Veggie Patch Basics - 2 (Apr-May)

In the first blog post of the Veggie Patch Basics series I covered starting a vegetable garden and getting ready for the first round of sowing and planting.  This second blog post covers what to sow and plant in April - May.

This Veggie Patch Basics series assumes that the reader is a novice vegetable gardener, but the series may also be of interest to those with more experience. It describes how to set up a veggie garden and what to do during the first year. The series does not cover permanent food plants such as berries and fruit, because they are covered in many other posts on this Food Garden Group blog.

Part 2: April - May

In this blog post we will look what you could sow and plant in the April - May period in each of the four beds or areas that you created in your vegetable garden.

Legume area

Legumes are plants that take nitrogen out of the air and store it in what are called root-nodules (see photo below). When you remove the plants at the end of the season by cutting off their stalks at ground level,  the roots die off and the nitrogen in the root nodules enriches the soil.

For one whole season (12 months) we are going to have Legumes in Bed 1, so, at the end of that there is a nice amount of nitrogen in the soil!

Root nodules formed by Legumes

By the time I write this it is 14 April, still a little bit early for sowing Legumes. I usually sow them in the second half of May. Both broadbeans and peas are spring vegetables that like sun, but don't like heat. If you sow them from mid May onwards, they will flower and then produce pods in October/November. Sowing them earlier than mid May is fine, but there is no point really because broad beans and peas produce their crops when sun-light and warmth are at certain levels in spring, not before, no matter what you do.

Please get yourself a nice quantity of broad bean and pea seeds, and we are going to sow broad beans in one half of bed-1, and peas in the other half of bed-1.

I don't sow my broad beans in neat straight rows. I sow them all over half of bed-1 with around 6 centimetres in between. That will give me far too many broad beans you may say.  This nice big broad bean patch is there for two reasons: to get a nice crop of broadbeans AND to fertilise the soil.  You don't need to pick all the beans this patch produces. By the way, you can harvest from broad bean plants even before beans form: broad bean leaves are a nice and good source of greenery. No harm done to the plants if you pick just a few leaves from each stem.

I used sow these large seeds by putting them on top of the soil, and then I covered them with a thin layer of compost.  I don't do that anymore, because broad bean seeds are so strong that they can easily push themselves out of the soil in their eagerness to get going, and some of them then die.

These days I make a little hole with a stick and then drop the broadbean seed in the hole, so its top is now approximately one seed-height deep below ground level. Then I brush with my hand a bit of soil over the top of the hole to fill it.

Seeds are best sown one or two times the size of the seeds below ground level

Any deeper, or any shallower, and germination rates will often decline.

There is a little mistake many people make when sowing broad beans and peas.  The broad beans will grow quickly and become around a metre high, whereas the peas are going to be much slower. Therefore put the peas on the sunny side of the broad beans! Both crops will then get a good amount of sun in coming months!  

When finished, cover the whole broad bean area with mulch. Mulch is the term used for organic materials that are used to cover soil to keep soil temperatures down and stop soil moisture from evaporating.

Tasmanian garden guru Peter Cundle used to recommend that people remove mulch from their vegetable garden in autumn, because there used to be enough rain in winter, and without mulch soil warms up earlier in spring.

However, Tasmania's climate has changed so much in the last decade (unreliable winter rain ; almost no frost) that the recommendation is now to mulch soil all year round because even in July it can be warm with no rain in sight, and soil will dry out.

For more information about mulching read Mulching - Why and How on the Food Garden Group blog. Put at least 3 centimetres thick mulch over the area where you sowed broad beans.  When they germinate they will seek the light and grow through the mulch.

Broad beans working their way through mulch

After sowing cover the mulch with mesh (any mesh will do, I use the green mesh in the photo below), so wildlife, birds and cats and dogs don't undo your good work. Don't forget to take the mesh away when the first broad beans poke through the mulch.

Now let's do the peas, in the other half of bed-1, north of (on the sunny side of) the broad beans.  

Unless you are happy to have a totally unruly mess later in the season, in which it is difficult to pick peas, peas are best grown up a trellis, and therefore sow them in rows. Around 5 centimetres apart in the row, and rows at least 50 centimetres apart. Sow them around one pea deep.

I usually immediately put up the trellis, so I know where the row is, and I don't have to come back for more work at a later stage.  I also lay down planks parallel with each row (see photo), so birds have little chance to have a good dig and undo all my work.

Some people recommend that you soak your peas and broad beans in water before planting. If you do, they germinate sooner.  I don't do this because it won't make any difference for when you will have your crop. Peas and broad beans will come up, grow over winter, and then produce flowers and pods when the weather begins to warm up.  Sowing earlier, or hastening germination is not going to get you a crop any earlier because the plants decide when the weather is right.

Make sure bed-1 is moist (not sodden) at all times, and in two or three weeks time (depending on how high day temperatures get) you should begin to see things appear above ground. Don't get impatient if, after two weeks, there is still nothing visible above ground. If day time temperatures are low, it can take up to four weeks for seeds to germinate.

Big Eater area

This bed will get a completely different treatment from Bed-1 because this season it will be for crops that need a lot of nutrients. That includes most vegetables of which we eat the leaves, but also corn, capsicums, aubergines etc.

As a first step in making the Big Eater area a success we are going to add nutrients to the soil. Please buy in a hardware store or nursery a big bag of blood and bone. Some brands add a lot of other stuff to the blood and bone.  Don't buy those. If there is a choice of brands, buy the stinkiest one. That is the best one.

Now broadcast handfuls of blood and bone over the whole of Bed-2 until most of the soil is covered by a thin layer. Rake this into the soil, then give the whole bed a good watering.

