Garden

PLANTING OUT TOMATOES

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transplanting solanaceae and other warm weather crops
growing tomatoes in a temperate climate


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After months of waiting, it’s finally here, that tiny window where you can plant out your hot weather crops! Blink and it’s gone, a month before it was too cool and a month later too hot, without enough time for the fruit to mature before autumns chill prevents fruit ripening. In Melbourne this magical month is November, when the minimum temperature doesn’t dip below 10C, but the rain has not yet dried up and those scorching 30C plus days are few and far between. In the Northern Hemisphere this would be May.

Spring’s warm weather companions have been flourishing, beans twisting around stakes and lettuces feathering over the earth to protect your delicate young seedlings from the worst of sun and wind. The rest of your hot weather lovers such as basil can go in now with your tomatoes, capsicums, chillis and eggplants. There was room for a cucumber too in the corner of my garden bed, to twirl up and over an arbour.

A month of work paves the way for two months of rest

 After you slog this month out you will have earned that beach vacation and the garden should be fairly self sufficient. Remember don’t spoil your plants and they won’t throw a tantrum when you’re not there.

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My garden bed plan for the warmer months. Tomatoes in the centre of each triangle, supported by string thread around stakes. Lettuces suceeded by basil, marigolds, amaranth
Stage 1: September – November
Stage 2: December – March


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Grow plants densely in hot weather to protect them form sunburn, otherwise put up a shadecloth.

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Tips for planting out tomatoes

In warmer months plant in the evening to allow transplants to recover overnight. The opposite is true in cold weather, where the plants need the warm day to prepare for the cold night, to reduce the likelihood of rot.
Tomatoes are nutrient hungry, but if your soil is too rich they will produce a lot of leaves an no fruit. Dig a hole twice as deep as your seedling’s pot and place poultry manure in the bottom, cover this with soil and plant seedling on top. The plant will grow deeps roots, and reach the manure when it need the extra boost, when covered in fruit.
Avoid overhead watering as this can contribute to sun spot and fungal spores can be splashed onto foliage from other plants.
Plant hot weather crops when the minimum temperature is consistently over 10C
Plant tomato seedlings deeper than they were in their pot so the roots are nice and deep to protect them from drying out. Like cucurbits and some herbs, tomatoes form roots on their stems when in contact with soil.
There is no need to prune. Studies have shown yield is actually reduced when plants are pruned.Wounds on plants increase their risk of disease. If you need to cut them, use secateurs disinfected with mentholated spirits.
Plants can get stressed because they don’t get enough moisture. Water your seedling thoroughly an hour before transplanting and for added benefit use seaweed tea. This helps soil cling to the roots and minimises shock. If it is really dry fill the hole with water and wait for it to drain into the soil before planting.
Mulch thickly around plant to keep soil damp.


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Tomatoes have delicate stems, be careful when handling not to bruise of bend them. The same goes for the roots, be gentle!
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Add mycorrhiza fungi to the roots of the seedling before transplant. Whilst natural ecosystem such as the forest floor have millions of fungi in the soil, garden beds often require the addition of beneficial fungi to act as agents for nutrient exchange, making nutrients otherwise locked up available.
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Water deeply to saturate the soil and make sure it stays moist for the first few days after transplant. Try a chamomile herb tea After that water only once a week, but very deeply. This encourages deep roots, watering too often, and too shallowly causes roots to form near the surface and these are vulnerable to drying out on a hot day. Plants watered too become soft and delicate.
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Garden

EDIBLE WEEDS

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Edible weeks along the Merri Creek, Brunswick, Australia

companions planting was never so easy

A Permaculture garden is the ultimate multicultural society. However, whilst diversity is encouraged in the garden that doesn’t mean Permaculturalist’s are egalitatarian, oh no not all plants are created equal, just start up a conversation about comfrey or conversely kikuyu grass and you’ll see. But a plant’s indigenous lineage doesn’t guarantee it spot in the veggie path, especially in Australia where the natives are quite mean with their nutrients, the eucalypt tree even has a nasty trick where it drops its toxic leaves on the ground to discourage competition. So in a community garden it’s not great, but as a woodchip path it is quite a good grass suppressant.

Foreign plants do quite well here, they appear here there and everywhere without you having to spread a single seed and they are very hardy. Any other gardener looks on these “weeds” with bored cynacism and reaches for the round-up.

Don’t judge them on those nasty rumours that Monsanto spins, they can be useful and some are edible too.

DANDELION

Native to Europe and Asia, can use to loosen overgrazed, compacted pastoral soils as well as in the humblke veggie patch.

