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Pre-Spring, creeps up on you gently.

My mornings are still painstakingly timed to allow maximum cuddled up in bed time, the train becomes my breakfast nook and hair salon, all for a few more precious hours in my warm feather cocoon. But with the first few days that hit 20C, the first fruit trees bloom and the warm breeze brings sweet perfumes wrapped up with nostalgic memories of jasmine wreath crowns and daisy chains. Birds are stealing straw and string for nests and parakeets play court jester in the leafy canopy above.

I’m just itching to get planting, but gardeners beware for this is a “False Spring” one day of glorious sunshine can be followed by a freezing one with a real nasty bite to it. It’s going to get busy when True Spring arrives next month so I might as well get the nursery ready before the babies go in! Ha! It’s time to start preparing the Solanaceae garden bed for planting out when the weather is warmer, any planting is better done inside or under glass to protect it from the chill. I’ve been reading up on how to make your own seed raising and potting mix and am excited to share with you the recipes, once my seedlings taste the goodies I put in, they won’t be able to go back to that icky commercial stuff.

Coconut coir after being soaked

Coarse river sand

Seed Raising Mix

Seeds are a neat little packages, with enough nutrients to send stems and leaves skyward towards the light. That means that seed raising mix doesn’t need to be particularly rich in nutrients, but it does need to be friable (crumbly texture, not sticky like clay, easy for root grow through)

Seed Raising Mix Ingredients:
2 parts sifted compost
2 parts soaked fine coconut coir
1 part sifted cow manure
1 part coarse river sand

Potting Mix Recipe

When seedlings have developed their first set of adult leaves they need a little boost, so I add some worm castings to the mix. I am careful not to add too much nutrient rich material as this can lead to weak, leggy growth seedlings susceptible to disease and pests.

Homemade Potting Mix Ingredients:
2 parts compost
2 parts soaked fine coconut coir
2 parts worm castings
1 part cow manure
1 part coarse river sand

Garden Bed

Annual roots are as delicate as cobwebs and plants like tomatoes that suffer badly from transplant shock need to have their garden beds well settled before they go in, at least a month beforehand so I recommend anyone starting from scratch with a no dig garden get it ready in the next few months.

I have heard that when looking through a microscope settling soil looks like little “earthquakes” around delicate roots. No wonder it results in stressed unhappy plants!

Infrastructure

If stabilising soil is like a mini earthquake, then a stakes slicing into established roots may be like a meteor shower. I planned the location of my tomato stakes carefully so I could put them in now, rather than after the plants have already been planted out.
As shown in my plan I have placed hardwood stakes, offcuts from Agroforestry, in three hexagonal patterns around central stakes. Each tomato will have its own triangular enclosure, supported by string horizontals as they grow.

ALTERNATIVE TEXT

Watercolour plan for the Permablitz in Coburg, Australia

Bright eyed and bushy tailed we began our gardening adventure in July last year and of course we made the kind of mistakes that seasoned gardeners would snigger at such as planting 10 broccoli and 10 cabbages in a metre square. But that was easy to fix. When the bed bulged embarrassingly with bounty the chooks had a delicious snack on our excesses.

However one thing confounded us. At first the tomatoes we planted in the front garden grew just as happily and just as fast as the ones out the back, all of them delighting in the summer sunshine, but then EPIC FAIL! The ones out the front got one then two then a veritable patchwork of horrible yellowy brown spots! They shrivelled away. We ran to books and blogs to work out why. Apparently before we moved in, this north facing position had been prime tomato territory and this was our first introduction into the need for crop rotation.

Just as you would become malnourished if you ate nothing but tomatoes and potatoes, growing things from the same family year after year in the same spot will create an imbalance in your soil. Plants from the same family such as Solanaceae (that’s your tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, capsicums and chilis) have similar nutrient requirements so they will strip every last bit of these from the ground. But more importantly rotating your crops reduces the spread of soil-borne diseases and pest problems as these guys attract the same nasties.

So here are the four main groups we suggested for the Coburg Blitz:

Plot A: Umbeliferae (carrots, celery, parsnip, coriander, etc) followed by a green manure in the cooler months to replenish the soil for the next year’s crop

Plot B: Solanaceae (tomatoes, eggplants, capsicums, potatoes, etc) which are very nutrient hungry with Alliums (onions, garlic, leeks, etc) in the cooler months

Plot C: Legumes (peas, beans, etc) that fix nitrogen in the soil ready for a nutrient hungry crop to follow

Plot D: Brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, brussels sprouts, etc) that need a nutrient rich soil

And the next year the nutrient restoring crops will be replaced by the nutrient depleting crops. The root crops following the nutrient depleting crops, as too many nutrients in the soil result in very bush leaves, but disappointing roots.

The beauty of this system is that plants not in these main families such as many herbs, flowers, lettuces, beetroot, silverbeet and spinach can be mixed in amongst each plot to allow all plants to benefit from companion planting. For a full list of the plant family groups I recommend checking out The Seed Savers Handbook. This system is really ideal for a sharehouse, where each housemate can look after a bed themselves and not have to work about other people growing things that will cross-pollinate with their produce come seed saving time. I’m excited about suggesting this to my housemates … but first 1 Permablitz down 2 more to go until we can do our own garden!!

Explanation of 4 year crop rotation with reasons for the order of plants for the Permablitz in Coburg, Australia

Click on the images above to view larger on my flickr.

Please comment on this post if you found it helpful, I’d love to hear about your gardening adventures!

HOMEMADE POTTING & SEED RAISING MIX

Seed Raising Mix

Potting Mix Recipe

Garden Bed

Infrastructure

4 YEAR CROP ROTATION FOR A SPOTLESS LIFE