In fact it is nearly winter, will be by the time this planting break is over. There are roots and perennials planting days by the lunar calendar today and tomorrow, and again towards the end of the week. I don’t entirely trust the lunar calendar, but it does keep me in a nice rhythm and routine, so I do plant succeeding rounds of my staples rather than just mean to! This is a tray of mixed pearl onions and carrot seed, and if I plant just one of these every month it is a nice quantity for us – always enough ready for harvesting but never a glut.
I plant very few things, almost nothing, out into the garden as seed. Once upon a time when I had a huge unfenced garden it made more sense, but even then advanced seedlings were a major part of my labour economy. These days I live in a wildlife friendly environment that has succeeded all too well, and I have to use every bit of my fortress fenced garden space to its limit.
So these days I plant even carrots out as advanced seedlings. The basic concept is a bottomless pot, a tube, filled with a mix that is half creek sand and half garden soil. For carrots, I try to find some soil that is not too rich or they go all hairy on me and develop more leaf than roots. I mix carrot and spring or pearl onion seed together because they are such good companions and plant thinly, thinning out further to about 4 of each per pot.
I keep the box of seedlings in the shadehouse where they have a very cushy life until they are a good 10 cm tall. At this stage they are easy to handle, they can fight it out with any weeds that want to take them on, and I can plant them out scattered all over the garden. The month or so the seedlings spend in the shadehouse also allows me an extra month of yield from the spot.
I have been experimenting lately with newspaper tubes, but although they tell me newspaper these days has soy based ink, I don’t really like to put the quantities I use into the garden. So I’m playing at the moment with making tubes from banana plants. I like it so far – easy to harvest and to fashion into tubes, and I should be able to plant the carrot-and-onion sets out banana bark pot and all and let the worms do the rest. I’ll let you know how it goes!
There are fruiting planting days from today clear through till Thursday, and today brought some nice light rain perfect for bedding in seedlings.
All my first round of peas and snow peas are now out in the garden and I have planted a new round of seeds in paper sleeves in the shadehouse. This strategy is working particularly well for me at the moment as I have some beans and some cucumbers, both a bit ratty now but still yielding in the trellis space they will move into in the garden.
I have also planted a box of broad bean seeds, using the same technique. My climate is right on the margin for broad beans. I have to get the timing just right to get enough cold for them give a decent crop, and get it in before they just become an aphid red light district in spring. Luckily I’m not overly fussed about broad beans, because I’ll only get this one round of them.
I’ve mixed quite a lot of wood ash into the potting mix, and I’ll add some more when I plant them out.
The next leafy planting break according to the lunar calendar is Monday-Tuesday, and the weather report says we can expect rain. Amazing how often than happens – surely it can’t be co-incidence?
Anyway, it’s a good reminder that it’s time for a new round of leafy greens in any case. I have a few advanced seedlings of leafy greens ready to be planted out, and I have a whole lot of little seedlings ready to be potted on – parsley, celery, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, chinese cabbages, spinach, silver beet, amaranth, radicchio, lettuce, spring onions – all at this perfect two-leaf stage when transplanting them into their own private pot in a rich seedling raising mix will not set them back at all. They’ll stay there now till the next leafy planting day when I’ll plant them out into the garden as advanced seedlings, individually placed.
I’ll also be planting a new round of seed of all of them plus some broccoli as well. My challenge is not to plant too many of them because there will be another three rounds of all of these before their season is over!
This time of year is perfect for leafy greens in my frost free garden. The various kinds of cabbage moths and web moths have all disappeared and my predator population can keep up with everything else. The days are still shortening as we head towards the winter solstice so they are not in too much of a rush to bolt to seed. The cooler weather makes it much easier to keep the soil moisture levels up. And the space hogging zucchini and squash have finished.
All these dark green leafies like a diet rich in nitrogen, and happily I have enough compost made over the summer to give everything a good couple of handfuls in their potting mix, and again when I plant them out. Oh it’s nice when it just comes together – the lunar calendar, the weather, the season, the compost supply, seedlings at the right age to be potted on, the garden space to plant out.
