FGG Newsletter January 2026

 🍅Food Garden Group newsletter - January 2026 🍅

 We like to grow what we eat 

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In this newsletter - Is the weather really colder?, what to do in your food garden in January, this month's Northern and Southern food garden visits, what Food Garden Group Blog posts will be useful in January, last month's visits in words and pictures, and more. 

First ripe tomato of the season

On 5 December Maria D. shared on our group's Food Gardeners Tasmania Facebook page a photo of her first ripe tomato of the season (see above). It was in fact the first reported ripe tomato by anyone this season - even more amazing when you realise that Maria lives at Ferntree. How did she do it? She would have won this season's Golden Tomato Award if we had run the competition. Next season I should really bring back the Golden Tomato Award!

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This month's Southern food garden visit

On Sunday 18 January at 10.30am you will be very welcome in Kelly and Nick's garden at Sandfly.

About their garden Kelly wrote

Six years ago, we started with a house in a 34-acre paddock. We had beautiful alder trees on two sides and nine overgrown, unproductive fruit trees. We have made a few changes since then, but progress has certainly been slow. But we have had lots of time to observe and interact with the landscape!

Our small farm is a work in progress and we love it. In addition to the productive garden, we also have productive paddocks: we currently run sheep, cattle, quails and chickens. Although don't let the lambs, platypus, birds of prey and swans with cygnets fool you. Farm life offers very regular reality checks for anyone who overly romanticises the often-realities of hobby farming.

We are very slowly turning the garden into a productive garden. We started with wallaby proofing, removing the water-hogging alders and bring in heaps of manure. Those few jobs alone have taken up more of my time than I would like to admit.

We have had a reasonable amount of success grafting onto rootstock (purchased from Maple Grove). We are hoping to get our perennials established as the foundation of our productive patch. We have been preserving for a few years and we have observed that it takes real effort to use what is on hand. We realised that we could grow some bulk crops like Roma tomatoes biennially because we don't use huge amounts of passata etc. Similarly, we make a lot of jams, but we ordinarily don't eat jam every week. We are having to consciously adapt our diet to our little farm.

The seasonal excess issue eased in 2025 when the Allens Rivulet crop swap commenced, which gave us goose eggs, fruit leathers, breads etc.

The clay soils, winds and the frosts are our biggest challenges. Like most people we also struggle to find the time to tend to the yard as other issues arise (e.g. machinery repairs, lambing season). Coming into summer, watering is a huge time commitment, and I regularly joke that our veggies are very expensive.

Our current garden style is best defined as chaotic, but if you look hard enough you will see glimpses of what is to come as our grand plans slowly unfold.

Our biggest asset is the scale of the garden, but this is also our curse. Ironically, we would be much more productive if we had a smaller garden. 

Our garden priorities for 2026 are: plant the MANY potted fruit trees, build a greenhouse to extend our growing seasons, design and implement water infrastructure, think about creating more microclimates with windbreaks etc.

We look forward to showing you around and sharing our journey with you. We have learnt a lot, but we have so much more to learn.

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

This Southern visit will be at Sandfly, 10.30am on Sunday 18 January.
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 18 January at 10.30am you will be very welcome in Ken and Mylene's garden at St Leonards.

About their garden Ken and Mylene wrote:

We have only been at this property since June 2025 (8mths). We have downsized our property from NW Tas where we had 1.5acres with fairly extensive garden beds and orchard trees. We still hope to grow as much produce on our new property, but more efficiently. One thing we did learn early on is that the more space you have to grow, the more volume of everything you tend to produce. We would like to grow more variety but less volume to reduce the potential of wastage. 

Our new property already fortunately came with existing fruit trees (all dwarf) and some garden beds (both raised and inground), but these were a bit rundown. We have added additional garden beds and more fruit and citrus trees and have refreshed the existing beds. We have a heavy clay base about 3-6 inches below the topsoil, and are still learning how things grow here in the Central North. We have also added in an espalier trellis upon which I hope to grow different varieties of pears. 

I have in recent years taken an interest in grafting, mostly by way of Google and UTube videos. My intention is to multi-graft all of the existing fruit and citrus trees, and I have had mixed success so far. I have already grafted a Crabapple onto the Granny Smith, a Cox’s Orange Pippin onto the Pink Lady, and an unknown blood plum onto the Satsuma. I have also attempted grafting a lime onto our Meyer lemon. 

We did have intentions of getting chickens like we had previously but decided that the cost and their potential for garden destruction (if allowed to free-range) was too much. So the chicken house site has become potato beds. We try to grow as much as possible from seed, and this has been a slow process with only a homemade mini-greenhouse and limited north facing internal window ledges. Even with a heatmat and propagation box, we have had mixed success with striking new plants. In addition, the lousy spring weather has meant that our new gardens are off to a slow start. The only pests we seem to currently have are the blackbirds, which make a mess of our new plantings. 

I do not generally bother with crop rotation and interplant as much as possible with good companion planting in mind.

