Veggie Patch Basics - 6 (Dec - Jan)

The December to January part of the food garden season is a busy time in the food garden. Veggie Patch Basics - 6 covers this period and aims to help you make your food garden even more productive and successful.

Pink Eye potato flowers

Veggie Patch Basics - 5 (Oct-Nov)

Spring opens up great opportunities for growing vegetables, but the tricky Tasmanian climate makes timing really important.  This fifth post in the Veggie Patch Basics series covers the October - November period.  It aims to help you decide what to grow, and when to sow and plant it.

Seed Saving Made Easy

Sowing seeds collected from your own food garden can be fun and successful if you stick to a few basic rules. Taking control of the whole cycle from seed to crop and back to seed is very satisfying and it saves money! This blog post shows how it can be done for a range of vegetables.

Spring has definitely sprung

Lotte, chief garden supervisor and bird scarer on duty

Its Crunch Time

With warmer weather and showery days the slugs and snails are out and about so get out there in the evenings with a torch and start collecting and crunching before they get stuck into your spring plantings.

Planting and sowing

This is the time of year when most  things can be planted or sown. However there are a couple of exceptions. In most areas it is still too early for carrots, parsnips and beets. Wait another week or two. Seeds sown into damp cold soil will not germinate.

The nurseries are selling tomato plants but don't be fooled. By all means purchase your plants but be prepared to pot them up with a pinch of potash  and give them full sun during the day but indoors at night until well into October. We all love to get a head start with our tomatoes and if you do decide to plant them early give them some protection, such as a plastic sleeve.

Dwarf beans sown now will be overtaken by seeds sown in October so be patient. I am planting a few into pots hoping to get a head start.

Heeling in Leeks

From past experience I know my overwintering leeks will start to put up a flower spike in September and become hard and inedible. Last year I practiced the old technique of heeling them in. I lifted my huge summer leeks in March and with roots intact  bundled them together into another spare bit of ground. Pushed the dirt around them and there they stayed for several months. I pulled them as needed and used the last of them in June. Still in perfect condition. This technique seems to suspend growth but maintain quality.