June 2022 Kitchen Garden Guide

 (The day after writing this piece I picked up an old Organic Gardener magazine from 2011 which featured an article by Tasmanian chook man Paul Healy. Most of how I feed my chooks came from the advice Paul used to give on the radio on Saturday mornings, just as he describes in this magazine article.)

Various things are happening in my garden which indicate that the plants know a thing or two about the season that I do not.  Firstly, self-sown miners lettuce and corn salad are both coming up at the same time. This is a treat because I love them both and usually have to wait until almost the end of winter for the corn salad to appear, which then grows quickly before running to seed. Another thing is that frost has not yet knocked off the yacon leaves, which are very large and generally have turned black by now, telling me it is time to harvest the tubers. The BOM forecast for the southern Tasmania winter says we are in for warmer than average days and nights during winter, with average rainfall. With this in mind, I will wait for a while longer before covering my lemon tree with fleece.

Sprouts and microgreens

Shorter days and low sun angle in Tasmania mean plant growth is very slow during winter. These also affect humans, mentally and physically. The best approach to maintaining your health and vitality at this time includes making every mouthful as nourishing as possible. It is time to grow sprouts and microgreens because those very first moments of a seed’s germination are packed full of enzymes and nutrients.

SPROUTS (grown in a jar or container, without soil or the need for sunlight) should be eaten when the growth is only a couple of mm long, not left to grow long. My favourites are: lentils, chickpeas, fenugreek, buckwheat, mung beans, all of which only take 2-3 days. Wash well before eating to wash off the phytates. Some people prefer to blanch them before eating, but I don’t.

MICROGREENS (sown thickly in a tray of soil and raised in a sunny window or greenhouse) are cut with scissors and eaten when they have their first true leaves after the initial 2 baby leaves. This may take 2 – 3 weeks. There is excellent information on the Green Harvest website. Anything with edible leaves will make delicious, nutritious microgreens for salads.

Keeping chooks laying during winter

There are some absolutely gorgeous looking chooks but I have chooks to lay eggs, to constantly turn my weeds, finished plants and autumn leaves into compost, to chat with and to add their bedding to my worm farm. So, I have hylines or isabrowns, which are chooks that have been bred to lay. I don’t have roosters. Every November I get 2 new, point of lay hylines because I know from experience that 2 older chooks will die during the year, from old age or raptor attack or something else (I rarely eat my chooks). Buying them in November ensures that they get laying as we come into summer and they will keep laying pretty much every day for at least 2 years. Having 2 young chooks seems to also keep the older chooks in a laying frame of mind longer!

They have all day access to Red Hen grains (the one without animal protein). In the late afternoon I give them a small amount of organic wheat and sunflower seeds that have been soaked in water for 24 hours. If I have some unused stock or milk or anything else, I use that but water is fine. Soaked grain is more nutritious (as in the sprouts above) and feeding them late in the day ensures that they go to bed with a full crop, which evidently keeps them warmer at night.

They have access to water, which has a clove of garlic in it, for their health and for worm control. I don’t refresh their water until is it running low. I don’t find it necessary to treat them for anything (parasites, mites etc). They love freshly picked greens and I give them some most days, on the ground, held down by a brick, so they can tear off what they need.

Their coop is deliberately airy, but dry. They have a big free range area under the fruit trees and often out in my front garden, away from my vegetables. Dust bathing is very important and the ground under the oak trees stays fairly dry, which is handy. I don’t fuss about with chook care! But I talk to them and touch them or pick up them every day so they are easy for me to handle if I need to trim their wings or deal with for any reason. New chooks, like new puppies, learn from the older ones so having calm, happy, older chooks is really important.

I have not bought eggs for 20 years or more and currently have 3 chooks.

 

Seeds to sow in June Sow in the garden: Broad beans Salad and spring onions Shallots Chives English spinach Radishes Sow in trays to plant out later: Brassicas Globe Artichokes Coriander Chervil Lettuce Rocket Asian greens Free seeds available at the Cygnet Seed Library (see facebook page)

Plant out Garlic Asparagus crowns Divide rhubarb Winter herbs: coriander, chervil etc Winter flowering annuals Globe artichokes Bulbs Asian greens Lettuce Spinach Winter Reading Herb: a cook’s companion by Mark Diacono…. An absolutely fabulous book about making the most of herbs, in every way   Eat Wild Tasmanian by Rees Campbell…. About growing and eating Tasmanian edible plants

 

Jobs for June -Prune deciduous trees except cherries and apricots -Feed and mulch the dripline of fruit trees with anything you have, including seaweed and good sprinklings of ash from the fire. -Collect seaweed (especially kelp) after winter storms and cover your asparagus patch with it. Brassicas also love it. Wonderful added to your compost too. -Walk in the forests and see the fungi

-Lacto-ferment root veg and sprout seeds to add vitality and nourishment to your body during winter. -Take time to read, write, walk, swim, breathe, cook and think. -Make a wonderful pesto with chervil and almonds / rocket and pistachios / parsley and walnuts. ---Make hempseed butter for hot toast and honey. -Check out my blogs for food and gardening inspiration…. Vegetable Vagabond and Gardeners Gastronomy

February 2022 Kitchen Garden Guide

 

Welcome to the southern Tasmanian kitchen garden guide for 2022, where I talk about growing food, all year round. To find all my previous 9 years or so of Kitchen Garden Guides head to my blog called Vegetable Vagabond and look for the Garden Guides link directly under the header. It’s a big job to upload them all there, so it is not finished yet! I want to add relevant photos and links, which I cannot include in this Classifieds paper version too.