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

This Northern visit will be at St Leonards, 10.30am on Sunday 18 January.
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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Have a look at last month's food gardens

On Sunday 7 December the Northern Food Garden Group visited Harry and Jess's garden at Bridgnorth:

Northern gardeners visited Harry and Jess's property in Bridgenorth recently which provided an interesting insight into the challenges of establishing a food garden in a rural setting whilst building a house and living off site.

You can read the complete article about this garden here.

Also on Sunday 7 December the Southern Food Garden Group visited Jan's garden at Dynnyrne:

 

Jan's garden may be small - just 365 square metres - but it's a treasure trove of food plants, flowers and trees. creating a gorgeous green oasis. To create her garden, Jan had to remove a number of large trees & LOTS of yellow iris and ivy - keeping just a couple of mature trees as a backdrop.

You can read the complete article about this garden here.

Many thanks to Lynn and Lola (North) and Mandy (South) for photos and text of these food garden visits. 

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Food garden visits planned for coming months

South - Sunday 22 February: Mandy's garden at Howrah
South - Sunday 15 March: Jo's garden at Geilston Bay

South - Sunday 19 April: Kathy and Tom's garden at Tea Tree

North - Sunday 8 February: John and Colleen's garden at Ravenswood

North - Sunday 22 March: Peter and Pam's garden at Longford

North - April: John and Venie's garden at Newnham

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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Why keep a garden diary?

Many years ago I started writing down a short one-line note every time I fertilised, sowed, planted, harvested or pruned in my food garden. I still do that today. Over the years it became a really good way of recording what I did, when I did it, what the result was, and what I should do differently next time. Here are some examples of the one-liners I wrote down:

My garden diary is a spreadsheet on my computer, but of course it can be a notebook.

I find my diary really useful for all kinds of things:

What variety were those really nice beets last year? What was the space between my rows of peas? When did I sow my broccoli? What varieties of seed potatoes did I plant?

For more about keeping a food garden diary see A Garden Diary on the FGG Blog.

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Is the weather really colder this season?

Is the weather really colder this season or are we just imagining it? I looked in my garden diary for some evidence that everything is really later than usual. This is what I found (data over the period 2009 to 2025):

When did I harvested the first peas of the season? 

earliest in the season: 01-Oct-2020

latest in the season: 17-Nov-2025

When did I pick the first raspberries of the season?

earliest in the season: 15-Nov-2009

latest in the season: 13-Dec-2025

When did we have the first ripe hothouse tomato?

earliest in the season: 22-Nov-2014

latest in the season: 31-Dec-2021 (this year: 28-Dec-2025, 2nd latest)

So it is not just our imagination. The weather is really colder and most crops are much later than they have been for many years! 

Google provided the following explanation: It's cold in Tasmania this summer because polar air masses are pushing northwards, influenced by a negative Southern Annular Mode and a strong negative Indian Ocean Dipole, causing frigid conditions and strong winds, despite it being summer, with these cold fronts reinforcing themselves and dropping temperatures well below average.

Yep, exactly the easy to understand words I would have used. Thank you, Google!

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At this time of year you may want to know .........

• What is the best way to preserve my surplus crop? Our second blog named FGG Extra has a whole section devoted to preserving. You can see an overview of it here. A good article to start with is Preserving your Harvest.

• What is this pest in my food garden and what should I do about it? Food Garden Group Blog post Pest-Control Quick Guide describes and shows photos of 22 of the most common food garden pests and to get rid of them or contain them.

• How do get the best results with my tomato plants? Food Garden Group blog post Tomato Care & Repair will help you overcome or contain tomato-specific pests or diseases and respond to problems that are not pests or diseases at all.

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Food garden activities suggested for January

• Water regularly to make sure your soils don’t dry out
• Make sure your food garden is well mulched to conserve water
• 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, celery, Chinese cabbage and Asian greens
• Sow in your garden beans, spinach, chard, silverbeet, radish, carrot, parsnip, turnip, swede, beetroot
• Plant loose-leaf and 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, Brussels sprouts
• Minimise caterpillar damage to brassicas by manual removal, netting or spraying
• Put shade cloth over newly-planted seedlings to protect them from hot sun
• Put something under pumpkins that rest on the ground so they don’t rot
• Dig up potatoes and hill the ones that you are leaving for later
• Dig up all remaining garlic, allow to dry and store in cool, well ventilated spot
• Foliar-feed crops once a month with seaweed extract to maximise their health and growth
• Hand pollinate pumpkins, cucumbers and other cucurbits early in the morning
• Cut off tips of cucurbit vines that have two fruits so the fruits become larger
• Tie up or provide support for climbing crops such as beans and tomatoes
• Remove laterals on tomatoes and limit plants to 3 or 4 branches
• Remove flower-heads on rhubarb, so plants focus on forming leaves
• Sprinkle sulphate of potash once a month around vegetables that form fruits
• 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)

• Remove runners on strawberries if you think you won't need young plants next season
• Thin fruit on all fruit trees, so fruits become larger and branches don't break (*)
• Cover fruit trees with netting to avoid fruit-damage by birds
• 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
• Apply bud grafts to all types of fruit trees in the second half of this month
• 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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