Dandelion companion planting

Their long deep tap roots break up hard soil and bring nutrients up from deep down to benefit shallower rooted annuals without competing for surface nutrients. They also release ethylene gas which aids in fruit ripening, so a patch of dandelions around your late green tomatoes might be a good idea. Their bright yellow flowers attract beneficial insects such as bees to pollinate your garden.

Most intriguing of all is their power to combat fusarium wilt, a soil-borne fungal disease that effects tomatoes grown in the same soil year after year. This disease reduces health and yield of tomatoes, but dandelion roots produce an acid that starves the disease of iron.

We harvest the root, peel it and use it in stirfries for a potatoey/parsnipy substitute.

Used as a nutritious salad green, benefits of dandelion include:

  • high in iron, calcium, vitamin K, B6, E, K thiamin, antioxidants, beta- & alpha-carotene
  • treatment for liver disease, kidney and spleen complaints, skin conditions, digestive aid
  • cancer fighting properties
  • acne remedy

    • SOW THISTLE

    Sow thistle too is said to aid growth, but I’m slightly suss on this particular edible. There was a particularly old and serrated one in my garden bed which I brushed passed. Where it touched my skin I came up in what can only be described as a horribly itchy flea bite like rash. With a reaction that extreme I’m loathed to put it in my mouth, no matter how nutritious it is. Turns out I’m one of those unlucky people with an allergy to the old Sow!

    So this a lesson to everyone before eating any new food whether it be a weed or just an exotic fruit, test a little bit first don’t go swallowing a whole green smoothie full of it! One day I will try cooking it then doing a patch test on my wrist first, but until then I think I will just stick to the nettles and dandelions until I’m REALLY HUNGRY!

    NETTLES

    Native to Europe and Northern Africa, be heartened that when you feel its sweet sting at your ankles and merrily hop in pain that it is an indicator that your soils is oh so fertile, pop a tomato next door for optimum results.

    This was one of the Permaculture lessons that blew my mind, Peak Oil aside, could that horrible stinging nettle that I had long called weed be a friend?

    Nettle in companion planting
    Nettles are said to increase disease resistance and resilience to insect attacks. People even go so far to say it improves the flavour of its neighbours, increasing their production of aromatic oils. As a tomato companion they improve their keeping quality by slowing down the fermentation process and for eggplants they are the ladybird’s preferred breeding ground so bad news for the resident aphids. And remember why nettles make a good mulch?

    I recommend you pick up a copy of Adam Grubb’s Weed Forager’s Handbook to learn more, it’s really fascinating.

    Nettles as edible
    Eat the tender young leaves dried, blended or cooked for these benefits:

  • high in antioxidants
  • 40% protein by dried weight
  • dense in mineral, especially calcium (for the vegan’s out there you onlyneed 150g to get your recommended daily intake)
  • reduces pain of arthritis
  • anti-dandruff properties
  • mild hayfever remedy
  • eczema remedy
  • diuretic & hypotensive – reduces blood pressure
  • astringent for nosebleeds and internal hemorrhaging
  • detoxifying blood tonic
  • reduces benign enlargement of the prostate
  • add dried to chook feed, helps to protect against disease

    • So next time you feel tempted to pull that weed, maybe rethink the definition and pull the ornamental taking up valuable tomato space instead.

    Nettles are a protected place for caterpillars to transform into beautiful butterflies.


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    Sometimes confused (by me at least 😉 ) with RED RIB DANDELION which is actually a chicory, but still a great addition to a salad!

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    Butterfly metamotphosis photos taken by my clever dad

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    Garden

    CHOP & DROP MULCHING

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    high summer preparation
    free, easy mulching solutions for the busy gardener to replesh nutrients in their soil and protect their plants form the hot weather.


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    The seaweed mulch we covered the garden beds with has been decomposing nicely, shrinking away to nothing. adding nutrients to the soil. However the companion plants haven’t grown large enough to cover the bare spots and the cool weather crops are ending. On the otherhand the herb border went wild during the Spring Flush!

    What to do… let’s chop & drop!

    Herbs accumulate a lot of micro-nutrients in their leaves, especially the perennial ones with deep roots, they’re pretty sneaky and can get hidden nutrients out of even the worst soil. So if you can’t eat them all it makes sense to chop up the leaves and mulch with them, as they decompose they’ll make those nutrients accessible to your annuals. A lot of these are also great compost activators and some plants like legumes actually accumulate nitrogen from the air! I use trimmings of the River Wattle bushes we have in our food forest as it is nice and fine. Always finely chop your herb mulches so they breakdown easily and in the case of nasturtiums don’t start spouting! You can even use leafy kitchen scraps, but don’t let your chooks/worms go hungry! Add crushed eggshells for additional calcium.

