This last article in the Vegie Patch Basics series discusses what to do in your food garden in February and March, plus what to do at the end of the season to get ready for the next one. This article completes the one-year Vegie Patch Basics series, an introductory look at growing vegetables, that started in April last year.
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.
No matter what the weather forecast tells you, in summer always monitor moisture levels in your garden and irrigate if needed. Monitoring moisture levels is best done by feeling how moist the top centimetre of soil is with your fingers.
After many dry summers I came to the conclusion that my time in the garden in summer was better spent planting, looking after plants, and harvesting, than watering by hand, so I began to install irrigation hoses and pipes.
In mid to late summer pumpkin leaves can become covered in a fine thin layer of white mildew. Why does that happen? Because mildew thrives in humid moist conditions. If you irrigate from above (with a sprinkler or with a hose) do that early in the morning if possible, rather than in the evening, so moisture on leaves evaporates quickly, rather than sitting on leaves all night long. If this winter you decide to install hoses and pipes that irrigate your garden at ground level rather than from above, your chances of getting mildew on pumpkins, tomato plants and other crops next season will be a lot lower!
There are so many wonderful vegetable seedlings available in nurseries. You may have bought some, and you may not have checked whether the plants are hybrid or heirloom.
One of the reasons I recommend you keep empty seed packets and labels that come with seedlings, is that they always tell you whether the plants are hybrid or heirloom.
- Hybrid seedlings will give you a great crop, but it is not a good idea to save their seed as it won't reproduce similarly-successful plants when you sow that seed.
- Heirloom seedlings are in most cases old-fashioned varieties that will be absolutely fine in the home garden AND you can save their seed if you want to. That seed will grow you the same plants again next season without having to buy new seed.
Why there are heirloom and hybrid varieties and what their differences are, is explained in Heirlooms and Hybrids on this blog.
If the varieties you planted were heirloom, then harvesting seed is not hard for broad beans, peas, beans, lettuce, tomatoes, parsley, dill, coriander and many other vegetables and herbs.
You would not recognise the plant in the photo below as a lettuce, but it is! Food Garden Group member Kathryn F. decided not to pick one of her really successful lettuce plants, but let it go to seed (she removed all the leaves at ground level). The plant produced an enormous number of tiny flowers at the top. She gave it a stake, so it would be fine in windy conditions. Seeds developed after flowering. Kathryn will collect the lettuce seeds when the flower head has dried out. She will have thousands of seeds that can be used over a number of seasons, because lettuce seeds remain viable (fertile) for at least five years.
You could decide not to collect the seeds, but allow the wind to disperse them around your garden! I have in my food garden silverbeet, dill, tomato and coriander plants that have gone 'native'. They look after themselves from year to year. They self-sow, flower and produce seed and then sow themselves wherever they like in my garden. Volunteers is the name used for these plants that look after themselves, year after year.
I suggest you encourage volunteers in your food garden. They are easily removed from where you don't want them. Quite often, however, I do want them, because they don't need any looking after except watering and they are often strong and productive because they never had to be transplanted.
What to do in our four vegie areas in February - March
Legume area
The plan was:
Peas, broad beans until mid-November, then beans for the second part of the season
Where are we at?
In Tasmania beans can be sown from mid-November to mid-January. If you sow beans in February, they will come up, but the remainder of the season will not be long enough to get fully-grown ripe beans. The time for sowing beans has now passed.
In
Vegie Patch Basics 6 I talked about bush beans, climbing beans and perennial beans. Humid conditions are quite normal at this time of year and the dense foliage of bush beans can give tiny
whiteflies (see photo below) a great environment to live in if the bushes are densely planted. There have been years when I disturbed swarms of them, as soon as I touched the bushes.
The temptation might be to 'exterminate, exterminate' these little pests, but please weigh up the pros and cons of doing that. Whitefly make small holes in bean leaves, but do little or no damage to beans. Spraying will cover your beans with poison that washing will not fully remove. My advice is to live with this pest, if it arrives, because it will not mean fewer or damaged beans.
