What To Sow or Plant This Month

If you live in a temperate climate like I do and you haven’t already, March is the month to sow seeds for the winter garden.

Photo courtesy of Louisjos via Pixabay

There is still time to plant out basil and amaranth before the weather gets too cold. It’s also the time to plant out garlic cloves and chickory, horseradish, and Chinese (Wombok) Cabbage. Plant leek seedlings now as well.

You can sow burdock, carrots, corn salad (Lamb’s ear or mache), radish, rocket, shallots, and turnips directly in the garden.

Seeds that need to be sown in pots or seedling trays are members of the brassica family such as broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, kale, pak choy, mizuna, mustard greens, swedes. Broad beans, chives, coriander, dill, endive, fennel, lettuce, New Zealand spinach, parsley, peas, silver beet (Swiss chard), spinach, and spring onions can all be sown now as well.   

This year, I’m keeping things simple and sticking to some of my tried and true favorites. If you’re looking to plant something reliable and delicious, you might want to consider these:

Broccoli: A fantastic source of vitamins and super versatile in the kitchen.

Snow Peas & Sugar Snap Peas: Perfect for snacking straight from the vine! They are perfect in a stir fry and add a sweet crunch to a salad. 

Carrots: I can’t imagine my vegetable garden without them. They never disappoint! Plus, there’s something so satisfying about pulling fresh carrots from the ground. 

Garlic, Onions, Shallots, and Leeks: Garlic is an essential ingredient for me; it’s my go-to aromatic. While I’m not a fan of onions due to their strong flavor, my daughter and son-in-law are currently living with me and use onions in nearly every meal. As a result, I will be planting some this year. Although I don’t enjoy onions, I do appreciate the flavors that leeks and shallots add to a dish, so I will find space for them in my garden as well.

Lettuce: The cooler months are the only time I can grow lettuce, so I take full advantage of having it in my garden.

Are you thinking about starting a winter vegetable garden this year? If so, what do you have planned? Are you excited to try out varieties that you've never grown before?

Until next time, happy gardening.

Janette.

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Sowing for the Autumn/Winter Garden

It's not a very exciting photo I know, but I wanted to post, so I have a record of when I sowed and what I sowed. These are all the seeds that can't be direct sown, and were sown on March 5th. The seeds that can be direct sown won’t go in until we get some cooler weather, which at the moment feels like it is never going to happen. We have had a reasonably cool summer this year, but just as the temperatures should have started to drop, it rose instead and we are now on day seven where the temperature has been above 35°C. Today’s high was 41°C, (105.8°F) as was yesterday, and the day before. 

Here is a list of the seeds I have sown so far.

Brassicas 

Brussel Sprouts - Long Island

Broccoli  Green Dragon and Di Ciccio

Cauliflower - Macerati Green, Purple Sicily and Rober

Pak Choi - Shuko

Lettuce - Green Mignonette, Freckles, and Butternut

Spinach - Red Kitten

Here is how they are doing after six days.

As soon as the weather starts to cool down I will be sowing all of the carrot, turnip, parsnip, wombok cabbage, and pea seeds.

There is still a week of warm to hot days ahead so while I wait for the weather to change I will order some compost to top up the vegetable beds, and dream of the harvest to come.

Until next time, stay safe and be kind to each other.

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Blogtober Day 17

 I woke to sunshine and blue skies this morning a perfect day for doing the laundry. After I had hung the clothes on the clothesline, I sat down at the computer to work on the plan for the summer vegetable garden. I use Grow Veg, a subscription-based program that helps me keep track of what I've planted and where, it also helps with crop rotation.

I have three different varieties of cucumber, Lebanese, Marketmore and a gherkin cucumber, that I need to find room for. I might extend the garden on the left-hand side and grow them there, the grass there is very patchy so it wouldn't take a lot of work, it would also give me more growing room for winter crops. Before I plant anything, I have to check the irrigation system to ensure it's all working, it saves me so much time and, I no longer have to stand out in the heat to water the garden.

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The Winter Vegetable Garden

I'm very happy with the way the winter garden is growing this year especially after the dismal year I had last year. 

Mammoth Melting snowpeas July 14th, 2020

August 8th, 2020

Brassicas July 14th, 2020

August 23rd, 2020

The harvest has been small so far. Mammoth Melting snowpeas

More snow peas and a very early asparagus spear.

Red Kitten and English Medania spinach

Violaceo di Verona cabbage, another white cabbage, Red Kitten spinach, Freckles lettuce and another tiny head of broccoli.

I've harvested two beautiful Purple Sicily cauliflowers that grew from seedlings planted last winter but that never made it to maturity before the warmer months arrived. I moved them to another part of the garden not thinking that they would make it through summer, but make it they did and this beauty was the reward for my patience.

