There’s a permaculture principle of designing for disaster.  The same principle applies to big disasters (whoever had the bright idea of building the Fukushima nuclear plant wasn’t taking account of it), or small disasters like a hailstorm or a day of sizzling hot weather when carrots are germinating or establishing. Like many permaculture principles it’s hardly rocket science:  just research, consider and design for the extremes not just the ideal, and apply a bit of hazard assessment and risk management.

It’s the kind of thing that is elementary WHS.  If you were filling in one of those nowadays ubiquitous hazard assessment forms for Fukushima before the tsunami, you’d have to give it a 1 – which means stop, right now, and eliminate the hazard, even if it means you can’t build the power station there.  Same for the risks created by shipping coal and LNG out through the Barrier Reef or continuing to produce unlimited greenhouse gases – we don’t care how inconvenient or costly it is, if it’s a 1 you have to deal with the hazard.  Full stop. Right now.

Der.

Back to carrots.

This time of year, a tiny bit of hazard assessment says there are going to be thunderstorms and there are going to be frizzle days and chances are pretty good that you’ll get one or the other of them during the three weeks or so carrot seeds take to germinate and the further three weeks or so they take to establish to a relatively safe stage.  I know the death of a carrot is not exactly a disaster, but you’d have to give it a 1 – very likely to happen and if it does, almost certain to kill the carrots.

I rarely plant carrots directly out as seed at any time of year (or anything else much).  But if I need to, I can get away with it in autumn and winter.  My autumns here in northern NSW are normally wet and winters fairly mild.  WHS carrot risk drops to 3 or 4.  This time of year though, I germinate them in the shadehouse, grow them out to advanced seedlings, and only plant them out into the garden when they are robust enough to need at worst “Medical attention and several days off work”, and a frizzle day during the week or so it will take them to establish is at worst “unlikely”. Maximum risk a 4

I’ve written about my usual method for planting carrots before.  This week I’m planting out into the garden, besides the carrots, advanced seedlings of beets and spring onions, and I’m going to try sweet potatoes yet again (the wallabies love sweet potato leaves above just about anything else.) I’m also planting another round of seed in the shadehouse for planting out in January.

It has rained, the best kind of rain – overnight storms, not so heavy as to cause erosion, just heavy enough to deep water the garden and wet down the fire danger.  We still need more to fill tanks and dams, but there’s been enough for me to happily plant.

I’ve planted a few each of Hungarian Wax capsicums (in the picture), which are a yellow banana type, and my Supermarket Flats, which are a thicker walled, sweet pepper that is red when fully ripe.  They are at the perfect age for planting out – raised to advanced seedlings (about 15 cm tall) in individual pots filled with a compost/worm castings/creek sand mix.  This means I can plant them out with very little root disturbance and they will suffer very little transplant shock.  It also means they have fairly well developed root systems so they survive a few hot dry days without keeling over.  I’m planting out into a very well mulched garden bed that the chooks have cleared and fertilised for me.  They were watered in, and if it stops raining now I’ll water well again in a week, but from then on they’ll be largely on their own.  I put the sprinkler on if it doesn’t rain for a fortnight or more but otherwise it is just wait for harvest to start.

I’m also planting tomato seedlings – just red and yellow cherries now – it’s too late for the big Beefsteak varieties up here in fruit fly territory.  I have some Yugoslav and Brandywines that I planted early that are flowering now, and I should get some crop from them before the fruit flies move in, but I have learned not to push my luck too far.

I’m planting more zucchini, yellow button squash, cucumbers, potkins, and tromboncino, although I know I already have too many in.

And I’m planting beans.  I have about two metres of tall fence of each of Blue Lakes, Rattlesnakes, and Snake beans in already, at different stages.  We’re eating Rattlesnakes and the Blue Lakes are just about to come on.  This time I’m planting more Snake beans and some Purple Kings on the fences, and some dwarf black Turtle beans as an experiment. The turtle beans are a storing bean and a staple of Southern USA cuisine,  so I’m hoping they do well.  Has anyone else grown them?

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It’s a leafy planting day today, but it’s 38°C outside (100°F), with a dry northerly wind that has the zucchinis wilting.  A lettuce has no hope.

