This fourth episode in the Vegie Patch Basics series looks at the many things that can be done in Tasmanian vegie gardens in August and September, months that on our island surrounded by southern oceans, are often dominated by an unpredictable mix of wind, cold weather, sun and rain.
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.
Veggie Patch Basics-1 covered where to put your veggie garden and compost area, and establishing four areas in your veggie garden. Veggie Patch Basics-2 then discussed the April-May period and Veggie Patch Basics-3 the June - July period. This blog post continues from there.
Part 4: August - September
Our climate
I begin to write this blog post on an early August day with wind, a lot of rain, a maximum temperature of 7 degrees, and snow in many areas. Yet, a few days ago, we had a nice sunny 17-degree day with blue skies.
Following a few days of slightly warmer weather, you may think that spring is in the air, but if you act on that and sow or plant in your garden, you will often find that, 'no, I should have waited!'.
The weather at this time of year is quite unpredictable. Some years it is very dry in August and September. Keep an eye on rainfall and irrigate if necessary.
Some people will sow carrots in August outside. In most years temperatures will be too variable and too low for good germination. Cold wet conditions may result in the small carrot seeds rotting in the soil.
Some people will sow their tomatoes in August inside. In most years these seedlings have to then stay inside until at least early November, and end up long thin, lanky, and unhealthy looking. Not worth planting in your garden. A wasted effort!
There is a time and place for everything, and for many crops August is simply too early! But there are many things you can do at this time of year that won't be a wasted effort. This series of blog posts focuses on growing annual vegetables. For a look at what can be done in regard to fruits, berries, and perennial food plants see our Monthly Food Garden Calendar.
Become your own local micro-climate expert
This blog post assumes that you have an average Tasmanian climate in your garden. Within Tasmania, however, there are considerable differences in climate.
Compare a food garden in St.Helens with one in Launceston. Compare a coastal food garden on the North-West coast with a food garden in the foot hills of Mt Wellington.
There can be considerable differences in climate even on a much more local scale. We live in Hobart near the top of a hill. Down-hill from us gardens get considerably more frosts than we have.
Observe the weather in your food garden, and find out whether you have frosts, and if so, where in your garden and when was the last frost of the season? Where is it the windiest in your garden? Where is it nice and warm when the sun shines on a winter's day? Where, after a big rain, does the ground stay dry, and where does it become muddy? Where is it shady in winter, and in summer. Write your observations down in a garden diary if you think you will forget them.
By observing the climate in your garden on an ongoing basis you gradually become a local micro-climate expert. That knowledge allows you to make better decisions regarding when to start planting potatoes (after the last frost of the season), where to put your outside tomatoes, and so on, and so on.
Measuring pH and adding lime
In Veggie Patch Basics - 1 we created four vegetable beds and then added lime to all of them. We did that because most Tasmanian garden soils are acidic, but we did not actually measure the acidity of the soil.
August is a good time to go a little bit more scientific about this, because it may rain more regularly than later in the season, and regular, not too heavy, rain improves the uptake of lime.
Acidity is measured on a pH scale that goes from 0.0 (extremely acid) to 14.0 (extremely alkaline).
A soil with a pH of less than 7.0 is acidic, also called ‘sour’.
A soil with a pH of more than 7.0 is alkaline, also called ‘sweet’.
Vegie garden soil ideally has a pH of between 6.5 and 7.
Testing pH is easy. Use a soil test kit or a pH meter - available from hardware stores and nurseries (see photo below).
Correcting pH is done with lime or dolomite.
Find out all the details in Food Garden Group blog post Acid or Alkaline?
Green manures
Green manure is the term used for growing plants from seed, then cutting them up and digging them in before they flower to improve soil.
In Vegie Patch Basics - 2 it was mentioned as a way of feeding soil in autumn when you have nothing else to grow in sections of your vegie garden.
I recently cut up my green manure because it looked lush and green and because, to get the best out of plants, you need to cut them up before they begin to form flowers.
Here are some photos I took at the time:
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| the lush greenery before digging in |
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| After cutting it into small bits with a pair of scissors |
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| After gentle up and down movements with a spade |
Don't dig if you don't have to!
I dig as little as possible in my garden to minimise damage to soil organisms. I did not dig to work my green manure into the soil. I worked the green material into the soil with gentle up/down movements of my spade all over the bed.
