May 2015 Kitchen Garden Guide

 

Autumn is here; the days are shortening, the nights are chilly and gone is the time to sow many seeds or plant many seedlings as the plants will not reach a big enough leaf size to keep developing through winter, resulting in either stunted vegetables or plants that bolt to seed as soon as spring comes. However, there is still time to plant garlic and to sow broad beans, onions, some salad leaves and many Asian greens. Check the guide below for details.

Luckily, the cooler weather heralds the start of the end of the cabbage moth laying eggs on our brassicas although I did notice a few new holes on my Chinese cabbages today. Autumn is a wonderful time for harvesting mushrooms, kale, French sorrel, salad leaves, early broccoli, rainbow chard, the last of our summer vegetables and a myriad of fabulous apples. Many kitchens are bulging at the seams with preserves, Bring on winter and cosy nights by the fire with some home-made cassis and quince paste served with a delicious cheese!

Wood Ash

One product all who have fires can harvest in autumn and winter is wood ash. This fluffy, gritty, alkaline substance is sometimes a challenge to manage but here are some uses I put it to:

1.   As the best cleaner for firebox glass (dampen a piece of screwed-up newspaper and dip it into the ash then rub onto the glass for instant success!)

2.   In place of lime in the garden (sprinkle over the soil and dig in before planting garlic, brassicas and most veg this time of the year. I throw buckets of it thinly around under all my fruit trees now and through winter, then mulch with thick straw.)

3.   In spring and summer to kill pear and cherry slugs (also found on quinces). (Throw fine ash over all leaf surfaces whenever you see the pear and cherry slugs. This will dry them out.)

4.   Algae and moss deterrent in lawns and useful for slippery surfaces.

5.   As a chook dust bath. (Provide them with a place to bathe in dry ashes as it helps kill bugs. Useful for wet weather when their regular dusting areas may be damp)

6.   As a light fertiliser for alkaline-loving plants as wood ash can contain 10-25% calcium, 1-4% magnesium, 5-15% potassium and 1-3% phosphorus.

7.   Mixed with compost to raise the pH of the compost and your soil.

Cuttings

Now is the perfect time for softwood cuttings for deciduous plants like grape vines, glory vines and black currants as well as for rosemary, Chilean guavas and other evergreen edibles. Cut lengths of new grape vine growth to include 4 buds. Put into a damp, light, potting mix deep enough for 2 buds to go below the soil and two above. A cheap potting mix with no added nutrients is best. With rosemary and other evergreens, strip the leaves off the bottom 2/3 of a cutting and place into potting mix. You can put several in a pot. Cover with a plastic bag secure with a rubber band. Leave in a sheltered place and keep just damp, not wet, until spring. Check for root growth and pot up to grow on further or leave longer. Don’t let them get too hot or dry out.

Winter pruning

I listen to the radio quite a bit, mostly online via my smart phone which I plug into my speakers so I can hear it all over the house. I love technology and make use of it a lot. Today my home phoneline died and I lost the internet. Tragedy! Then I learnt how to tether my smartphone and make a mobile wifi hotspot which meant I could send this garden guide to The Classifiieds, even without ADSL. I am pretty proud of that and have a lovely bloke at Internode to thank for telling me how to go about doing it. The show must go on!

I can always find something to learn about on the radio via podcasts and the cloud, when local radio is reduced to sport or celebrities. I sometimes even listen to live BBC2 garden talkback, which is thoroughly delightful, even when the seasons are upside down.

Somewhere online last week I listened to someone talking about when to prune things, not for our own benefit, but for the benefit of the birds. It is no good attracting birds to your garden if you start having a mad spring pruning session and cut down everywhere the birds might want to nest! For the sake of birdlife, it is best to prune after the young have left the nest, which varies from species to species but pruning is most often best carried out late summer to early winter.

I seem to have an autumn pruning bug right now, running my shears over everything from lavender to pear trees and natives as well. They are fed straight into my Australian-made, heavy duty mulcher and the resultant bags of green mulch then spread on paths or used in making compost. A couple of weeks ago I pruned 3 wattles pretty hard, to let the afternoon winter light into my windows. The mulchings were layered with straw and horse manure the same day and within 3 days the heap was so hot I could not put my hand into it!

If this all sounds like too much hard work, grab yourself a bottle of linseed, mix it half with turps, sit in the sunshine and rub an oiled cloth over the handles of all your garden tools. Unbelievably relaxing!

Sow in the garden now	Plant Now
Broad beans Bok Choy Mustard greens esp. frilly Miners’ lettuce Corn salad (mache) Shungiku (edible, Japanese Chrysanthemum) Radishes Salad and spring onions Coriander Chervil Sow in the hothouse to plant out: Lettuces Kales Broccoli raab Sow to stay in the hothouse or frost-free area: Sugar snap peas	Leek bulbils Garlic cloves Large Seedlings Flower bulbs Plant and grow in the hothouse: Celery (loves it there over winter), 1 or 2 of lots of things, so you can pop out there and pick things without having to put your boots on, in winter…. Lettuce, spinach, Viet. Mint, Lemon Grass, Chervil, Frilly Kale (small variety) for salads, Shungiku, sugar snap peas.

