These are the spuds I planted back in early August. They grow so fast!  I planted them in a trench about 20 cm deep and I’ve been pulling the compost in around the stems, leaving just the top leaves exposed as they grow.  This morning I hilled them up a bit more – they now have about 80 cm of stems underground, hopefully with lots of little shoots starting to bulb out with spuds. In another few weeks they should start to flower and I will be able to start bandicooting them, or stealing potatoes from under the mulch leaving the plant to finish growing out.  I hope. We have hot weather on the way according to the weather reports, and if it gets too hot too early they won’t bear well. Fingers crossed.

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It’s cool and damp today, a perfect planting day.  Soooo tempting.  But I know that within a month or so, we are likely to be getting frizzle days, days when the fire danger meter down on the main road points to Extreme. (It hasn’t been updated yet to include the new category introduced since the Victorian bushfires – Catastrophic – but we’ve already decided to follow the advice of the Rural Fire Service, and arrange to be somewhere else on those days.  Our house is well prepared, but the warning is that on those days, nothing is well prepared enough.)

We’ve had frizzle days ever since I’ve lived here – nearly 30 years.  But with climate change, they are becoming more frequent and more extreme.  That’s the climate change pattern.  The weather has always been variable, with long cycles and short cycles overlapping and catalysing each other to create occasional “extreme events”.  Climate change just raises the whole kit and caboodle a notch or two, so what was a “very high” fire danger becomes “severe”,  what was “extreme” becomes “catastrophic”, what was a defendable position becomes foolhardy.

We’ll leave on a catastrophic fire day, but the climate change pattern of bumping everything up a notch is likely to mean that what was a grassfire that would go out of its own accord at night, or be easily fought, becomes a bushfire that needs serious attention.  We’re becoming more and more conscious of conserving water for firefighting.  So although we have a lot bigger reserves these days, I’m even more reluctant to plant things that will need watering.

So, mid-spring, heading into summer, la Ninã or no, I’m not planting any more fruit trees, not even to replace the jackfruit and macadamia twisted off at the base by the storm this week.  I’m planting  my usual round of carrots and spring onions, and that’s it.  I’ll wait till February, when the worst of the fire season is over, to plant trees. I won’t even regret it if it turns out to be a wet summer.  It’s not about politics, it’s about risk management.

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Everything has lined up beautifully for a planting day today – no bottlenecks for once.  I have old compost and creek sand for seed raising and potting mixes, seeds and seedlings for planting, a new bed just vacated by the chooks ready to plant into and mulch to mulch up the spaces in the old beds, a barrel of old seaweed brew, a dam full of water, a lovely cool, slightly overcast day following some good rain yesterday, and a Sunday free.  When all the bits are there, the assembling is so easy, and I can feel like I get so much done in a day.

I have a seed germinating box full of tomato, capsicum, and  eggplant seedlings planted last month, all now at the two leaf stage and ready to pot on.  I have been selecting the strongest three or four of each and potting them in individual pots, and planting another round of seed of each to give me continuity of supply.

I also have seedlings of several varieties of beans, cucumbers, zucchini, and squash ready to plant out, and I’ll plant another round of all of them too, skipping the seed germinating stage and planting directly into individual pots.

I have seedlings planted the month before now a good 15 cm tall and ready to plant out.  I took the leaf-tube pot off to show you the root development.  This seedling has had a month in its own private pot of compost mixed with a bit of creek sand.  For the last week it has been out in full sun, and I can plant it out now without damaging the roots at all, and it won’t miss a beat.

If I plant it into a newly chooked bed, I won’t need to fertilise any more at all.  If I plant it into an older bed, I might give it an extra handful of compost and surround it with a good thick layer of mulch.  It’s a Principe Borghese variety so it is indeterminate, so it will grow tall.  I shall plant it next to a fence in one of my fortress fenced beds (one of the advantages to having to fence intensively is ready made trellises) and tie it up to the fence as it grows.  I’ll water it in, but then only water if we get a few weeks without any rain.  From now on, it’s pretty much on its own till it comes to picking.

And then, just because I can, I’m going to break all my own rules and plant some sweet corn seed directly out into the newly chooked bed.  I didn’t have any seed to plant last month, so I’m a bit late with the corn, and now the bed is ready.  I shall put some in pots as well at the same time, so I have some to fill any gaps from no-shows.  I am aiming for about 16 plants – just about the minimum number I am likely to get away with to get a good rate of setting of kernels on the cobs.  But I don’t want too many at once.

It’s just about the biggest planting day of the year, and it’s so nice when it all comes together without a bottleneck.

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There is a reason that Greek salads have no lettuce.  Greece has a Mediterranean climate – cool wet winters and hot dry summers, and lettuce and hot dry summers don’t mix.

Our summers here in Northern NSW are usually wetter, but the rain comes in thunderstorms.  Any lettuce seeds I plant now will be coming to maturity in 8 to 12 weeks, in December and January.  They can expect to need to endure days of frizzle weather when even if I water heavily in the morning, by midday anything with big green leaves will be wilting.

This leafy planting break, I shall whack in a few seeds of very heat tolerant, bolt resistant varieties – wild rocket (aragula – more bolt resistant than regular rocket), cos, brown romaine, and royal oak leaf lettuces, and maybe a few more of a new lettuce variety I am trying this year called 2 Star from Southern Harvest seeds.  But I shall only plant out a couple of each and they are long shots.  I won’t expect too much of them, a few weeks of harvest if I am lucky.  In December and January I will be making Greek salads and tabouli, not salads based on lettuce. The only other leafies I am planting are another round of all the basils.

I shall plant the seeds in seed raising mix in the shadehouse, and pot on the seedlings into a rich mix of compost and creek sand.  I shall keep them well watered and protected in part shade in the shadehouse until they are well advanced, then plant them out into a deeply mulched spot with minimal disturbance to the roots.  In midwinter you might get away with buying a punnet of lettuce seedlings and tearing the roots apart, but from now on, all that is likely to happen is that they go bitter and bolt to seed.

I am also planting out the advanced seedlings planted last month.  The picture is a 2 Star Lettuce, supposed to be heat and bolt resistant.  I also have some cos, romaine, and mignonette to plant out, and basils and aragula.   I shall make a hollow in the mulch and dig a little hole just big enough to put the seedling in, leaf tube and all, causing minimal disturbance to the roots.

They may all come to nothing.  A couple of days over 40 degrees C, which sometimes happen, and only the basil will still be worth harvesting.  But that mixture of staples and long shots is the basic design nature adopts for most ecosystems, and it’s  not a bad model for maximising variety and minimising risk.

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