Once upon a time 'turning over soil' was common practice in food gardens. Not anymore! There is now much more awareness of the micro-organisms in soil, and their beneficial role in making soil healthy and crops nutrient-dense. Many soil organisms won't survive if you do. For the same reasons rotary hoes have lost most of their popularity!
If your soil is really bad or compacted, disturb it in a major way just once (dig, aerate, improve drainage, add compost, add other organic material, add gypsum etc), and then go back to not digging.
For more info on soil organisms and their role in a healthy food garden see Twelve Simple Food Gardening Practices and Now Improve your Soil Biology on the Food Garden Group blog.
The importance of flowers
Now and then I see food gardens in which the host is so focused on making their garden productive that they have forgotten an essential ingredient: flowers.
Flowers are essential in food gardens ... because they attract insects ... and insects pollinate! But flowers also make a food garden look so much better, and some are edible!
My preferred flowers are those that look after themselves, that is, they come back season after season because they sow themselves out! Examples are marigolds, aquilegias, violets, and nasturtiums. There are many simple annual flowers that you can pull out if their seeds land where you don't want them. They make a food garden look great, and are a real help when it comes to pollinating all fruiting food garden plants.
Make flowers part of your food garden. Sow them in trays and then plant them out, or buy seedlings, and see them as an essential part of a great looking productive food garden!
Our four vegie areas and what to do in them in August and September
Area 1: peas and beans (called 'Legumes') - they add nitrogen to your soil
Area 2: big eaters - vegetables that need a lot of nitrogen, compost and fertiliser
Area 3: root vegetables - without much nitrogen, fertilisers and other soil nutrients they won't fork
Area 4: potatoes and tomatoes (called 'Solanums')- need little if they are in good soil
Each area is treated in its own special way for one year. Then you change the use of each area. In Year 5 each area is back to how it was used in Year 1. This is called crop rotation. We will discuss the process in more detail at the end of Season 1. For now, just believe me when I say that there are real benefits in doing things this way!
Let's look at each area for the August - September period. In each section I have included links with more information for specific crops and techniques.
Legumes area
The plan is:
peas, broad beans until mid-November, then beans for the second part of the season
Where are we at?
Fertiliser recommendation - no fertiliser needed, just foliar feed seaweed extract once in a while.
In most food gardens this area will contain broad beans and peas at this time of year.
I don't sow my broad beans in rows. I sow them all over their allotted space, because in my garden their number one function is to fix nitrogen and feed the soil. For that reason I have far more broad beans than I need. No problems, because a broad bean plant can be a food-source of more than just beans. Most broad beans form more than one stem. Pick one stem of a young broad bean plant, and the other one(s) will keep growing. Use these young stems and their leaves in stir-fries and salads.
In my garden in my local micro-climate we usually eat our first small broad beans in their pods in the first week of October. By early November we have a large amount of more fully grown broad beans.
You can feed your broad beans with a seaweed liquid/water mix if you want to make them really happy.
Before the Spring winds start, surround your broad beans with some string or mesh on garden stakes (see photo below), so they don't fall over in high winds.
I sowed my first batch of peas in mid April. That was earlier than I usually sow them. I knew what was going to happen, but I thought, let's see whether theory matches reality. That theory is that sowing peas early does not give you early peas. And the reality? That batch of pea plants have now been flowering for at least a month, and not one pea pod was formed. Why? There are enough insects around. It must be that the days are too short or the temperatures are too low. Pea pods will form on those plants, but later when the season has progressed. Peas are usually sown from June to September. In my garden in my local micro-climate I usually have ripe peas by mid October.
Foliar feed your pea plants seaweed liquid if they don't look totally healthy at the moment. Otherwise, just watch them gradually grow!
Big Eater area
The plan is:
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?
Fertiliser recommendation - ample COF or some other general organic fertiliser mix, compost, foliar feed seaweed extract, fish emulsion, worm juice, coffee grinds etc. etc.
In most gardens this area will at the moment produce broccoli and cauliflower, and then cabbage.
I have seen gardens recently in which 'it was all over' because people had planted their brassicas really early. No problem! In their place you could directly sow in your garden spinach, silverbeet or radish. If you would like to find out more about sowing directly in your garden soil, have a look at Sowing in your Garden on the Food Garden Group blog.
