I’m loving the selection of greens in my garden this time of year. There’s such an abundance, I pick some for us and some for the chook bucket every day. It gives us eggs with glorious deep yellow yolks and lots of Vitamin A.
The lengthening days are starting to show in all the early rounds, after hanging in there bearing and bearing for months, now going to seed. Luckily this year I kept up the successional planting through winter fairly well, so I have young ones coming on to keep the supply up. They won’t last as long but I’ll get a few weeks of bearing from them to extend the season. Which means I can appreciate the beauty of the flowers both in the garden and in salads, without regretting the loss of crops.
Very soon now I will need the space to plant out the advanced seedlings in the shadehouse, but if I can manage to eke out another couple of weeks, I will harvest the gone-to-seed greens as chook food. I shall pull up the whole plant and throw it to the chooks, a couple of plants a day. The seeds are a great high protein feed for them, and they enjoy the challenge of getting them out of the pods. And they round out the meal with the green leaves left on the plant too. Along with household scraps and the occasional box of outer leaves and trimmings I collect from the local supermarket, it means that I am only feeding them a couple of handfuls of bought food occasionally and my eggs are costing virtually nothing. And, though I found the snake sunning herself right near the chooks today, so far the new roost design has kept them safe and I’ve avoided feeding them to the wildlife. I’m beginning to believe I can count my chickens…
I love mulberries. If you were following my Muesli Bar Challenge recipes this time last year, you’ll know why. Besides being a super-food, they’re one of the few berry fruits that grow well this far north and fill that berry-fruit spot in the seasonal fruit calendar.
Sadly for me, everything else around here likes mulberries too. I’ve been meaning for years now to try taking enough cuttings in spring to create a veritable forest of mulberries, to try beating the wildlife by growing more than they can eat. (This is not a strategy that has ever worked for me, but I’m ever the optimist!)
This year all the conditions have come together. The mulberry tree is just starting to bud up, it is cool and overcast and a roots and perennials planting day, we passed a willow tree on the way home and I gathered some willow cuttings for rooting hormones, and I have a nice batch of potting mix that is mostly creek sand ready to pot them in. Couldn’t get better conditions.
I’ve taken lots of finger thick cuttings, using a very sharp knife to cut at an angle just below a bud. I’ve dipped the bottom of the cuttings in a bucket in which I’ve been steeping the willow cuttings – willow is a rich source of rooting hormones. I’ve filled pots with a potting mix that is mostly creek sand with a bit of mowed old cow pats to hold moisture, poked holes with a stick (not the mulberry cuttings) and planted them with a couple of buds below ground.
With a bit of luck, I will hopefully have dozens of mulberry trees to plant out in a few months, and in a year or two maybe enough mulberries for us and the birds. I can dream!
This is last year’s post at this time. It seems I am making a habit of it!
If I were at home today I would be planting potatoes. In my frost free garden, I would be planting them straight out – making a small burrow and covering the seed potatoes with 10 cm or so of composty soil, giving each plant about 50cm of elbow room in each direction so that I can “hill up” the plants as they grow with more compost.
“Hilling up” just means piling soil, compost, and/or mulch up around the stem, leaving 20 cm or so of leaves exposed. Potatoes are not really a root crop – the tubers grow off the stem, not the roots, so the more compost I am willing to devote to surrounding the stem, the more potatoes I will get. I would be picking a sunny, well drained spot in the garden that can do with a good top-dressing of compost after the spuds are finished so I am not tempted to stint the hilling up.
I would not be planting too many of them – we’re not active enough to eat high GI carbohydrates at every meal, and now that I have no huge boys at home to feed the demand for potatoes has gone way down. But home-grown new potatoes are such a gourmet delight I grow them, like the asparagus and strawberries, as a feature and delicacy rather than a staple.
If I were worried about frost, I would still be trying to get them started off now, even if it meant sprouting them in large pots of composty soil in a warm spot in the shadehouse. Frost will kill the young leaves, but the hot nights of October will make the plant just burn all its calories rather than storing them in new tubers.
I would be planting the certified seed potatoes I ordered by mail order so I know they are not affected by a virus that progressively lowers the yield in each generation. I have been “chitting” them by leaving them out in the light (but not direct sun) on the verandah table to develop eyes since they arrived. In my sub-tropical climate, they are bound to get aphids carrying the virus, but it won’t affect the yield in this generation. It just means that I can’t save my own seed potatoes year after year.
But I’m not at home. I’ve managed to organise a few days away at the beach. So potato planting will just have to wait till next week. Lucky I’m not a purist!
I just caught the very end of this fruiting planting break yesterday. I was determined not to miss it – it’s one of the biggest of the whole year. But being a weekday, my time was a bit crunched and I’m only getting around to finishing off and posting about it today. I’m not too stressed. The lunar calendar is only allowed to cheer me on, not to chastise me!
