🫑 Food Garden Group newsletter - March 2026 🫑
We like to grow what we eat
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In this newsletter - what to do in your food garden in March, this month's Northern and Southern food garden visits, last month's visits in words and pictures, visits planned for coming months, genetically modified food, blog updates, and more.
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This month's Southern food garden visit
On Sunday 15 March at 10.30am you will be very welcome in Fiona and Craig's garden at Mount Nelson.
About their garden Fiona wrote
Our garden on the summit of Mt Nelson is ever changing as more time to garden becomes available and I continue to learn and experiment. We are situated at 350m in elevation, face due north and sit on dolerite bedrock. With rock in abundance, it has been used to create walls and garden borders. Over the years I have worked hard to build the soil depth and quality. Chickens have been an integral part, but we are currently having some chicken-free time while we upgrade the run.
Last winter I created a whole new food garden space on a former grassed area. This has 9 beds, 2mx4m and my intention was to run a well-planned crop rotation. I’ve already strayed from that plan. My reason was my original raised garden beds were being compromised by my vague food forest attempts. The more permanent plantings were taking up space and light. And I also wanted to start growing flowers for cutting. I like to grow food that is best eaten fresh from the garden or is not more generally available. Aesthetics are important too.
Craig’s wildlife exclusion fence has been transformational. I still have some fences within fences, but most wildlife has been successfully excluded, except now RABBITS have found my garden! Corn plants, lovingly grown from seed and planted into soil nourished with compost, sheep manure and biochar from a biochar workshop I hosted, have been eaten to ground level three times. It remains to be seen whether we get to harvest corn this season.
My little greenhouse is where my cucumbers, basil, lemon grass and turmeric have refuge from the cool climes of 350m or my seedlings establish before heading out to the main garden.
My ambitions to have a Chilean Guava hedge continue to be an exercise in patience. I’ve grown the plants from cuttings and have transplanted them from their original space as the Hazelnuts were overgrowing them and they often had wet feet being in a low, poor draining section of the garden. They’re now battling the Eucalypts for water and nutrition. You have to be tough to survive and thrive on Mt Nelson.
My greatest challenges currently are competing with Eucalypts and watering. Craig is my Minister for Infrastructure. He set up a drip watering system for the original raised beds, but the gentle slope and the shallow soil profile on a rock base mean that it is challenging to nuance the watering. Plus, my garden is bigger now and our water pressure is poor. Next infrastructure project – a watering system that can be managed from a phone app.
Regardless, my garden brings me great joy and I’m looking forward to welcoming you to share it with us.
Contributions for morning tea and the produce table will be much appreciated!
This Southern visit will be at Mount Nelson, 10.30am on Sunday 15 March
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 22 March at 10.30am you will be very welcome in Peter and Pam's garden at Longford.
About their garden, Peter and Pam wrote:
We live on a suburban block in Longford which has recently been enlarged by the purchase of a part of our neighbour's property.
We live on a suburban block in Longford which has recently been enlarged by the purchase of a part of our neighbour's property.
We both enjoy gardening and have been working at this site since 2013. We have substantially enlarged the gardens, reduced but improved the lawns and re-arranged the driveway for better vehicle access.
We have several fruit trees and a good size vegetable garden which provides us with fresh produce for much of the year. We also preserve the excess - bottling, freezing & drying, to use throughout the year.
All will be revealed on March 22nd.
Contributions for morning tea and the produce table will be much appreciated!
This Northern visit will be at Longford on Sunday 22 March 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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Last month's food garden visits
On Sunday 8 February the Northern Food Garden Group visited John and Colleen's garden at Ravenswood:
This month's garden visit to John and Colleen's Ravenswood garden was well attended and much enjoyed. John imparted lots of knowledge gained over his 84 years of gardening, including potato seed selection and limiting potato eyes to one only when planting.
On Sunday 15 February the Southern Food Garden Group visited Mandy's garden at Howrah:
A warm summer's day and a delightful garden greeted us for the the Southern Food Garden Group's February visit to Mandy's in Howrah. Mandy moved here about three years ago, and we were all astonished to see how she has managed to change the garden from a 'blank canvas' with mainly grass to this thriving plot with flowers everywhere and the vegie components well underway too!
You can read the complete article about this garden here.
Many thanks to Denby (North) and Pauline (South) for writing up these food garden visits.
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The 25-26 Food Garden Group season will end in April
After the April food garden visits there will be a winter break without monthly newsletters. Newsletters are planned to resume on 1 August. We hope to resume food garden visits in September. The planned visits for April are ......
South - Sunday 19 April: Kathy and Tom's garden at Tea Tree
North - Sunday 19 April: John and Venie's garden at Newnham
A big thank you to these FGG members for being happy to host a visit!
These visits will be advertised in this newsletter on 1 April (but they ain't no joke!). 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.
A big thank you to these FGG members for being happy to host a visit!
