Today, along with the usual round of mixed carrots and spring onions, and half a dozen beetroot seedlings, I’m planting garlic. Lots of garlic.

It’s very early for garlic.  Conventional wisdom is Anzac Day at the earliest, more traditionally midwinter solstice.  But I’ve been planting earlier and earlier, and last year’s early planted garlic did well, albeit that was mid, rather than early Autumn.  I don’t know if it is a change in variety or a change in climate, but early seems to be working.

I am planting into pots in my shadehouse, each clove in its own pot, pointy end up,  just below the surface in the mix of compost and creek sand in the picture. This is partly because I want to be sure they do all come up planted this early, and partly because the garden is pretty full at the moment and I shall get at least a month’s head start this way. I shall probably plant another round next month as well, as insurance, and because I really don’t want to be buying any Chinese imported garlic this year.

I am also planting potato onions the same way.  This is a first for them.  Seed catalogues always get me in!

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Fruiting planting days today and tomorrow, but this time of year is the risky season for fruiting annuals.  If I plant things that are frost, or even cold tender now,  even in sub-tropical northern NSW, I am betting on a late start to winter. If I plant things that need the cold weather (like broad beans) I am betting on an early start.

I won’t bet on early yet – I’ll leave the broad beans for another month. My site is high and pretty nearly frost free, so broad beans are right on the margin anyway.  If you live further south, or even in a cooler site, you might like to put in some broad beans now though. I’ll have an each way bet on late, planting out a small number of advanced seedlings of squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and beans, but not so many that I’ll be upset if an early frost knocks them off.  I want to save space for peas and broad beans and cauliflowers and onions anyhow. And specially garlic.  I really don’t want to be eating anything imported from China or Japan this year. Sadly Japanese people don’t have that luxury.

Too late for capsicums, chili or eggplants even as advanced seedlings, but I shall put in more seed of tomatoes.  I have pulled back on tomatoes this year.  I use them so much that I got a bit greedy. Last year’s tomatoes failed to thrive as well as they should – nothing specific, just plants that looked a bit bedraggled and keeled over sooner than they should and fruit that was a bit scanty and less resistant to pest attack.  I put it down to a build up of soil bourne disease, caused by planting them in the same places too soon. This year I planted only in places that hadn’t had a tomato plant, or anything else in that family, for several years. It has meant I have had tomatoes for eating but not for bottling.  So I am keen to keep at least a little supply coming through winter to see me through.  By spring I will have given most of the garden a rest from tomatoes, and I should be able to plant bottling quantities again. It’s a good lesson, but one you’d think I would have learned by now!

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My mowing meditation this morning – I was thinking about the basil and macadamia pesto post and how much basil we have harvested this summer.  Pesto on toast for breakfast and on sandwiches and wraps for lunch,  pesto pasto, pesto pizza sauce, basil in polenta and moussaka and fish cakes and quiches, gorgeous tomato and basil and bocconchini salads.  I think if I had had just one pot to garden this summer, I would have planted it in early Spring with a sweet basil bush – the one indispensable ingredient at the bottom of a whole season of healthy eating.

Which of course led me to thinking, if I had just one pot to plant now, what would I be planting in it?  After an hour of mowing, I settled on flat leaf parsley.  It is the thing I think would be most difficult to buy, that I would use daily if I had it sitting on the step or the windowsill in a pot, and that I would most miss if I didn’t have it. Tabbouleh and green salad, omelette and quiche, kangaroo stroganoff and tagine, maidanosalata sauce for fritters and patties, fish cakes, winter soups and stews and casseroles.

I would choose a deep pot,  preferably a ceramic one – parsley has a single deep tap root and it doesn’t like too hot a soil.  I would fill it with a mixture of compost and creek sand and feed it every couple of weeks with worm pee tea. Leafy greens like a high nitrogen diet but parsley needs very good drainage.  I would put it in a sunny spot and be careful not to overwater – it will cope with drying out better than waterlogging.

Which then led me to thinking, the hardest part would be getting the one seedling.  Buy a whole packet of seed? Find flatleaf parsley seedlings (hard) and ditch most of the punnet? Maybe I should start a random act of kindness parsley in a pot giveaway.

So, fellow gardening bloggers – if you had just one pot to garden, what would you plant now?

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After the heat waves of the last couple of weeks, today is cool and overcast. The soil is moist from good rain over the last few days and it’s a leafy planting day by the lunar calendar. It’s past Lammas so the days are shortening fast now, telling potential bolters that winter is coming so going to seed now is a bad idea, and the best strategy is to store food to last through to spring.  And I have nice heavily mulched beds as a result of all the good mowing weather, some lovely mature compost, and a good stock of creek sand for making potting mix.  You couldn’t get a happier day for planting leafy greens!

The advanced seedlings strategy has allowed me to hold seedlings waiting for exactly these conditions.  Last leafy planting break, in the frizzle weather, I potted on all the seedlings I had in the shadehouse into individual pots and held them in the shade where I could keep water up to them.  I have seedlings that are now a month old, that would have died within days had I planted them any time in the last month. We may still get killer conditions over the next few weeks – I won’t plant all the leafy greens in my shadehouse. I always raise about a third more than I intend to plant out anyhow. So I will have a reserve  if we have a sudden heat wave or hail storm. But today is so nice, it’s most likely the reserves will be given away or recycled in a couple of weeks.

I’m planting out advanced seedlings of several kinds of lettuce,  leeks,  parsley, dill, basil and lemon basil, coriander,  rocket, aragula, amaranth, and Perpetual Green silverbeet . My celery seedlings are too small yet – celery are slow to germinate and slow to get going, and they really hate drying out, so I shall pot them on and hold for next month.

I’m also planting seed of  all the above except for the basils – I have enough of them now to last through to the end of the season – plus mizuna, endive, and Fordhook Giant and Italian silver beet.  I shall even give some cabbages, kale, and chinese cabbages a start – not too many – they’re this month’s long shot. It is likely that the cabbage moths will still be too voracious to get a good crop from them this early. But every year is a little different, so it’s worth planting out a couple just to see how they go.

The only leafies I can think of that I’ll leave out are English spinach – this far north it needs to be planted in the coldest conditions I can find – and broccoli – not worth fighting the cabbage moths for yet. My brussels sprouts are 10 cm tall but I shall hold them in the shadehouse as long as possible – they’re very marginal this far north.

I love the awareness of seasons that you get with gardening.  I am cooking with tomatoes and capsicum and zucchinis, but today has brought it home to me that summer is ending and the job of re-bricking the wood stove, that I put off till summer, can’t be put off much longer.

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