March 2022 Kitchen Garden Guide

 

Hopefully there will be rain soon and all our hard work to keep things going will slowly transition to caring for cool season crops to grace our tables through winter. Now in my garden is the time for saving seeds from tomatoes, sunflowers, parsnips, coriander, Florence fennel, celery, parsley, chicory and more. March is a busy time in the kitchen, processing fruit and vegetables for storage before the first frosts arrive. We are so fortunate to live where we do; safe in the knowledge we can, together, produce almost everything we need, especially if we save and share our local seeds. Join the Cygnet Seed Library to be a part of our seed community. Details on the website and facebook.

Fun with Pumpkins

Now is the time to consolidate your pumpkin vines’ energy by choosing pumpkins that are a good size already and removing the growth beyond the pumpkins. Those that are flowering or just setting now will take energy from those that are a good size and need to mature, so removing them is key. And a liquid feed now will help to keep the well-formed ones growing to maturity.

Maybe you will grow a huge pumpkin or a quirky one or a beautiful one and enter it into one of the competitions we are going to run at the Cygnet Autumn Garden Market at The Cannery on Sunday, May 22^nd. We will have more details out soon so follow our facebook page and this column, but already I can tell you we are having a pumpkin focus, including food and decorations, along with all the regular stalls, talks and music that everyone has come to love!

The big world of brassicas

Brassicas grow wonderfully in the cold and they are so healthful for our bodies during winter. There are hundreds of varieties from all over the world. European brassicas include broccolis, cauliflower, cabbages, collards, Brussels sprouts and all the kales etc.  My tips for growing these are:

·         Get good sized seedlings into the ground NOW and cover them with lace curtains or white shade cloth to keep off the cabbage moths which are still active. (The moths will disappear when we get a cold snap.)

·         Plant seedlings into damp soil rich in compost and lime to get them growing fast before the end of May when day length and low sun angle bring a halt to further growth if the leaves are too small to provide enough energy to do more than survive.

·         Protect with iron based slug and snail pellets.

Asian brassicas can be sown throughout autumn because they grow so fast that nothing slows them down all winter. These include bok choy, tatsoi, Chinese cabbage, mustard greens, mizuna, mibuna, kalian, daikon, hakurei turnips etc. Most parts are eaten; stems, leaves, flower shoots and some roots. My tips for growing these are:

·         Wet the soil thoroughly. Put your fork into it and check it is wet down at least 15cms. Keep watering until it is!

·         Spread with well rotted sheep manure or compost or simply use a bed that had broad beans or other legumes in it previously. They are less fussy about pH than European brassicas but prefer near neutral.

·         Rake to a fine tilth. Sow thinly. Asian vegetable seeds germinate quickly and reliably and will provide a long season of fabulous food right through late autumn, winter and early spring. Sow every 2 weeks for continuous supply.

·         To stop birds disturbing them while they germinate, cover wire crates (from a tip shop) with lace curtains and place over the area. I use this system a lot as rain and irrigation go through, white lets the light through and the lace reduces the wind.

·         Protect with iron-based slug and snail pellets.

 

Garlic

March is time to prepare the soil for planting out early varieties of garlic in April. If your soil has set like concrete over summer it will need some well composted manure (sheep is great), mushroom compost or homemade compost and plenty of elbow grease! If you have grown potatoes in it previously, that will have loosened it up somewhat. You don’t want to fertilise the soil now, just condition it.

First, simply place gypsum at 1/2 kg / square meter over the soil. Then add a good 5cms of the compost / old manure on the bed where you want to grow garlic and water well. That means using a sprinkler to apply at least 2 cms of water. Water again after 4 days. After a week or so you may find you are able to dig in with a fork and incorporate that compost into the top few cms of the soil. Add more compost and keep working it in, if you can, down to about 10cms. Otherwise, this will do. There is no need to dig deeper. Keep the soil damp, not wet, and work on improving the incorporation of the compost all month, if necessary.

Now you have loosened the soil and raised your bed above the surrounding ground a little, you will have better drainage and garlic hates being drowned, as we discovered in 2021! Next, add a good dusting of garden lime. Rake in. Leave to rest. Weed regularly. You must be able to stick your finger right into the soil or your garlic will not be able to grow. Wait until April to plant out the first garlic. Mid season and late season garlics can be planted in the following months.

Seeds to sow in March

Plant out now

Beetroot Salsify Burdock Tas. swede Carrot Parsnip Spinach Broad beans Daikon radish Asian vegetables Coriander, pennyroyal, cress Seeds to harvest in March Tomatoes Beans Fennel Lettuce Sunflowers Calendula Coriander Nasturtiums

Good sized European brassicas Spring onions Chives Elephant garlic, potato onions Lettuce Spinach Celery Silver beet Jobs for March -Prune established fruit trees to improve shape and production. -Rake up all fallen fruit to reduce over-wintering of diseases. -Take semi-hardwood and hardwood cuttings of evergreen plants such as rosemary, sage, lavender, geraniums, correas as well as lemon verbena and anything that is hardening off and not soft.