Kitchen Garden Guides

Saturday, May 7, 2022

April 2022 Kitchen Garden Guide

 

The weather continues to be mostly dry, with warmer than average day and night time temperatures for this time of year. But don’t be fooled into thinking the summer growing season will continue much longer! Now that the days are noticeably shorter, soon there will not be enough sunlight hours to maintain the warmth in the soil. Did you know that a mulched soil full of active, healthy microbes will be warmer than a soil fed with fertilisers? Let’s hope that good autumn rains arrive soon.

With all the chaos in the world it is easy to fall into despair. But for me, just being in my garden, working in sunshine or mizzle in my garden, having coffee under a tree in my garden, chatting to the chooks and even talking on the phone in the garden, bring some relief from all that is happening.

Multisowing

For many vegetables there are considerable benefits from sowing two or more seeds together in trays plus you use less potting mix. Basil benefits greatly and grows much stronger, when multisown. I have noticed this myself.

Charles Dowding has experimented with multisowing for decades and in his new book ‘Skills for Growing’ there is a whole chapter on multisowing details for various vegetable groups and uses. Here are some examples….

VEGETABLE

SEEDS TO SOW PER CLUMP

DESIRED PLANTS PER CLUMP

SPACING

cms

Kale for salad

4

3

22

Kale, larger leaves for cooking

2-3

1

30-35

Radish

5

4-5

15

Turnip

5

3-4

30

Asian greens for salad

4

3

22

Asian greens for cooking

2

1

25-30

Onions for bulbs

6-7

4-5

30

 

Multisowing is not useful for roots, such as carrots and swedes or hearting vegetables such as cabbage and lettuce.

Spacing

When transplanting tiny seedlings it is easy to plant them out too close together. Multisown seedlings need wider spacing than single sown plants but you end up with more plants per square metre. If you are after larger vegetables, they need more space than smaller. Root vegetables grown too close together make wonderful leaves but smaller roots. Lettuce grown thickly makes a rapid harvest of small leaves but subsequent pickings will diminish in size and quality. Spacing can mean the difference between a beautiful cabbage and one that just bolts to seed without forming a head.

Don’t dismiss paths as wasted space because they allow light to reach plants as they mature, especially in winter, as well as being another source of food for the roots of larger plants. I use my paths as mini compost making strips by laying anything I remove from the beds directly onto the paths, followed by a sprinkling of blood and bone, if the layer is thick. After a few days of trampling it down as I walk by, I cover the whole path with mulchings from my chipper, coarse straw or semi rotted woodchips. Path soil is living soil.

Interplanting

This is a way of growing quick vegetables between the big vegetables so that they are over and done with by the time the bigger veg need the space. This is a kind of companion planting; a lone broccoli really enjoys the company of a few radishes as it is filling out its roots.

Planting in blocks is so much more aesthetic than long rows and makes working with interplanting easier. For example, within 1.5 square metre blocks you can sow broad beans at 30cms spacing, with some bok choy seedlings in between. Each broad bean seed eventually grows into 3 – 5 stems and by that time, the bok choy has been harvested and eaten.

Fungi; the good, the bad and the incredible

We eat them, we curse them and without them we could not exist and neither could our gardens. Fungi evolved many millions of years before we did and still occupy almost every cubic metre on earth, from the surface up and down. Every creature, including ourselves, is full of them and we depend on their health for our health. Without fungi nothing would decompose, we could not make compost and our soil would just be dirt, not soil, and be devoid of life. Incredibly, fungi can turn toxic waste into soil rich in worms and life so imagine what fungi can do for your vegetable garden!

Autumn is fungi fruiting time so you will see them popping up after rain, if your soil is full of life. Rejoice if you have them and let them finish their lifecycle in your garden as their mycorrhiza are communicating with the roots of all the other plants, shifting nutrients from here to there, turning any amendments you add (such as blood and bone, compost, decomposed hay etc) into a liquid state, for your plants to take up. Healthy soil makes healthy people and neither can exist without fungi.

Garlic

Plant out soft neck varieties such as Tasmanian purple, now, into damp soil but do not water until you see little green shoots appearing, or you risk them rotting. These will be ready to harvest before Christmas, when their soft stems brown off and begin to flop over. If overwatered at this time the water seeps down into the garlic head and can cause rot or cause them not to store well.

Plant out hard neck varieties later and into May. Later they will produce tall, curly, green stems called scapes, which are fabulously delicious. I leave some to grow scapes but most I cut off so more energy goes into growing the bulbs. These will be ready to harvest in January or even February and have a hard stem, right down into the garlic head. In a wet spring, these survive better as they are less prone to rot because of the way they grow tight around the hard neck.


April jobs

Sow in April

  • Lime brassica beds, fruit trees and deep hay areas.
  • Make compost in 1 cubic meter bays. Cover thickly with hay. Leave for winter.
  • Take herb cuttings
  • Harvest seeds such as tomato, lettuce, parsnip.
  • Use natural lactose fermentation to pickle any hard vegetables such as cucumbers, carrots, radishes,  and beans

·         For absolutely everything you need to know about growing garlic in Tasmania visit the website and facebook page “Tasmanian Gourmet Garlic”.

·         Follow our Cygnet Garden Markets facebook page for details on our May 22nd Autumn Garden Market


 Plant out now

Spring bulbs

Garlic, shallots, potato onions, salad onions

Evergreen shrubs and trees

Strawberries

In trays

Asian greens

Radishes

English spinach

Chervil

Coriander

Spring onions

Lettuce

Winter annual flowers

Direct

Green manure

Sweet peas

Sugar snap peas (frost free)

Broad beans

Miners’ Lettuce

 

No comments: