PRUNING & PLANNING

True Spring Preparation – Temperate Climate – Southern Hemisphere: September & October – Northern Hemisphere: March & April

 
 


FEVERFEW – GOOD COMPANION PLANT FOR HERB BORDER – ENHANCES THE GROWTH OF PLANTS AROUND IT


 
 

ALTERNATIVE TEXT
ALTERNATIVE TEXT

The wind began to whirl, but it was delicious, it was warm. It carried flower petals, dandelion seeds and the promise of rain.
 
 


 
Spring has come, there is no time to catch your breath, the gardening marathon begins.
 


 
 
Like bright, juicy drops of rain raspberries start to slowly ripen, then in a matter of days become a deluge of fruit. Strawberries too are ripening and all at once everything that was quietly growing over the cool months bursts into flower, even those things you’d rather not like broccoli, coriander and celery, but the chickens are please for these sweet offerings.

We’re getting our first hot days, climbing towards 30 degrees and with the first appearances of the predator insects we know we are safe at least for a few months until the more annoying flies and mosquitoes start plaguing us.

It’s our last chance to get the garden bed ready before the tomatoes get planted out in High Summer. Mulching, weeding, pruning and after that planting out some companions to lend some shelter when it starts to get really hot.

ALTERNATIVE TEXT


 
 
ALTERNATIVE TEXT
 
ALTERNATIVE TEXT

weeding

If vegetable seeds are slow to germinate, so are the weed seeds. If you didn’t do it last month this is a great time to pull out those pesky grasses and nutrient hungry fiends and mulch heavily to prevent them from springing up again. Soon with added sunlight and water they can get out of control.

Some “weeds” I leave, like dandelions which are edible and are a good companion for tomatoes as they exude a little something that helps the fruit ripen. Clover is a nitrogen fixer, absorbing nitrogen from the air and putting it back into the soil. There is no use pulling out something that is useful and leaving bare soil for something nastier to take root, better to leave it until you have a seedling in hand to replace it with.
 
 
pruning

The herb border around my garden bed has really sprung into life this season. Mint has sent out runners like a web through the garden bed and the Feverfew has grown enormous. True Spring is a great time to take cuttings and divide up your herb border, keeping it under control and if you can’t use those new plants there will be enough time for them to get over the trauma to be gifted at Christmas.

pest control

Everything is sending out juicy, sweet shoots that snails can’t resist. It’s not hot enough for them to retreat and all it takes is a storm for them to pop up under every leaf. They must be controlled before you plant out your seedlings. A week of beer traps and night time torch hunts with your work boots on will; keep them in check.

A strong smelling herb border with spiky leaves will mean less placed for them to hide during the day, these include Winter Savory and Thyme. I have learnt to my horror that edible violas are about the worst thing to grow on your garden edge, the tender, multitudes of leaves and flowers beautifully cascading over the edges the perfect snail mansion and nursery. I am trimming and pulling these out straight away!
 
 
mulching

The weather is still quite variable hot and dry one day, freezing and rainy the next, a good thick layer of mulch around the base of all your plants will help keep a balance of warm and damp to prevent your plants going into shock.

Remember snails like to hide in mulch so keep it fine and check each night for the slimey sneaks. More about mulching in my next post!



 
 

These two months are when you should really try and sow EVERYTHING you want to occupy you garden until Spring comes again next year, even things like silverbeet that you can plant later can be planted now and kept going all year with dedicated picking, watering and mulching.

This is the time to get the seedlings well established as High Summer will
 
knock tiny plants to the ground with its sizzling sun and bruising winds.
 
By Christmas there should be no bare earth in your garden beds, your plants crowded with little soldiers selflessly shading their neighbour and being shaded in return.

Afterall this is not meek and mild Europe where things can flutter in gentle summer breezes, spaced out rows, kissed by fairies and the like. In Australia, if snails don’t go down the line chomping up your progeny then our unfiltered, ozone depleted rays of suns will finish off the job. Plus won’t it be so much more relaxing knowing that your garden can be left for a week or two over Christmas, planting finished and resilient enough to take a few 40C days. (Hopefully you have a nice neighbour check in every 10 days or so)

ALTERNATIVE TEXT
 
planning

It’s hard to not be overwhelmed after a long winter of lethargy. I like to organise the seeds I’m going to plant for the season into glass jars with seed tags made out of plastic milk bottles. Clear plastic is hard to read and cardboard crumples with water, so I’ve found milk bottles best. The glass jars make it easy to see the seed labels and keep them dry if left outside on the propagation table.

I use to be precious with my seeds, sowing only a few at a time, but with a shoebox full of expiring packets, I’ve learnt is far easy to sow an entire packet at a time and save the fresh seeds for the next year.

ALTERNATIVE TEXT

ALTERNATIVE TEXT


 
 

Continue Reading

PRE-SPRING 2012 HARVEST

ALTERNATIVE TEXT
 
 

ALTERNATIVE TEXT
ALTERNATIVE TEXT


ALTERNATIVE TEXT
ALTERNATIVE TEXT



 
 

ALTERNATIVE TEXT
I feel like our garden has finally settled into the right rhythm. Last October we pulled almost everything out to start afresh. After we finished all the earth bag garden beds, we felt overwhelmed. We were confronted with bare earth and spring already over, beans leaves crisping from summer sun and snails nibbling every snowpea to the ground. Pansies were pretty to fill the gaps in the herb border over winter, but proved a ridiculously perfect home for snails to procreate, but now our first spring is approaching. Now finally our garden in producing a quality and quantity of produce we can be proud of,

something for every lunch and dinner.

 
Soon when the fruits begin perhaps for breakfast too. The perennials are really starting to flourish, bare earth is a distant memory.

So I thought I’d start documenting what we are harvesting each season, it should be interesting to see how it changes not over the months, but if I am dedicated enough, to see how it (hopefully) grows over the years. Who would have thought that we would be picking the last of the capsicums this late in the year!

Companions:
Snowpeas – Oregon Dwarf
Lettuces – Rabbit Ear
Beetroot – White Blankoma
Silverbeet – Fordhook
Chard – Bright Lights
Chives – Common
Chervil
Parsley – Continental
Dill
Rosemary
Oregano – Greek
Marjoram – Golden
Mint – Common
Mint – Orange
Savory – Winter
Thyme – Lemon
Thyme – Common
Coriander

Brassicaeae:
Mustard greens – Mizuna
Pak Choy – Red
Chinese Cabbage

Umbelliferae:
Celery – Stringless
Carrot – Red Dragon

Solanaceae:
Chilli – Pepper Fish
Capsicum – Mini Sweet Yellow
Capsicum – Mini Sweet Chocolate

Alliums:
Spring Onions



 
 
ALTERNATIVE TEXT
 
 
ALTERNATIVE TEXT
 
 
ALTERNATIVE TEXT
 
 
ALTERNATIVE TEXT
 
 

Continue Reading

PRE-SPRING FRUITS – DAMPENING-OFF & PROPAGATION

Cold, wet and sickly – that’s no way to start life. Neither is wrenching for the light, dizzy with bleach fumes, roots clawing through lifeless soil.

Close up of a chamomile plant leaves and flowers

When you don’t believe in nuking soil to remove the bad bacteria and fungi or bleaching the hell out of your pots, you have to accept that whilst protecting the good guys in your soil you are also keeping the baddies. (I’ll be honest my decision is based as much around my own laziness as it is about the delicate ecosytems involves, really who can be bothered baking soil for an hour?!)

In the damp coolness of Pre-Spring you might despair as seeds fail to germinate, seedlings wither with yellowing leaves or worse a healthy green seedling suddenly rots at the base and topples over.

But it’s not your fault, it’s Dampening-Off! Wicked fungi that thrive in these conditions and rot your seeds and seedlings, before they have a chance. The solution is not sterilising with chemicals or blasting with heat (sterile and seeds just don’t make sense) The solution is as easy as making Chamomile Tea!

Watering your seed trays with diluted chamomile tea which has steeped overnight and again when the seedlings emerge can stop dampening off. It has natural anti-fungal properties and more importantly whilst it does not destroy all the fungi in the soil, it contains magnesium which not only aids germination by breaking down the natural enzyme inhibitors surrounding the seed, but also is integral to photosynthesis producing more resilient plants that are more resistant to disease.

Fresh leaves are meant to be better than flowers as they have more magnesium, so whilst tea bags will probably work if you can get a hold of a plant that would be best.

Chamomile tea brew in glass bottle

Chamomile tea brew sitting ourside in sun

Chamomile tea brew sitting in window sill

Sowing seeds for tomato experiment in plastic bottle greenhouse/pot

Tomato Experiment

As well as testing out my Plastic Juice Bottle Greenhouses my Tomato experiment is meant as a step-by-step way to test when to sow and plant out tomatoes in your local area for optimum results.

I want to test to see if tomatoes sown later really catch up to those planted later, and if adding beneficial bacteria to the soil really works!

I chose not to use cherry tomatoes in the experiment because really that would be too easy.

What: Tomato Periforme Abruzzo
Why: Good slicing or cooking tomato
Where: Heirloom seeds from Diggers Club, to be planted for The Tomato Experiment
When: Packet expires DEC 2012 so planted 4 seeds in each pot
How: Plastic Juice Bottle Greenhouses, placed in polystyrene boxes on north facing verandah

Sowing capsicum mini sweet and eggplant listada di gandia seeds in punnets

Sprawing solanaceae seed punnets with chamomile tea to prevent dampening-off, plastic bag covers tray to act as greenhouse

What: Eggplant Listada Di Gandia
Why: Early maturing extending the fruiting season. Small, delicious with pretty striped fruit
Where: Heirloom seeds from Diggers Club, to be planted in my Crop Rotation Plot
When: Packet expires OCT 2013
How: 6 seeds in a punnet sitting in a metal roasting tray with a plastic bag over the top to act as a greenhouse

What: Capsicum Mini Sweet Mix
Why: Had far more success with the mini varieties than their larger cousins. Produced through Winter!
Where: Heirloom seeds from Diggers Club, to be planted in my Crop Rotation Plot
When: Packet expires MAR 2014
How: 6 seeds in a punnet sitting in a metal roasting tray with a plastic bag over the top to act as a greenhouse

What: Chilli Joes Long Cayenne
Why: Packet expired, no luck in past, just threw them all in to see if they would germinate.
Where: Heirloom seeds from Diggers Club, to be planted in my Crop Rotation Plot
When: Packet expires OCT 2011
How: Seeds in a punnet sitting in a metal roasting tray with a plastic bag over the top to act as a greenhous

What: Tomato Purple Russian
Why: Early fruiting variety.
Where: Saved from the garden last year, between two paper serviettes, to be planted in my Crop Rotation Plot
When: Saved MAR 2012 from tomatoes sown last year from Diggers Club
How: Tray on north facing window sill with wet newspaper underneath to prevent drying out. Interesting to see how compares to tomatoes grown in juice bottle greenhouses.

For more information on dampening-off and natural remedies please check out Easy Organic Gardening by Lyn Bagnall it’s amazing!

Continue Reading

COMPANION PLANTING – CALENDULA & MARIGOLD

Plants that grow well with tomatoes
Plants that grow well with tomatoes

Orange Calendula Flowers

Yellow marigold flower growing in painted tin can
The very hungry caterpillar does his grocery shopping by scent and silhouette. The European vegetable patch, everything in neat little rows, is his ultimate convenience store. The snail can just slime along that generous aisle between vegetables and mow down each snow pea it comes to. One, two, three!

Let’s not make it too easy for them shall we?

You need to fill those gaps with companion planting! We want to propagate veggies not pests! There is no room for bare earth in my tomato bed this year!

Let’s begin by sowing seeds of Calendula and Marigold.



 
 

The Desert Echo's Tomato Companion Planting Chart with sowing times
Bee on Calendula seed head
To crawl amongst these flowers is, for a bug, like the overwhelming stench of a department store perfume floor, that sweet essence of tomato leaf gets lost amongst the confusing odours and they flee, overwhelmed.

French marigolds in particular are known to deter the nematode, those transparent, millimetre long worms that carelessly multiply in your soil spreading bacteria and viruses, leaving behind them a trail of disfigured and useless tomato roots.

The repellent effect of the substances exuded from their roots is meant to last several years after the plant has been long dead.

Whiteflies tend to plague tomato plants, quivering merrily under each leaf in shimmering clouds. Tiny sucker mouths by the thousand cause young growth to deform and wilt and fruits to become disfigured. Happily marigolds deter these nasties, whilst Calendula gallantly act as a decoy crop attracting them away from the precious tomatoes.



 

Continue Reading