Eating by the seasons brings health to mind, body and soul as well as real purpose to our lives, no matter our age or ability. The next level kitchen gardener does not attempt to grow everything themselves, but connects with neighbours, friends, farmers, local market gardeners, roadside stalls and old-fashioned green grocers to gather what they do not have in their home garden and to share what they do. Some call this food security, some call it community sufficiency, I call it common sense! See below for some stalls and farms and groups to connect with.

Tomatoes

Are they fruiting? If not, then maybe you are watering them too much. Once a week is more than enough for well mulched tomatoes in the ground. I water them about once a month! By now their roots are way down, seeking out the rain that drenched our gardens before Christmas. Seriously, water is great for seedlings, for pots, for greenhouses and small, raised beds but not for tomatoes in the ground. The microbes in the soil will work wonders for you but they do not enjoy swimming!

When you are biting or cutting into a delicious, ripe, magnificent tomato, before you eat it all, STOP! Pick out a few seeds, put them on a piece of paper towel and write the variety and some notes on it. Leave it on your kitchen bench and add more seeds of that variety to that same paper towel, through the season. Do that for each variety of tomato. Later, when all the pages are fully dry, pack them away, to sow from late July.

Greenhouses and shadehouses

During the years of my endless quest to find someone who will use my salvaged windows and timber to create a greenhouse for me, I have had to resort to other measures to provide shelter for seedlings etc. I do not want to grow things out of season; I have more than enough to eat that is in season, whatever time of the year. I do not want to grow crops in a greenhouse, I just want to protect trays of seeds and seedlings while they get big enough to plant outside as well as shelter some precious pot plants from the very toughest of winter frosts here in Cygnet. There is an excellent, in-depth article online which thinks through the construction, use and sanity of greenhouses through cultures, climate and ages. Search for: Reinventing the Greenhouse. Please, do read broadly and think carefully before constructing something that you may find you really don’t like or use.

You might actually find that a sturdy structure, covered with a dense, white shadecloth is more versatile. In summer, when the sun is overhead, this will provide good wind protection and white is an excellent choice for bright shade. In winter, when the sun is quite low here in southern Tasmania, if you have it positioned to fully open on the north side, you will get full sun.

Basil

Oh the joy of having abundant basil growing in your garden and filling your summer kitchen with its delicious scent! This is a good year for basil, so far. If you don’t have any, get some advanced plants and plant them out or, do as I did last year, and pot them up into nice, terracotta pots for ready access at the kitchen door or on a bright kitchen windowsill. In pots you can keep them going for months by bringing them in when the weather starts to cool. Basil is wonderful for pesto and in salads and but also goes remarkably well with strawberries or peaches or in a lemon cake!

Chooks in summer

Most of the year my large chook yard under some fruit trees provides my chooks with all sorts of greenery to pick at, insects to dig up and clean up, like codling moths. By February, if it has been dry for a while like this year, there’s not much except dust for bathing. I grow a lot of chard for them because it is my chooks’ favourite thing. Yours may prefer other greens! Whatever it is they like, always keep some growing in your garden or next to the chook yard fence (so they can peck their own).

Natural dyes

Did you know that many of the plants we grow for food also can be used as natural dyes? The ‘Natural Dyes Project’ was created by Sewing Café, Lancaster,UK, to develop skills and knowledge of natural dying and bring awareness to the harmful impacts of synthetic dyes. They have a fabulous website which showcases a garden full of plants that can be used for dying.

February Events

Woodbridge WaterFest: Sun.Feb 20^th

Koonya Garlic Festival: Sat. Feb 26^th

Seeds to sow in Feb. Broccoli raab Kale Beetroot Shungiku Lettuce Asian greens (late Feb.) Carrots Spinach & silver beet Spring onions Leeks Hakurei turnips Tas. swedes Parsnips Radishes Seeds to save in Feb Lettuce Shungiku Calendular marigolds Tomatoes Parsnips

Plant out /pot up now, yes now Brussel sprouts Cauliflower Broccoli – regular, sprouting and raab Salad vegetables Leeks   Jobs for February Plant, feed or move citrus Summer prune stone fruits Prepare beds for autumn plantings Save seeds for next spring Mulch deeply with wet straw/silage Give flowering veg a dose of potash Protect brassicas from moths   Roadside stalls & farms Ashcraig Farm stall (Nichols Rivulet Rd) Lenny’s stall (Jetty Road, Cygnet) Blueberry farm (Gospel Hall Rd) Canes Orchard (Franklin) Crop Swap Cygnet and Surrounds

July 2019 Kitchen garden Guide

 There’s been frost, snow, frozen pipes, frozen plants, no wind and too much wind as well as unusually warm days and nights, through June. One thing has been constant in south eastern Tasmania; not enough rain to wet the soil beyond a few centimetres or to fill tanks and dams. Let’s hope things are different during July. Keep watering your celeriac or risk no bulbing.