I've since harvested another of these as well as a white cauliflower which I think is a Rober, but I'm not sure.

Some harvests have been smaller than some others.

 A tiny head of broccoli

Tiny turnips.

     What could quite possibly be the worlds smallest cauliflower?

Freckles lettuce

Everything else is coming along nicely and in a few weeks, I expect to be harvesting lots of cabbages, broccoli, beetroot, Speckled snowpeas, more cauliflowers, potatoes and carrots.

The beautifully coloured flower of the Speckled snowpea.

I miscalculated how long potatoes take to mature and the spot I had set aside for them was where I will be planting my tomatoes mid-October so they are growing in pots this year instead.

Apart from some very small broccoli heads, the only other problem I have had in the garden this year is whitefly. Normally they arrive at the beginning of winter, stay around for a few weeks and then leave, but this year for some reason they have stayed around much to my annoyance. Luckily, this year I invested in some insect netting which protected my young brassica plants from them as well as the Cabbage White butterfly. They have been a very worthwhile investment. 

I think that's all for now, I will be back next week with another post.

Until then, stay safe and be kind to each other, Jan.

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October in the Garden

October has been a  funny month weather-wise, it started out warm, then got cooler, then got warmer again so I packed away all my winter clothes and the following day the temperature dropped again and I was back in winter clothes. The last two weeks of the month have been almost identical temperature-wise, they started out warm and just got hotter with last Thursday's temperature reaching 39.1°C and today (Thursday) 39°C.

I spent a few hours out in the vegetable garden last week pulling out the brassicas and I also changed the layout because I realised with everything that I want to grow this summer there wouldn't have been enough room with the existing layout.

I removed the existing centre garden and widened the two garden beds, the bed on the left measures 7 metres x 1.9 metres, and the bed on the right measures 4.3 metres x 2.3 metres with a pathway running down the centre of the garden. I have five different types of pumpkin, two varieties of zucchini, as well as two varieties of squash that will be planted out in the bed on the left and I will also be planting sweet corn in this bed as well.

The bed on the right will be planted out with tomatoes, (which I have already planted out), carrots, lettuce, basil, beetroot, and I will be growing kujari melons, watermelon, rockmelon and cucumber on the cyclone fence that borders the vegetable garden.

Kestrel potatoes

 I harvested the potatoes this month and was happy with the number of potatoes I ended up with. It was my first year growing potatoes using the Ruth Stout method but because I was not as careful as I should have been in keeping them covered I lost about 1/3 of the crop because they went green. I will try this method again next year as it was so much easier than the traditional method of growing potatoes, and I will also be growing a lot more.

The beans are growing well despite the heat and although they are not very tall they have started flowering. I have been keeping the water up to them and covering them with 75% shade cloth on these really hot days and I'm hopeful of a really good harvest.

That's all for this month's garden update, I will be back at the end of November with another. Until then, take care. Jan.

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Because You Can Never Have Too Many Seeds

My seed order from Diggers arrived a couple of days ago, I wasn't going to buy any seeds this year as I have more than enough, but then I decided that I really wanted to grow some Lemon Drop tomatoes again this year and because paying $6.95 postage for one packet of seeds made for some expensive tomato seeds buying more seemed like the sensible thing to do.

Along with the Lemon Drop tomato seeds I also bought:

Crimson Flowered Broad Beans - As the name suggests these beans have a beautiful crimson flower and I've wanted these for the longest time, so I decided to just go ahead and buy them, they will make a lovely addition to next year's garden, there's no room for them in the garden now.

Painted Lady beans - Also known as seven year bean these beans have a white and salmon flower and will be given there own bed where they won't be disturbed.

Sunset Runner beans - Another bean I chose because of the flower which is a lovely salmon-pink.

Golden Podded Peas - Discovered at a market in India, I chose these because of the pod colour, but they also have a very pretty two toned flower of purple and pink so they will definitely add some colour to the winter garden next year.

Juane et Verte Squash - I'm trying to broaden the variety of vegetables I grow and after seeing some Yellow Button Squash in the local fruit and vegetable market I thought I would try growing them myself, but couldn't find them anywhere, so I bought this variety instead, I found seed for the yellow squash in the Reject Shop two days after I made my order. Oh, well.

Golden Zucchini - I grow green zucchini in my summer garden most years, but this year I want  to add some more colour to the veggie beds and I think these will do the trick.

As for those Lemon Drop tomatoes, if you haven't tried them I suggest you give them a go as they add a lovely lemony tartness to salads. I think they just might be my favourite tomato.

Until next time, Jan.

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