It is some time in April. This is your last opportunity to plant broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and kale seedlings. So, if your local nursery or hardware store still has some, plant them now in Bed-2, but before you do, have a look at the photo below:

In this photo a Brussels Sprout plant is pushing a Broccoli aside.  I don't have a particularly big garden, and I am always keen to plant crops as densely as possible in order to maximise my crops.  Well, in this case I definitely did not allow enough space. 

When these two plants were small seedlings, I put them 30 centimetres apart, and there was plenty of bare earth between them.  Turns out it was not enough.  Most members of the Brassica family (Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cabbage, Kale etc. etc.) grow into enormous plants.  When you plant them as seedlings try to visualise how big they will become.  Distance between Brassicas should be 50 centimetres or more! 

One by one gently remove the seedlings from the punnet they came in, then put them on the soil precisely where you are going to plant them. 

Now make a small hole for each seedling, deep enough so the soil level for each plant will be the same as it was in the punnet, or ever so slightly deeper.

Add a little bit of blood and bone to the hole, and work this into the soil at the bottom of the hole.

Now plant each seedling, then press down the soil around its stem a little bit.

Now, there is lots more you can put in your Big Eaters bed at this time. Whether you will, depends on what vegetables you and your household like.

Loose-leaf lettuce varieties will do fine in the winter garden, but as it becomes colder and the days shorter they will grow only slowly, so they may not be able to keep up, if you pick some leaves every day.  To keep up your supply, you could plant more lettuce plants than you would in summer. Before planting, add a bit of blood and bone to each hole and mix it a bit into the soil, then put the seedling in.

It is not too cold yet to sow English Spinach and Silverbeet in your garden.  It could be a good idea to sow your Silverbeet or English Spinach in rows, put five centimetres between seeds, and then thin them out later, if lots of them come up. Cover your just-sown rows with mesh, so birds don't completely undo your work.

It is not too late to sow Asian Greens (Bok Choi, Pak Choi, Wong Bok) and Chinese Cabbage. They are best sown in little pots and then planted out.  Have a look at blog post Sowing in Pots and Punnets for more info on how to do this. It provides all the details you need.

Roots area

Bed-3 is meant for carrots, parsnips, swedes, turnips, leeks, garlic and other plants of which we will eat the roots. Root crops do not like high amounts of nitrogen and other nutrients, so we are not going to do anything beyond liming this bed, which we did earlier.

Plants that develop long tap roots, like carrots and parsnips, can not be transplanted successfully from pots and punnets. In order to be successful we will have to sow these crops where they will grow to maturity.  They like soft soil so they will benefit from the soil preparation you did in Part 1 of this series.

The April - May period with declining temperatures and ever-shorter days going towards mid-winter  is not a good time to sow carrots and parsnips, so let's consider some other crops at this point in time.

Leeks are very worthwhile growing in your Roots area because they are not cheap to buy and have a light delicious onion flavour. In our household we use them instead of onions.  It is not too late to put them in right now. Have a look at blog post Easy Leek on this blog first, because there is an easy bit of advice about planting leeks that is worth knowing.

It is not too late to plant garlic, but you will need to plant them before the end of May.  You could do what I do. Visit a shop that sells locally grown produce in their vegetable section, and buy the best looking biggest unsprayed garlic that is there.  Divide it into its individual little bulbs, and plant them (pointy bit up please!) with their tip just covered by soil around 10 centimetres apart in your Roots area.

Spring onions are very tasty and easy to grow.  In summer they grow from seed to crop in 8 weeks. If you sow them now you can expect a nice spring crop in October. Sow thinly in shallow rows. Keep weeds away, don't over-water, and they will grow without much further assistance.

Surround your leeks, spring onions and garlics with mulch when they have established themselves.

There is nothing else I would do in my Roots area at this stage, but, generally speaking it is not a good idea to leave soil bare for long periods of time.  There are many micro-organisms in soil, and they will not be happy if the top layer of the unoccupied parts of your Roots area gradually dries out. 

To keep the micro-organisms happy you can simply cover the rest of the bed with mulch, or be more adventurous and sow a 'green manure'. 

Green manure means growing plants from seed, then cutting them up and digging them in when they are young and lush and green. The young plants are 'green' and digging them in will improve the soil, so in that respect they can be called a 'manure', but the term is misleading because animal manure is not part of this process. When legumes, grains and even common weeds are used this way soils benefit. For more info about green manure see Food Garden Group blog post Why Green Manure?

Mustard sown as a green manure

You can buy green manure mixes at hardware stores, nurseries or online seed companies. This season I am going to experiment with using the left-overs of all the seeds that I sowed in past seasons. I will simply sow them all, see what comes up, and then chop it up and dig it in when I need the space for something else. Green manure will make dense soil more open and it will add nutrients to it.  Because your vegie patch might not have received a lot of care in the last few years, consider sowing a green manure in the rest of the Roots area.

Solanums area

Solanums are potatoes and tomatoes.  Both don't like frost. Both are best grown over summer.

Until August cover your Solanums area with mulch or sow a green manure.

And to finish off .....

If there is no rain, water every few days where you sowed and planted, so the soil stays moist at all times.

Nothing else needs doing in your food garden for a little while, except one thing that is often forgotten, and that will make your plants thrive.

Buy yourself a large bottle of seaweed solution. It's gold, and I hope you will use it throughout the season. Don't buy the 'ready-to-use' diluted stuff. Buy the stuff that you need to dilute yourself. 

Once a fortnight for the whole season add a splash to a full watering can, mix it thoroughly, and then water your plants with it. Use two, three watering cans full, as many as you need, to 'foliar feed' all your food garden plants. They will love it, and reward you with better health and a bigger crop when the time comes.

This series of blog posts continues with Vegie Patch Basics 3