FGG Newsletter August 2026

          🫛 Food Garden Group newsletter - August 2026 🫛

 We like to grow what we eat 

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Welcome to the 2026-2027 Food Garden Group season! The first FGG newsletter of the season usually comes out on the first of August, but BioSecurity Tasmania has published proposed new primary produce regulations and asked Tasmanians to respond to them before 5pm on 30 July, so this newsletter is early to alert you to this fact and invite you to provide feedback to BioSecurity Tasmania before the deadline.

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Proposed Primary Produce Safety Regulations

What is all the fuss about? Well ...... Most food gardeners would in the past have taken their surplus produce to food swaps, community houses or trade tables at Food Garden Group garden visits. If proposed BioSecurity Tasmania regulations get the green light you will be in breach of primary produce regulations if you take leafy vegetables or berries or melons without first providing BioSecurity Tasmania with detailed paperwork. 

For most people food safety is only in the spotlight when food that is supposed to be safe, is in some way contaminated and causes consumers to become ill or, worse, die. It is good that Biosecurity Tasmania wants to introduce new regulations that make primary produce safer.

The new regulations would align Tasmania with stricter national standards that aim to prevent rising foodborne illness outbreaks, such as the recent recall of alfalfa sprouts due to potential salmonella contamination. The new regulations will apply to berries, leafy vegetables and melons.

The proposed Primary Produce Safety (Horticulture Produce) Regulations were made available for comment late last year (phase-1), and many people provided feedback. BioSecurity Tasmania then published revised regulations (phase-2), and is inviting Tasmanians to comment by 5pm on 30 July.

The proposed regulations have raised many concerns, most of which have not been addressed in the phase-2 draft. They will add cost and administrative burden on small and large growers and may lead to some leaving the industry. They may also result in the demise of many non-commercial community activities that make food available to Tasmanians, thereby directly contradicting current government policies that aim to maximise food availability in Tasmania.

Olivia Rundle, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Tasmania, has produced a series of YouTube videos in which she explains what BioSecurity Tasmania is proposing and how the new regulations will impact on Tasmanians. You can find her videos here.

Primary produce safety is a big subject. It is therefore great that Olivia has tried to cover all aspects of the proposed regulations in her videos, so all affected growers, from home-gardeners to large commercial farms, can find out what is proposed, without having to plough through the comprehensive regulations themselves.

In this Food Garden Group newsletter, I want to draw your attention to the impact the proposed regulations will have on informal road-side food stalls, food swap events, and produce trade tables - activities supported and organised by individual home gardeners, where little or no money changes hands.

Extensive feedback on the phase-1 draft of the regulations didn’t result in making the regulations more workable for home horticultural activities. 

The phase-2 draft regulations state that home gardeners can only be exempted from regulations if their leafy vegetables, berries and lemons are consumed within the household, or given away to friends, family or neighbours.

In all other situations (road-side food stalls, food swaps, trade tables, you name it – any situation in which small quantities of produce are given or sold to the wider community) home growers will have to provide to BioSecurity Tasmania what are called ‘tier-1 notifications’, which are too onerous for most people to bother (for more information see Olivia’s video on tier-1 notifications go here ).

The result may be that most of these activities will either cease or, if continued, will be in breach of BioSecurity Tasmania regulations.

In Olivia Rundle’s words ...

These regulations are going to discourage long-standing community practices, including food swaps, roadside honesty stalls, fundraising produce sales, and informal local food networks. 

Biosecurity Tasmania has not been able to provide any evidence of outbreaks of disease from home-scale producers. Many people requested that in their phase-1 submissions. 

Effectively, the fears that many of us have about overreach by the government, loss of community autonomy, and erosion of the way of life we hold dear, have pretty much all been confirmed or ignored by the phase two proposal.

The following BioSecurity Tasmania information can help you form your opinion:

• Draft Regulations At a Glance here
• Frequently Asked Questions - Development of Primary Produce Safety (Horticulture Produce) Regulations here.
• Supporting Information here.

Please provide your feedback to BioSecurity Tasmania here.