    Just like us plants need a balanced diet to be disease resistant and healthy. In nature leaves fall to the ground adding nutrients back to the soil, some are eaten by animals and insects, but they too add to the soil in the form of manure. How can we expect the soil to remain healthy when all we do is take and take? A diet of sugarcane mulch alone is just not enough! To avoid problems of malnutrition, spread your herb mulch throughout the garden to evenly distributing a broad specturm of nutrients.

    So why waste time and money buying fertilisers and chemical additives?! You just need to follow nature’s example, chop & drop the leaves where you found them! It’s not lazy if it’s smart! Ha!

    NOTE: Some herbs have negative allelopathic effects on other plants so should not be used as a mulch. These “anti-companions” release biochemicals that stunt growth, cause plants to bolt or just outright kill them dead. Why would they be so cruel? Perhaps as a defense mechanism to ward off herbivorous animals and insects, but is that really an excuse?


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    micro-nutrients found in some common herbs

    If you know of anymore please share with us, let’s add to the list!

      PERENNIAL HERBS

      MARJORAM – calcium, phosphorus, iron, magnesium, trace amounts of manganese
      OREGANO – calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, trace amounts of zinc
      ANGELICA – potassium
      ROSEMARY – phosphorus, potassium, iron, magnesium, zinc, calcium
      THYME – potassium, phosphorus, calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc
      CHAMOMILE – calcium, potassium, phosphorous
      COMFREY – nitrogen, calcium, potassium, iron, magnesium, silica

      ANNUAL HERBS

      PARSLEY – calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, trace amounts of phosphorus
      BASIL – calcium, iron

      NITROGEN FIXERS

      ACACIA – nitrogen
      VETCHES – nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous, copper, cobalt
      LEGUMES – nitrogen
      LUPINS – nitrogen, phosphorous, calcium

      WEEDS

      THISTLES – potassium
      NETTLES – calcium, iron, copper, sodium, sulphur, nitrogen, potassium
      DANDELION – iron, copper, potassium, sulphur, manganese
      PLANTAIN – calcium

      EDIBLE FLOWERS

      SUNFLOWERS – potassium
      PRIMROSE – magnesium
      YARROW – copper, nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous
      BORAGE – potassium, calcium, silica, phosphorous
      NASTURTIUMS – sodium, fluorine, sulphur, magnesium, calcium, potassium, phosphorous, iron


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    amaranth-seedling-hardening-off-summer-preparation

    And then in an instant the rain is turned off at the mains and it just gets hotter and hotter, it’s High Summer. It’s dry and water is scarce, the snails and slugs of spring fade away to be replaced by the dreaded mosquito – good for the garden, bad for the gardener! Mulching your garden to prevent moisture lost is imperative!

    You would have planted out all the “all season” plants like lettuce and silverbeet in True Spring under cloches to keep them safe from snails, but now it’s time to plant out the warm weather crops. Here is Melbourne November doesn’t dip below 10C so it’s ideal for tomatoes.

    Get as much as you can planted out now, it will be a frenzy, but worth it when your plants have grown large and lush enough to look after themselves when it gets really hot. In late December you want to be enjoying an ice cream on the beach, not worrying about your entire crop turning to ash.

    HARDENING OFF

    But just look at those little seedlings in your nursery, they’re spoilt aren’t they! Soft and delicate little things, they won’t be able to hack it in the real world, just one stiff breeze will send them crying to the ground!

    Tough love time – they need to be hardened up!

    But in all seriousness transplanting can be very traumatic for our delicate seedlings if not done right. The shock can stunt growth or cause your plant to bolt to seed prematurely. If you are really unlucky it will just flop over and die. A sudden change from a cosy nursery to an exposed spot in full sun or freezing rain is likely to be a shock it will never recover from.

    “Hardening off” off means introducing them to their new home gently, over a week or two. Only for a few hours at first, let them get use to their new microclimate, but protect them from extremes. If in a greenhouse I begin by removing the lid. Then I like to pack everything going into the bed in a poly box for ease of transportation (a trick I learnt from my permaculture bible) and to offer a little insulation from said extremes. By the end of the week I just leave the seedling sitting where I will plant it.

    Keep them well watered, drying them out before transplant is also a death wish and choose a nice mild morning or evening to do the deed. A drink an hour before planting out will help soil stick to the roots, a little bit of water in the hole they go into will make sure the soil is nice and moist. Morning is good in cooler weather as they have a day of sun to get use to their new spot, and evening in summer so they have the night to drink up water and settle before the hot day.

    Do you have any special tricks when transplanting?


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