Also, you could sow Asian Greens and loose leaf lettuce in trays, inside, and then plant them out later. If you would like to know what soil mix to use in your trays, have a look at Sowing in Pots and Punnets on the Food Garden Group blog.
It is far too early for crops like pumpkins, corn, Iceberg-type lettuce, zucchini, capsicum and cucumber.
Roots area
The plan is:
Leek, garlic, spring onions and green manure over winter, followed by carrots, parsnips, beetroot, swedes, radish, turnips over summer.
Where are we at?
Fertiliser recommendation - strictly no fertilisers, foliar feed seaweed extract once in a while
Leeks will be progressing slowly, and can be picked from here on as needed in the kitchen, but you may miss out on them growing to full maturity if you pick them too early. There will come a point in Spring when they begin to form a sturdy flower stem. At that point you know that the plants will focus on their flower and not on growing bigger, and that is the best time to lift them. Don't just pull leeks out of the ground, but lift them using a small garden shovel. A leek, properly planted well below soil level (see blog post Easy Leek ) is not easy to just pull out by hand, and might break if you try.
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| Now this is a leek! |
Pick spring onions as required. You could sow them in succession, with a fortnight in between, so you have a constant supply.
Garlics will continue to grow until late November or December, and need nothing more than moist, but not wet soil, while growing. They love foliar feeding with seaweed extract.
Sow carrots, parsnips, swedes and beet root directly in your garden from mid-September. Sowing these crops in August or even early September is probably not a good idea because soils are still too cold. Wet conditions may lead to the seeds rotting rather than germinating.
For beginning food gardeners beetroot is the easiest to sow because the seeds are big enough to put each seed precisely where you want a beetroot plant to come up.
For all root-crop seeds picture the width of a mature root. That width plus a bit is ideally the distance between each mature plant. Keep this in mind when you sow, but don't worry too much about where the seeds land when broadcast them. We will 'tin' seedlings (ie. remove seedlings that are too close together) in a few months time.
Always sow seeds near the soil surface, but not on top of the soil, and keep the soil moist at all times during germination.
In addition to beetroot, I recommend you try carrots because the home-grown end result is likely to be much tastier than the enormous orange, tasteless things you buy in the supermarkets. You could consider making paper seed tapes with carrot seeds. By doing so you space out seeds precisely at the right distance from each other and won't have to spend a lot of time thinning seeds later on. Blog post Making your own Seed Tapes explains how to do this.
Some really good recommendations for sowing carrots and other small seeds can be found in Food Garden Group blog post Sowing in Situ. My favourite way of keeping soil moist is a plank (as described in that blog post).
The trickiest to get to germinate is parsnips because parsnip seed often only remains viable for half a year after harvesting. Ideally you get your parsnip seed from someone local who harvested the seeds not long ago. Carrots and beetroot might be more rewarding for beginning food gardeners.
Always check the 'Sow by' date on all the seed packets you buy, and get the packet with the latest date.
Solanums area
The plan is:
potatoes and tomatoes
Where are we at?
August and September is far too early for planting tomato seedlings outside. The most successful tomato plant is one that grows quickly in above-twenty-degree conditions from seed to crop. September is a good time for sowing tomatoes in punnets in a warm sunny position inside. The recommendations in Sowing in Pots and Punnets will give you a good starting point for raising your own tomato seedlings.
August and September is the right time to plant potatoes if there are no longer any frosts in your garden.
For potatoes the common rule that you sow a seed once or twice the size of the seed below the surface does not apply. The deeper you plant a potato the bigger the crop! Add additional soil on top as they grow. The reasons for this are explained in Food Garden Group blog post Growing Potatoes.
You could try to stagger your potato production by planting your first lot now, and a second lot a few months from now.
My recommendation for all members of the Solanum area is 'no fertiliser' because if you do add fertiliser, they produce lots of leaf and less fruit or tuber.
That's it for the August - September period. Have fun with it all!
The discussion will continue in Veggie Patch Basics - 5 (Oct-Nov). See you there!
Cheers,
Max Bee
Thank you so much for these veggie patch basic posts- they are so helpful and I’ve learnt so much already!
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