April Produce Swappers Gardening Tips
IN THE GARDEN:
The days are getting shorter and the leaves are turning. We are getting our share of that glorious, cool, gentle sunshine of Autumn, our most beautiful season. The garden bounty has been coming thick and fast as the last of the summer vegetables are harvested and fruit ripens on late apple, plum and pear trees as well as medlars, quinces and others.
Move quickly to plant out your winter vegetable crops so that they can establish before our cold cold weather sets in and slows them down. Broad beans are great to plant right now and are one of our favourite winter greens – you can tip prune them continuously for sweet, beany flavoured greens to add to soups, stir fries and salads while you wait for their spring pods.
Now is the time to be finalising your wish list for bare rooted fruit trees and even preparing the spots so that they can settle before planting. These days most varieties are available on semi-dwarfing rootstocks which make the mature trees much easier to manage and net. When planning your edible garden remember to plot out spacings that allow room between each tree to give good access all around for picking, pruning, netting and general maintenance.
Getting the very last out of your tomatoes: If you haven’t already pulled out your tomato plants to make way for winter crops then you will be seeing them continue to slowly ripen as we head into the colder months. It’s about time to get them out now though if you want to make use of those garden beds, as the window for planting pre-winter is closing fast. Any tomato that has even a slight blush can be picked and ripened inside (you don’t even need a sunny window-sill, they will ripen just as well out of the way on a benchtop or even in the pantry). If you are ripening quite a few then make sure you lay them out with gaps in between to avoid any rotting and don’t try to ripen any that have bird or insect damage as they are likely to go mouldy. We then lift and hang our tomato plants under our verandah (see photo below) – the whole plant, roots and all (wash the soil off) and this way even the greenest tomatoes will ripen up. We use these ‘hung’ tomatoes to continue with our batches of passata or to make sauce – they are not as nice eaten fresh but have a beautiful flavour when cooked.
Plant garlic now. There always seems to be mixed messages around the planting time for garlic in gardening circles. There is an old saying that you should always plant garlic on the shortest day of the year and harvest on the longest day – but this doesn’t necessarily make sense in our climate. Garlic farmers in our area definitely tend to plant in Autumn and this makes sense as the plants can get some good establishment time before we hit the winter doldrums. The days are still short enough now to spur on the sprouting of garlic cloves and if you plant earlier you can harvest earlier, which means that the timing is far better in terms of utilising space in the veggie garden. I like to get garlic out in November so that I can fill those spots with summer crops.
Garlic, like other alliums, loves calcium, so apply a couple of handfuls of dolomite lime to beds where you will be planting your crop. Dolomite lime adds both calcium and magnesium and doesn’t affect the pH of soil as much as standard garden lime so I prefer it as a calcium source when prepping beds that I want to plant straight into (garden lime should be left for 2 weeks ideally before planting and you should also do a pH test to ensure that applying it won’t make your soil too alkaline). I prep using compost and a bit of blood and bone also, forking it into the soil. I generally avoid manures as fluctuating temperatures in Spring combined with excess nitrogen can result in Witches Broom in garlic, which dramatically affects it’s storage life. I do know other organic gardeners who apply manure and get away with it, but this has been my experience. Here are a few more tips:
Soak your cloves overnight in a seaweed solution. This speeds up sprouting and growth
Sort your cloves and only plant the biggest ones. With garlic the bigger the clove = the bigger the bulb that you get at the end, so use the smaller, internal cloves for cooking not planting.
Plant cloves pointy end up and use your thumb as a guide for the planting depth. Plant roughly 15cm apart.
Some people will interplant garlic with short season crops like lettuce and radish but if you are doing this then plant in rows and allow 30-40cm between rows in order to interplant. I prefer to just grow garlic on it’s own as I find that it does better without the competition (or root disturbance when other plants around it are harvested).
Plant in FULL SUN. Garlic can technically cope in part shade but won’t produce good sized bulbs without maximum winter sunshine, especially here, so make sure that it is in an open spot and be careful not to plant anything tall to the north or west of it.
Other jobs in the garden:
Save seeds from favourite summer crops
Make a hot compost pile utilizing autumn leaves, spent summer veggie plants, manure, ash from the fire, pulled winter weeds and other organic materials
Fill bare spots among brassicas and other winter veggies with fast growing asian greens, lettuce and radish
Source copper hydroxide (syn. Cupric hydroxide) ready to spray any peaches and nectarines immediately after leaf fall to protect against leaf curl next season. *This is an organic-approved spray that needs to be applied three times over the dormant period to be completely effective: Leaf fall, mid-winter and, most importantly, at bud swell in late winter/early spring.
SOW NOW(direct): Broad beans, coriander, garlic, parsley, rocket, cool season green manure crops
PLANT NOW (as seedlings): Brassicas (ASAP) such as kale, broccoli, cauliflower and romanesco, Asian greens including pak choi, tat soi, mizuna and mibuna, lettuce, onions, spring onions, leeks, silverbeet, spinach, perpetual spinach, mustard greens, small radishes such as French Breakfast and Cherry Belle (good gap fillers)
Happy gardening!