If you grew bush beans this season, measure the width of a fully grown bean-producing bush. When you sow beans next year put space between them equal to that width + a bit extra. With my bush bean variety this means I should sow my beans 40 centimetres apart. The more space you give these bean bushes, the more ventilation there will be. More ventilation means fewer whiteflies.
Earlier in the season I had broad beans in two spots in my Legumes area. One lot I removed in November. I put beans in their place. The other broad bean patch is still there and now looks like this:
The broad beans in this patch were nice and high, strong and healthy, and very productive, so I decided that they were going to give me the seeds for next season's crop. I let stalks and bean-pods dry out for a few months, and now I am going to remove it all and save the seeds. They will then go in a brown paper bag, ready for next season.
Big Eater area
The plan was:
Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, spinach and Asian Greens over winter, followed by, for instance, pumpkins, silverbeet, corn, lettuce, radish, zucchini, corn and cucumber over summer
Where are we at?The photo below was taken just before planting my pumpkins and zucchinis in November:
That exact same area now looks like this:
This clearly illustrates why you have to plant pumpkin and zucchini seedlings so far apart. They invade! They take over your garden! At first I had a few lettuce and a Bok Choys seedlings in this same area. I had them there because I knew they would grow up quickly and be out of the way before they would be swamped by their 'monster neighbours'.
It is very likely that my pumpkin sea of leaves will be affected by a fungus called
Powdery Mildew this summer as it thrives in warm moist conditions. To kill it I will spray milk spray.
Milk spray is made by combining water and full cream milk in the ratio 9:1. Milk spray is very effective against Powdery Mildew, but interestingly, it needs sun light to kill the fungus, so don't spray milk spray at dusk or after dark. Give both the leaves and stems a good even coverage. For more info see
Preventing and Overcoming Mildew on this blog.
February-March is a good time to directly sow in your garden radish, spinach, silverbeet, loose-leaf lettuce and parsley. Just make sure that sown areas are moist at all times.
The February-March period is also a good time for planting seedlings of loose-leaf lettuce, parsley, celery, brassicas (provide protection against caterpillars), Chinese cabbage and Asian greens.
Zucchinis are known to be prolific producers, no matter what the weather does. I never plant more than one or two because at this time of year they produce more than most households can cope with.
Cucumbers and capsicums are more heat-loving than zucchinis and should begin to produce now.
If you are thinking ahead and want to plant brassicas now to have broccoli or cauliflower this winter, please read The transition to next season section at the end of this blog post before going ahead with this.
I foliar feed all my vegetables in the Big Eater area once-a-week with diluted seaweed extract.
The plan was:
Leek, garlic, spring onions and green manure over winter, followed by carrots, parsnips, beetroot, swedes, radish, turnips over summer.
Where are we at?All these crops can continue to be sown until temperatures go down markedly in late autumn! Thin seedlings so mature roots won't touch each other. That is about all you need to do in the Roots area.
Sowing now can be a bit more tricky because soils dry out faster. Water soil well immediately after sowing and cover rows with planks for 3 - 5 days. Lift the planks and check once a day to see whether seedlings are emerging. Alternatively water the sowed area once a day, or even twice a day in warm conditions.
At this time of year radishes may appear above ground after just 3 days. Parsnips take much longer. It took them 12 days to appear above ground when I sowed them recently. If nothing is visible after two weeks, that may be because the seed is no longer viable or because you did not keep the soil moist continuously. Some people find sowing in their garden tricky. I suggest you persist because there is nothing better than a home-grown juicy carrot or parsnip! Right now there is enough time left in the season to try again if nothing came up the first time.
If you planted leeks, let them grow until a flower spike begins to form (see photo), because they will become woody if you allow that to continue for too long. Plants in the same patch will do this at different times depending on how happy they are. It is best to lift a leek using a trowel. If you just pull the plant out by its stem, that stem may break.
Solanums area
The plan was:potatoes and tomatoes
Where are we at?I planted my potatoes (Pink Eyes) at the end of September, and then another lot (King Edwards) at the end of October. Hill them (that is add soil on top around emerging stems) as soon as potatoes emerge above ground. You can still plant potatoes now, so don't hesitate if you see bags of seed potatoes at nurseries.