These visits will be advertised in this newsletter on 1 April (but they ain't no joke!). 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.
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Feedback from past food-garden-visit hosts
- It was an absolute pleasure for us to host a recent garden visit by the Food Garden Group and to share our property with like-minded friends. Max and Gaye are great organisers and arranged the entire event from roadside signage to parking areas, tables, urn and mugs. If you are thinking of hosting a garden event at your place, please get in touch with Max and Gaye and lock in a date. We would be pleased to come along and share our love of gardening - Gemma & Geoff Nov24
- It's great to see our own garden through others' eyes - Karen D 19Feb23
- Hosting a garden visit is fun and rewarding. We spend so much time in our food gardens and it is lovely to be able to share it with fellow gardeners who appreciate our efforts. The organisors make the process so easy for you as a host. You only need to supply tea, coffee, sugar, milk, spoons and maybe a couple of chairs and they bring everything else. Please consider hosting a visit to your garden - Denby B 22Jan23
- Such a lovely morning, thanks so much for organising these get togethers, so nice hanging out with other gardeners and sharing our gardens – Belinda R 10Dec22
- 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 D 25Sep22
If you would be happy to explore the possibility of a visit to your food garden next season, now is a great time to email us at .....
- foodgardengroup@gmail.com for Southern visits or
- fggnorthtas@gmail.com for Northern visits
We always visit hosts and their gardens first to discuss what we bring, dates, parking, maximum number of people you would be happy with etc, and to make sure that everything will be nice and easy on the day. Please talk to us to explore the possibility.
Without hosts we won't have any visits!
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March is a good time to prune fruit trees
The best time for pruning stone fruit trees (peach, nectarine, apricot, plum) is after you have picked the fruit, and when the growth of the tree begins to slow down in anticipation of losing leaves and then going dormant. That means March - April! If you prune these trees in winter, cuts may not heal well because the tree is dormant.
Other fruit tree varieties such as apple and pear are more tolerant of pruning in winter, but also respond better if pruned before they go dormant.
Food Garden Group blog post Quick Guide to Pruning Fruit Trees contains
- General fruit tree pruning hints.
- Specific hints for Apple, Pear, Apricot, Citrus, Fig, Loquat, Peach, Nectarine, Plum.
Pruning is not hard. If you make a cut that you later regret, most fruit trees are very forgiving. Whatever you do will be much better than letting a fruit tree go out of control, because that will lead to small fruits on a tree that is too high. Just have a go! You won't regret it!
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Purple Bliss - buyer beware!
In what is a test case to see whether Australians will accept genetically modified food, tomatoes the colour of a plum are set to go on sale in Australian fruit shops after this was approved by the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator and Food Standards Australia.
The Purple Bliss tomato was bred to include genes from the snapdragon flower to boost the fruit's antioxidants, flavour and colour.
There are a number of existing tomato varieties that are purple, so that was not the aim of this product. The reason why this tomato will go for sale in supermarkets, one might suspect, is to open the door to a future where many commercially-successful genetically-modified foods are for sale in Australia.
The development of glyphosate-tolerant wheat comes to mind as an example of what mankind comes up with when we begin to tinker with plant-DNA. Don't get me wrong: I am all for using science to improve quantity and quality of food. I just feel that the opportunities for getting it wrong and producing disastrous outcomes for our health or our planet will be ample.
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Microwave bottling revisited
Our last FGG newsletter mentioned an FGG Extra blog post on this method. One reader commented that the photo with that post was confusing. Marg M. (the writer) agreed and that led to a rewriting of the blog post. You can find a 'new improved' article about preserving small amounts of fruit with a microwave here.
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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
- After harvest feed peach and nectarine trees blood & bone or mature poultry manure (*)
- Feed citrus trees a 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
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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Might be a good idea to subscribe to this newsletter!
If you do, you will at the start of each month, except in May, June and July, receive an email with a link to a brand new newsletter. You won't receive any advertising or junk mail!
Go to https://fggtas.wordpress.com/, click on To Subscribe click HERE, and follow the prompts. Thank you for flying Food Garden Group!
If you do, you will at the start of each month, except in May, June and July, receive an email with a link to a brand new newsletter. You won't receive any advertising or junk mail!
Go to https://fggtas.wordpress.com/, click on To Subscribe click HERE, and follow the prompts. Thank you for flying Food Garden Group!
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Happy food gardening,
Max Bee
FGG coordinator
To subscribe to this newsletter go to https://fggtas.wordpress.com and follow the prompts
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/
To join our Facebook page search for Food Gardeners Tasmania and apply for membership
The Food Garden Group is affiliated with Sustainable Living Tasmania
Max Bee
FGG coordinator
To subscribe to this newsletter go to https://fggtas.wordpress.com and follow the prompts
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/
To join our Facebook page search for Food Gardeners Tasmania and apply for membership
The Food Garden Group is affiliated with Sustainable Living Tasmania
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