Remember this garlic? Planted into potting mix a month ago.  Look at it now. I think every single clove sprouted, and some of them now have leaves 30 cm tall.  I have three boxes like this for planting out today, and I’ll put in another three boxes of cloves for planting out next month.  Not that I need successive crops with garlic – they all get harvested at more or less the same time –  but rather to give me a bit of insurance against weather or in case a wallaby gets in to my fencing.  I’m planting them out in three different beds for the same reason.

Today I’ll also plant out my onions – Hunter River Browns and Lockyer Gold – varieties carefully chosen to suit the relatively long winter day length this far north.  And I’ll put in another box of seedlings.  Like the garlic, they’ll all get harvested at more or less the same time.  Garlic and onions are so picky about day length that I can’t stagger them much.

I’ll plant out carrots and put in another box  for successive crops, using my standard method.  I have a bit more choice in varieties this time of year, but I’m liking Nantes so much and they’re doing so well for me, I think I’ll just stick with them. I shall put in a box of parsnips using the same method. Parsnips planted now will be ready for harvest in late winter, and they’ll be the best ones of the year.

I’ll plant a few beetroot seeds in a seed raising box, select half a dozen of the strongest of the ones germinated last month to pot on, and plant out the ones germinated the month before.  That way, I have about 25 beets on the go, but only about half of them taking up room in the garden at any one time, and about half a dozen ready for harvesting at any one time.

It’s perfect garden weather here today, and not sensible to be inside on a computer!

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The Broad Bean seeds I planted nearly a month ago are up and looking healthy, and I have a spot where some zucchini and squash have just come out, so today they’re going out into the garden.  It marks a real turning point. The autumn planting is here!

They were potted up in my usual compost and creek sand mix with some wood ash mixed through, and I’m giving  each a good double handful of compost mixed with wood ash as I plant them out.  My soil is a bit more acid than they like it, and the ash will bring the Ph up a bit, and the potassium levels too.  I’m watering them in with some seaweed and nettle brew to help them stave off the last of the summer’s aphids.  I’ve been using Aquadulce variety the last few years, and planting earlier than I used to, and it seems to be working except that it means I’m planting out while aphids are still around and broad beans would have to be one of their favouries. But by planting earlier, and an early variety, I”m getting decent crops even this far north, right on the margin of broad bean territory.

I shall plant another round of seed in the shadehouse today too, so as to have at least one successional crop.  And I’ll plant the first round of peas and snow peas. I only plant climbing varieties these days.  The return on space is so good. I have Telephone and Massey Gem peas and Oregon Giant snow peas.  The Oregon Giants did well for me last year but I’m still looking for a variety  I used to have  that was such a good bearer – a relatively short climber – about 1.8 metres – and very mildew resistant. If anyone knows what it might be?

Last year the mice got my early rounds of peas and snow peas and in the end I had to bring the potted seeds inside and rig up our Weber barbeque as a sort of temporary propagation house.  This year I have my fake owl, and the broad beans all survived without being stolen, so I’m hopeful.  But I’ve brought one pot inside just so I can monitor when they should have germinated.  If the mice get them, I won’t wait so long to replant this time.

I shall also put a couple of kinds of tomato seeds in a propagating tray.  Yellow cherries and Principe Borghese have both done well for me as winter tomatoes in the past.

A nice easy, slow Sunday morning in the garden. Then time to bake bread, read the papers right the way through, go for a walk and see how the creek is faring, chat on the phone to my kids for ages, and maybe even light the fire under our outside bathtub for a “star bath” tonight. Mmmm Sunday.

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Leafy planting days from Sunday through to tonight, and I meant to post this on Sunday, but I was having too much fun in the garden to come in.

In Spring and Summer, it’s the fruiting annuals that dominate the planting calendar. In Autumn and Winter, it’s the leafies. This is a big and interesting planting break, the first one for the season in this part of the world when I plant brassicas – kale, cauliflowers, broccoli, cabbages and chinese cabbages. It’s also the first when I plant spinach, silver beet, celery, and parsley.  I plant some lettuces and rocket all year round, but this time of year I swap from the heat-hardy varieties to the bigger collection of more interesting winter varieties.

We are past the equinox now (I missed the celebration this year – it was a hard toss-up but the need for a long bath and an early night won out). It means the season of long nights has started. Up here it never snows and rarely even frosts, but plants don’t know that. They store food and hunker down, waiting for lengthening days to signal that it is safe to go to seed. So all the bolters are now safe to plant.

It has, all of a sudden, got cooler too.  I put an extra blanket on for the first time last night, and had to heat water for a morning shower after a night cool enough to undo the day’s work of the solar hot water system. Very soon we shall start lighting the slow combustion stove for cooking, heating, and to boost the hot water system.  There are still a few cabbage moths and aphids hanging around, but not for long now, so it is now safe to plant a whole range of vulnerable vegetables.

I planted all the seed in the photo – just a few of each – there will be five or six more successive plantings of them all to come and I don’t want to use up all the space in the first month. Plus there are still zucchini and squash and capsicums and cucumbers bearing that will gradually die off over the next few months.

I find it hard to love winter but the winter greens are some compensation – I’m really looking forward to pulling out the kale and cauliflower recipes again.

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Onions and garlic are pretty well the only fresh foods that I regularly eat out of season.  I don’t preserve much or dry much or freeze at all. I love the sense of being connected to the spinning of the planet that eating with the seasons brings, and every season has plenty enough variety even for an adventurous cook like me. Except for onions and garlic.

I grow spring onions, chives and garlic chives for eating fresh all year round, and bulbing onions in autumn and winter for fresh eating  over spring and early summer, but this far north it’s hard to grow enough good storing varieties to last the rest of the year.  Onions and garlic are strongly day-length sensitive.  This far north I have to choose short to medium daylength varieties, or they go to seed without developing a bulb at all, and I only get a couple of  months to plant them.

Every single one of the garlic cloves planted last month came up.  That’s them planted out in the picture. They are all now about 20 cm tall and have a nice well developed root system.  And I’ve freed up a bit of room in the garden, partly by moving the chooks on so I can plant out the bed they have been living in, and partly by eating lettuces and beets so I can plant where they were.

I am planting them out in groups of about half a dozen this time so I don’t lose so many.  Garlic are antibiotic so I like to plant them in different spots around the garden as a disease control measure, but I’ve found that if I scatter them too far and wide I forget to harvest too many!

The potato onions haven’t done so well. I think it’s been a bit too warm and wet for them.  About half came up and about half rotted before germinating. I have planted out the survivors and will see how they go.  My climate may be too sub-tropical for them.

This planting break I’m also planting onion seed in seed boxes in the shadehouse.  I plant onion seed in a very similar way to carrots.  In fact, for much of the year I plant them mixed together.  But this time of year  I’ll plant tubes of  the varieties for storing – Hunter River Brown and Lockyer  Gold have been good varieties for me – on their own.  I sow seed thinly and when they’re up, thin to about half a dozen per tube. I plant that lot out as they are – they will spread out a little all on their own after they are planted out. Like the garlic, I’m planting them in small clusters of about half a dozen tubes, so it is easier to find them to harvest, but scattered enough to take advantage of companion planting.   Because they take such a long time to bear – nearly six months – being able to hold them in the shadehouse for a couple of months is a major advantage.  By the time they are ready to go into the garden, all the spots now occupied by zucchini and squash will be free. And the planet will have spun into a new season.

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