I quite like deadlines – they give me a target. Without them I find that, in my busy busy life, things that are important get put aside in favour of the things that are most noisily urgent. And seasons don’t scream urgent, but they don’t wait. They are a wonderful reminder that we humans can argue all we like but nature holds trump cards. We live on a little spinning planet, and there’s the reality of it.
I love the spin of it. Now is the season for eating broccoli and peas and spinach, but for imagining the harvest of tomatoes and eggplants, zucchini and beans as the seeds are poked into the warming earth. We are just past Imbolc, which marks the peak of the bell curve in the lengthening days. Although we had the fire on last night spring is well on its way.
Last month I stuck a few summer seeds in, too early but just for fun. Most of them are just coming up now. Planting too early really doesn’t speed it up. But up here in northern NSW, on my very nearly frost free site, I can now start seriously planting all the summer crops. Yesterday I put in:
Tomatoes – I have some Brandywine seedlings up from last month. They are the most glorious tasting tomatoes but susceptible to fruit fly. I’ll try to get some early ones, but for my main summer tomatoes I’ll go for the fruit fly resistant cherry and Roma and Principe Borghese this time.
Eggplants – I have a hard time with eggplants. There is lots of wild tobacco around this area, and it harbours flea beetles that prefer my eggplants. I’m planting red and white and black varieties. I generally have the most luck with the red.
Capsicums – I have several varieties I like. Corno de Toro for stuffing, perennial (which are really semi-perennial) for a reliable supply for cooking, baby flat for salads (I call them supermarket capsicums, because that’s where I got the one for seed, but I think they are capsicum annuum). I won’t plant any chilis – I have several perennial bushes going strong.
Zucchini and Squash – my own golden squash and blackjack zucchini seed saved from last year, and this year I’m putting in quite a few Trombocino. I tried two last year and loved them. They climb, which is an advantage in my fortress fenced garden – the fencing gives me lots of vertical space, and zucchini are very space hungry. They also yielded really well, didn’t get any powdery mildew, and the fruit is a bit denser than zucchini.
Cucumbers – I’m trying mini white from Diggers this year. They say it rated best on their taste test. I’m picky about cucumbers – I like Richmond River whites and continental types, so we’ll see how mini whites compare. (I’ll put in a couple of continental just in case.)
Rockmelons and Watermelons – hard to fit in my garden. They have to be inside the fence or the turkeys get them. But if I plant the seeds in pots, I’ll have a month or so to find some room.
Beans: Blue Lake, Purple King, Madagascar, and Brown Seeded Snake beans, all seed saved from last year. This year I remembered to put some aside so we didn’t eat them all! I’ll put some Winged Beans in too, but not till next month. They are really tropical and need very warm soil. (Same really goes for the snake beans too).
That’s the basics. They’re all fresh seed so I sorted them first, so only the few I am planting go out to the shadehouse. I’m planting them all in seed trays and pots in the sunniest, warmest corner of the shadehouse in a mixture of creek sand and old compost, with a bit of wood ash from the stove (especially for the beans, who like it a bit alkali). The garden is still too full of broccoli and brussels sprouts to plant them out, and I want to lay down a deep mulch blanket before I plant out the seedlings. Spring is generally very dry here.
Today, I’ll see whether I have room for okra and gooseberries and tomatillos. I want to put in some luffas this year but maybe they can wait a bit. I’m thinking about sweet corn too. It’s very exciting!
Tiny little hole in my fence – it took me an hour to find it – and they’ve dug up every single thing I’ve planted in that bed for the last month. Where’s the snake when you need it!
And the bower birds have got into the shadehouse too. It’s slightly tragic for the leafy greens, because it’s change of season time. I have a few advanced seedlings of lettuces, raddicchio, spinach, silver beet, celery, parsley, coriander, and leeks to put in, but I didn’t raise many seed of them last month because it was already then into risky time and I didn’t think I’d have anywhere to plant them. And the bower birds have taken the tops off all the baby broccoli, kale, chinese cabbages, and rocket in the shadehouse.
I won’t bother replanting seed of most of them now. By the time they are ready to plant out, the days will be lengthening so fast they will just bolt to seed, and the cabbage moths will start to get active anyway. So there will be a little spot in early November when I’ll curse the bandicoots and bower birds again for the early end to the leafy greens season.
In my seed raising trays, I’m planting seed of heat hardy lettuces this time – purple and green oakleaf varieties. I’ll go for aragula (wild rocket) rather than rocket – it will survive the heat better and won’t tend to bolt to seed so fast. Amaranth has self-seeded all over my garden this year so I won’t bother with seed of it. No more coriander – I’ll rely on the perennial culantro (or Mexican coriander) from now on. But it’s quite exciting to be planting the first basil for the year – sweet basil, lemon basil, lime basil, Thai basil. I am already starting to imagine pesto!
