some winter vegetables are best sown right now! Starting on time will be a key to success.

Find out more in Food Garden Group blog post Vegetables this Winter here.

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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 (*)
• Add sulphate of potash to the soil under peach and nectarine trees (*)

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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