I plant a few anyway, on the offchance, selecting varieties that are supposed to cope with hot weather like Cos and Buttercrunch.  But the odds of getting any to harvest are pretty slim.  Salads in summer are based on cucumber and tomatoes and basil, not lettuce and mesclun. The weather forecast is predicting 100mm of rain over the next few days though, and if that just happened to be the start of a wet summer, I’d be pleased I gambled on a few lettuces.

Today I’m planting in a seed tray, besides a few lettuces, a few radicchio, a few amaranth, and the basils (Thai, lime, and sweet). And that’s it for leafies.  I shall try to keep enough water up to the mint and Vietnamese mint, and I’ll plant mustard and coriander for microgreens.

Last week I harvested mustard seed,  lots of it, and coriander seed.  Mustard plants grow insanely easily over winter here, and seed so prolifically that these days mine are all self seeded plants.

There’s a (very small) limit to the amount of mustard we eat as leaf – a tiny bit to heat up spinach and feta muffins or add a bit of spiciness to Saag, but that’s about it.  But the seed is valuable.  I make seeded or Djion mustard from it, use it in curries and dhal and pickles, and sow the seed to harvest as microgreens this time of year.

It’s a very simple planting method – a wide mouthed pot or shallow tray,  filled with a mixture of compost and creek sand, sown quite thickly with seed, kept watered and shaded in the shadehouse, and harvested with scissors when the sprouts are just at the two leaf stage (two real leaves besides the first cotyledon leaves).  At this stage they are a little bit spicy but not too hot, and delicious on salad sandwiches or added to a side salad or used as a garnish with egg or cheese based dishes.

The same method works for lots of seeds.  The limiting factor for me is seeds I can harvest in large enough quantities, and that make delicious enough microgreens,  to make it worthwhile.  My favourites are amaranth, rocket and mustard. All of them seed prolifically in my garden, yielding lots more seeds than I need to save for for the next sowing.

The coriander is a similar kind of strategy but I let them grow for about three weeks. I have lots of seed, and the plants won’t survive out in the garden.  So I plant them quite thickly in a pot and keep them shaded and watered in the shadehouse.  They will still want to bolt this time of year anyhow because the days are still lengthening towards the summer solstice and coriander along with most leafy greens is day length sensitive.  But if I plant a new batch every month and harvest them very young, I can keep coriander going through the summer.  It’s way better than the hydroponic coriander in the supermarket this time of year, and there are some dishes where only coriander will do!

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I am really loving tromboncino. Usually by this time of year, my garden is so full that I skimp on the sweet corn because I just don’t have room for it in my intensively fenced beds.  And if I plant it outside the netting, the bandicoots dig it up, then the wallabies and padimelons eat the plant, then the parrots and possums and brush turkeys eat the corn.

This year though, I haven’t planted any zucchini, and it’s amazing how much space that saves. Tromboncino work with all my zucchini recipes and the climbing vine is sharing the south side of a garden fence with tomatoes and taking up no ground room at all.  I learned last year how prolific they are, so I’ve only got four vines in, one in each of the last four beds I’ve moved the chooks off and planted out.  So they are at four different stages.  If I pick them young (like the ones at the front right in the picture) I can just about keep up with them, so far anyhow.

It means I have room for another round of sweet corn.  I have two lots in so far, one planted in August that will be ready for the first picking in just a few weeks now, and one planted in September that will follow on.  I missed sweet corn in the October planting – just not enough room to plant enough of a block so that it would wind pollinate.  Sweet corn is a herd plant – if you don’t have enough of them, the wind cannot blow the pollen from the flowers of one onto the silks of its neighbours, and you get cobs with lots of kernels missing.

I also have room for some endamame.  Or I will have by the time they are ready to plant out and I have moved the chooks on again. I love endamame but don’t plant them every year either.  Now is about the latest I could plant them, since they are day length sensitive and like long days to flower.  These ones will be flowering in  February, just in time before the days start to shorten at an ever increasing rate.

I shall plant the seed in the shadehouse today, coating each seed in innoculant and planting two to a pot in leaf pots filled with a mixture of compost and creek sand. When they are about 10 cm tall I shall plant out.  They grow to about 50 cm tall, so I’ll plant them out in a closely planted row around the southern side of a bed, in front of the climbers but behind all the shorter carrots and beets and lettuces and spring onions.

The dam is dropping but if we have a normal year, it should start to get wetter from now on, so with luck I’ll be able to keep the water up to a fairly full garden.

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