Potatoes are ready for harvest when their foliage begins to die down. Before climate change, that used to be at a time of year when temperatures went down gradually and frosts began to arrive. In Tasmania you could leave potatoes dormant in the ground for a while. It meant you had freshly dug potatoes for quite some time, rather than drier stored-out-of-the-ground ones.
Our climate has now changed. You can still leave potatoes of which the foliage has died down in the ground for a little while, but then, if the weather remains warm enough, they begin to re-sprout. Potatoes that re-sprout in autumn gradually go 'glassy'. If you cut one, its nice yellow colour begins to change to a colour resembling translucent glass.
With that in mind I now begin to dig out small quantities earlier than I used to.
The alternative is to dig out the lot, and store them in a low temperature dark well ventilated spot. In our case that is under our house. In Tasmania storing potatoes works well until around mid August, when, no matter what you do, they begin to sprout. When that happens, removing sprouts will allow you to store them a bit longer, but not much longer.
Tasmanians love growing tomatoes, but our climate is really a bit too cool for them. In our current La Niña weather outside tomato plants will form a lot of leaves. Fruit will be ripening quite slowly. Most food gardeners will get plenty of tomatoes, but they will be late. In mostly low temperatures with the occasional hot day, there will be plenty of yellow leaves because daytime maximum temperatures are only around 20 degrees most days. Nothing you can do about this.
If you planted your tomato seedlings too closely together you may get mildew and/or whitefly due to a lack of ventilation. Both have been discussed above. The same remedies apply. In addition, thinning leaves and limiting the number of side branches (laterals) also helps.
If you would love to have the same tomatoes again next season, don't forget to collect tomato seeds! Saving tomato seeds is really easy: take a healthy looking very-ripe tomato, squeeze its seeds onto a piece of paper towel, write on the paper towel the variety and the date you did this, and let this dry. Then store it in a cool dry spot. Come September, you will sow no-cost tomato seed of a variety you like!
The transition to next season
Ever so slowly this season will move towards its end. If you would like to continue reading this series of blog posts for the period after March, you would need to go back to Vegie Patch Basics-2 that covers the period April - May.
But because this will then mark the start the second year of having a food garden, one thing will change: the four areas of your food garden (Legumes, Big Eaters, Roots and Solanums) will all move to a different garden bed, as follows:
- What is now the Legume bed will become the Big Eater bed. These Big Eaters will benefit from all the nitrogen that the legumes have added to the soil in year 1.
- What is now the Big Eater bed will become the Roots bed. The Big Eaters have taken a lot of nutrients out of the soil, and that makes the soil really perfect for root crops that don't want need any nitrogen.
- What is now the Roots bed will become the Solanums bed, and that is fine because solanums do well in soil that does not have a lot of nutrients.
- What is now the Solanums bed will become the Legumes bed, because it is time to add more nutrients to this soil.
or to put it in diagram form:
Each bed moves on the the next group of vegetables in the cycle from Legumes to Big Eaters to Roots to Solanums.
The easiest time of the year to make this change is late autumn/early winter when many crops come to an end, allowing you to move to a new bed what you sow or plant next.
For example:
- If in April you want to plant broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage plants to grow and produce over winter, put them where you have your legumes now (your beans will be finished by then).
- If in early winter you want to sow broad beans, and later, peas, put them in the area where the potatoes and tomatoes were this season.
and so on, and so on. There will be some beds that may sit idle for a few months. This is a good thing. Just leave the soil mulched to keep the microbes happy, or sow a green manure that you then dig in when you need the space for something else.This changing of beds once per year is called crop rotation. It is practised by professional farmers. It is also practised by many home gardeners. There are four really important reasons for rotating crops:
- By not putting the same crops in the same spots for more than one season you do not allow soil-borne pests and viruses associated with a crop to get established.
- You avoid depleting your soil of nutrients a particular crop uses.
- By planting crops in this succession, they derive maximum benefits from each other.
- You can more deliberately apply or with-hold compost and organic fertilizers according to the needs of the crops
As part of this method you will rotate crops again at the end of Year 2, then at the end of Year 3 and Year 4. In Year 5 crops are back in the same bed where they were in Year 1. See the diagram below:
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