Frost

Some plants love frost and others hate it. Some plants are ok if they are eased into it but this year it came hard and fast after some very balmy weather. Edible things which hate sudden, hard frosts include my Lisbon lemon tree and most other citrus, hearting lettuce, nasturtiums, and, obviously, warm weather vegetables like tomatoes, pumpkins etc. Even the Meyer lemon and the limes in tubs on my verandah had their tips burnt by that recent, very cold night or two, which has never happened before.

I was once in Japan in late autumn and saw workers wrapping special shrubs and small trees in parks with bundles of straw to keep them safe from the cold. They still looked beautiful as only the Japanese know how! I know from experience that just covering my lemon with either multiple layers of lace curtains or plastic and even surrounding it in bales of hay, stacked 2 high is not enough. I am going to do a full-scale straw wrap, Japanese style, this week before any more damage is done. It does not matter that it will exclude light as very little work is done by tender plants over winter. At least it should survive.

I grow vegetables in every season and both myself and the vegetables I grow revel in a good, hard frost. These include brassicas (broccoli, red cabbage and kales in particular), chard, oniony things, fennel, some loose leaf lettuces, sorrel, garlic, Asian greens such as bok choy, wasabi greens, mustard greens, mizuna, radishes, carrots, parsnips, swedes, celeriac and some herbs such as chervil, coriander, nettles, bay, calendula, chives and parsley. Do you need any more? Sow these in summer and early autumn…. put it in your e-diary for next year.

Chooks

Every afternoon I feed my chooks organic grains that have been soaked at least 24 hours. If I have whey or something else fermented, like kefir or kombucha or yoghurt, I add a bit of that to the soaking water. In winter I include whole sunflower seeds and /or cracked corn (even polenta will do) which are warming and will sit in their crops overnight, helping to reduce cold stress. They keep laying all winter.

Bokashi

You know those big, horrible, black compost bins (a great breeding ground for red back spiders in Adelaide!) that people buy then hate then give away? Well, a friend and I are experimenting using them as massive bokashi bins. Bokashi is a system that breeds lots of wonderful micro-organisms without oxygen, so without turning! Every time you add some garden waste to the bin you squash it down hard and sprinkle with a bit of bokashi inoculated bran (easy and cheap at hardware shops). You never have to turn it and can add stuff whenever you like. It won’t smell yukky either. Once it is full, leave it for a month or so. Delicious. I reckon this is going to be a winner because you can put a bin anywhere in your garden, fill it at your leisure and all the goodies will leach out the bottom too. Bokashi is advertised to be used in your kitchen, for cooking scraps, using special buckets which drain, which I also do, but I reckon outside bokashi is going to be amazing. Once fully composted, dig it into your garden beds and watch your vegetables go mad!

Fermented compost update

(See May 2019 for the intro to this method that I saw being used at Government House).

So, after 2 weeks we removed the tarp as directed and white fungus was everywhere. It was so exciting. We had thought that turning the heap would be difficult because we had added a lot of very long tromboncino/pumpkin vines but already, after only 2 weeks, they had shrivelled and were almost indistinguishable from everything else. Turning was easy peasy. Following the instructions, we sprayed over more microbes, piled it all up, covered with the tarp, trampled it down and secured the tarp so it stays relatively air-free for another 2 weeks. Stay tuned….

Sow in July

Sow now in the frosty garden: Onions (Creamgold, Domenica Sweet), leeks, broad beans, tic bean green manure

Sow now in the hothouse in trays to plant out asap or outside in frost free areas: Coriander, miners’ lettuce, spring onions, Asian veg, lettuce, bok choy, sugar snap peas, lettuce,

Sow now to transplant in spring: Broccoli varieties such as summer purple- sprouting and raab , red cabbage, kales, tomatoes.

July jobs

·         Get started on making fermented compost or bokashi compost.

·         Plant asparagus crowns, cut off old asparagus stalks and add seaweed and compost

·         Divide and replant clumps of chives and other perennial onions, rhubarb, strawberries, sunchokes and mint

·         Plant out deciduous trees and shrubs, bare-rooted fruit trees, cane fruits and grape vines.

·         Sort your seeds for the coming season

·         Get your favourite tomato seeds before they are sold out. Sow later in July.

·         Sow microgreens inside, in shallow trays of compost, for an enzyme hit to keep your immune system pumped during winter. Include fenugreek.

·         Sprinkle fire ash judiciously right out to the drip line of fruit trees