May 2014 Kitchen Garden Guide

 

Cuttings

Now is the perfect time for softwood cuttings for deciduous plants like grape vines, glory vines and black currants as well as for rosemary, Chilean guavas and other evergreen edibles. Cut lengths of new grape vine growth to include 4 buds. Put into a damp, light, potting mix deep enough for 2 buds to go below the soil and two above. A cheap potting mix with no added nutrients is best. With rosemary and other evergreens, strip the leaves off the bottom 2/3 of a cutting and place into potting mix. You can put several in a pot. Cover with a plastic bag secure with a rubber band. Leave in a sheltered place and keep just damp, not wet, until spring. Check for root growth and pot up to grow on further or leave longer. Don’t let them get too hot or dry out.

Making the most of chook yard design

You can harvest many products and gain many services from a well thought out chook yard, besides the obvious eggs. My chooks range under half a dozen fruit trees. Their kind services here include constant vigilance for coddlin moth and other pests that overwinter at the base of trees, everyday manuring, turning of the mulch and eradicating of weeds and grass that germinates there as well as cleaning up some (but not all) fallen fruit.

The product I appreciate most is their production of the most beautiful leaf soil from the fallen leaves of two large oak trees that overhang the chook yard. Thousands of oak leaves fall from now into winter and form a very thick layer of gorgeous dry leaves which is the playground for the chooks all winter. They constantly turn it, manure it and crush it, while the rain dampens it, resulting in a very fine, deliciously soft, quite acidic, leaf mould or leaf soil by mid spring. I rake it up and spread it around liberally wherever acid loving plants grow (such as blueberries and strawberries) and where I am going to plant acid loving plants such as tomatoes. Left for another year it can be used with sand as a seed raising mix or added to potting mix, but all this waiting is far too complex for me to organise!

In order to have a constant supply of greenery for chooks, it is a great idea to surround the perimeter of their yard with things they like to eat. This is easy to do if you have designed this idea into your food production system in the first place and placed the chook yard within the vegetable garden boundary, like a small box inside a larger box, thus making the outer perimeter of the chook yard, the inner perimeter of the vegetable garden. Plantings right up against the fence will poke leaves through and even over into the chook yard and allow the chooks a constant supply of your favourite vegetables without you having to do anything! Leaving some things to go to seed and fall into the chook yard will give them a good addition to their seed intake.

This design also allows you to let them range, from time to time, in a temporarily fenced section of the vegetable garden simply by opening one of a serious of gate options. They will eat the grass, remove weed seeds, manure it and turn it to a fine tilth. Then you simply close the gate, rake it over and start sowing or planting!

Managing growth

The other day I weeded and pruned my berries. First, I cut back to the ground all the summer raspberry canes that had had fruit this year. I lightly pruned any really tall, new canes that hit me in the face as I walked down the path. There were lots of runners coming up in the path so I dug up and replanted some elsewhere and gave the rest away.

Autumn raspberries such as Autumn Bliss may not have finished yet so check carefully before you prune! Then I made sure my wire and hoop frame was still secure, ready for next season’s netting. Pine needles and leaf soil make fabulous raspberry mulch and can be applied any time.

Next I pruned the black currants hard as informed by Tino Carnevale at a workshop I attended last year. He said to do this when planting out new bushes also. Tino said that red and white currants should only be pruned in spring and summer.

I love the shade the wattles provide for my lounge room windows during summer afternoons but I want the sun in winter. So I pruned them to about half their height, being mindful of cutting out the thick, older wood completely and cutting back the soft, willowy stems just enough to let the sun in the window. I still wanted them to look pretty. I do this every year to 3 of my wattles and it keeps them fresh and soft and means lots of flowers too, on the new growth. This is good because they provide constant pollen for the bees over winter.

I never prune plants in autumn that have frost sensitive new growth as they burn off terribly and look dreadful all winter. However, a light tip prune of natives now will help them bush out beautifully as many natives grow during winter and their flowers feed the birds and bees.

 

Vegetable of the month

The Cygnet Community Garden never stops growing food. One of our favourites at the moment is broccoli raab. It is a bright green, fast growing, large leafed vegetable with edible and delicious leaves, prolific, small broccoli heads and yellow flowers. Raw, the leaves have a slight mustardy flavour but cooked they are sweet and brilliant green, without collapsing down to nothing.

 

 

 

 

Sow in the garden now	Plant Now
Broad beans Bok Choy Mustard greens esp. frilly Miners’ lettuce Corn salad (mache) Shungiku (edible, Japanese Chrysanthemum) Radishes Salad and spring onions Coriander Chervil Sow in the hothouse to plant out: Lettuces Kales Broccoli raab Sow to stay in the hothouse: Sugar snap peas	Leek bulbils Garlic cloves Large Seedlings Flower bulbs Plant and grow in the hothouse: Celery (loves it there over winter), 1 or 2 of lots of things, so you can pop out there and pick things without having to put your boots on, in winter…. Lettuce, spinach, Viet. Mint, Lemon Grass, Chervil, Frilly Kale (small variety) for salads, Shungiku, sugar snap peas.