The deadline for comments is 30 July 2026. You don’t have to comment on the whole set of regulations. You can comment on one or more aspects. 

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About the food garden visits we had in April .....

On Sunday 19 April the Southern Food Garden Group visited Kathy and Tom's garden at Tea Tree. You can read all about this great visit here.

Also on Sunday 19 April the Northern Food Garden Group visited John and Venie's garden at Newnham. For photos and texts about this visit go here.

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Pruning fruit trees and berries - when and how?

It is time to prune some berry varieties, but others should be pruned later or not at all. 

It is also time to prune some fruit trees, but many others are ideally pruned at other times of the year.

I sometimes find it hard to remember what to do for each type of fruit tree or berry, so a few years ago I put some concise info in a few blog posts on the Food Garden Group blog ....

FGG blog post Pruning Berries discusses how and when to prune 13 berry varieties.

FGG blog post Quick Guide to Pruning Fruit Trees discusses how and when to prune nine fruit tree varieties.

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Spray against Curly Leaf before buds burst!

Make sure that you don't miss the opportunity to protect your peach, nectarines and almond trees against Curly Leaf fungal disease. 

You need to spray your trees after buds have formed but before they open!

Once flowers are open, you are too late, and there is little you can do to prevent or overcome Curly Leaf for the whole season!

For info on what Curly Leaf looks like and what to do about it look on the Food Garden Group Blog for the Curly Leaf section in Pest-Control Quick-Guide.

If you want to make your own Curly Leaf spray look on the Food Garden Group Blog for Bordeaux Mix or Burgundy Mix in Homemade Pest Control Sprays.

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Food garden activities suggested for August

• Remove weeds now before they begin to grow and become a problem in spring
• Make big changes to your food garden’s bed, paths or irrigation at this quiet time
• Cut up and work in green manures you sowed in autumn
• Repair or replace tools before things get busy again

Vegetables

• Sow in pots loose-leaf lettuce, brassicas, leek, parsley, spring onions and salad onions

• Sow tomatoes in pots inside from late August in a sunny spot or heated propagation tray

• Sow in your garden broadbeans and peas (if you don’t get heavy frosts), spinach, chard and silverbeet

• Plant leek and onion (after applying some lime or dolomite), potatoes, yacons and ocas (once the chance of frost has passed), brassica, celery, parsley, loose-leaf lettuce, globe artichoke roots (in a sunny well-draining position)

• Cut off old asparagus stalks, add compost and add new asparagus crowns
• Lift leeks, carrots and parsnips before they go to seed and go woody
• Control slugs and snails if the weather warms up, especially around peas
• Foliar-feed crops once a month with seaweed extract to maximize 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)

• Tidy up strawberry beds, replace 3-year old plants and feed each plant
• Remove all fruit tree litter and loose bark and discard this
• Remove all weeds under and around fruit trees
• Remove old unproductive passionfruit vines
• Tidy up and prune berry bushes
• Prune apple and pear trees if this was not done in autumn
• Prune grape vines back hard while they are still dormant
• Prune citrus trees, if they need it, when there is no longer any chance of frost
• Prune or tip-prune fig trees in late August just before they break dormancy
• Plant new blueberries
• Feed all blueberry bushes a generous amount of blood & bone and mulch them (*)
• Plant new (bare-rooted) fruit trees, berry canes and grapes
• Move a fruit tree, if it needs to be moved, if the tree is still dormant
• Apply dolomite or lime to peach, nectarine, apple and pear trees if pH is below 6.5 (*)
• Apply potash to apple and pear trees - they will love you for doing so (*)
• Give all fruit trees a generous amount of woody mulch
• Spread compost, old manure, complete organic fertiliser around fruit trees and berries
• Put chooks around your fruit trees while they are dormant to get rid of pests
• Protect fruit tree trunks and roots if your chooks are damaging them
• Feed citrus trees a good dose of nitrogen-rich fertilisers from late August (*)
• Feed blueberry bushes a generous amount of blood & bone and mulch them
• Apply whip and tongue grafts to apricot and late plum varieties until mid-August
• Collect scions of dormant fruit trees and store in fridge for grafting later in the season (*)

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