This autumn is not a time for gardening wimps. Need a garden filled with colour for the dull and challenging days of winter? Add pansies, primulas, Iceland poppies, heartsease, or cyclamen to your garden - now.
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Want a garden filled with winter veg so you can ignore the price rises in the supermarket? You'll need to act fast, and go hard.
Buy seedlings. Lots of seedlings. I almost never buy seedlings - seeds are cheaper, there's more choice of varieties, and within three weeks you have masses of plants that don't need transplanting. But our germination rate this year has been abysmal. You might even call it "nil" in some cases, partly lack of sunlight, partly days of misty rain so seed rotted, but also, possibly, poor quality seed due to the gardening bonanza in lockdown.
Many places ran out of seed to sell last year. A few in desperation sold seed close to the expiry date, and which may not have been stored well enough for it still to be viable. This suspicion is based on the fact that some of our plantings, like the coriander and red cabbage, had a superb germination rate, but others, like lettuce - which usually germinates so well you suspect that the seeds have multiplied like rabbits after you planted them - produced no seedlings whatsoever.
Once you have bought your seedlings, plant them in a well dug garden so their roots can grow down fast. Water them well, then feed weekly and weakly once a week while the plants are still growing, i.e. for about another two to three months. A foliar spray of a seaweed-based fertiliser every week will do no harm and may give added vigour, trace elements and a bit of protection against frosts. In other words, cosseting now, ie this week, will give results.
Decisive action should give you enough winter lettuces for as many salads as you need, masses of tender English spinach, loads of silver beet, parsley, rocket, coriander, cauliflowers (choose the smaller varieties for winter eating and some larger ones to mature in spring), broccoli, brussel sprouts, spring onions, wom bok, bok choi, savoy cabbage, beetroot (choose the long varieties instead of round ones, for faster cropping), and possibly other goodies I haven't noticed in the garden centre.
Do not neglect the seeds, either. I'm hoping to plant early onions (others go in later in winter), and lots of broad beans in the next few days, plus one of the more tender kinds of kale. (Some are only fit for juicing or a treat for the chooks or donkeys). I'd plant peas to mature in spring, but someone - bower birds, possums, wallabies et al - nearly always get our peas before I do (I might plant some anyway).
I'm also planting baby carrots, and hoping that now we are getting sunlight for at least an hour or three most days, they may germinate. Long varieties will give large green leaves and little root before they go to seed in spring, but baby ones, especially the round varieties, may yet give us a crop.
This is also a magnificent time to plant garlic. It won't be ready to harvest till November, but you can snip some of the tender leaves for salads and stews, though don't be greedy - too much leaf snipping means the bulbs growing below will be starved. A crop of spuds may also mature now if you have a good sunny spot. Even if you don't get whoppers, you'll have tiny "new potatoes" for boiling or baking - try rubbing the skins with olive oil and salt before popping them in the oven for extra lusciousness.
And if you want to make really sure you have green veg all winter, for soups, quiches, stir fries and salads? What's hot and sweet and green all over? Answer: pots or hanging baskets of cos lettuce, parsley or silver beet, hung by a sunny wall, preferably over heat-reflecting and retaining paving, or even placed on a sunny windowsill or table indoors. If you heat your house and have that sunny spot, you can keep harvesting your green veg all winter, as long as you keep feeding and watering them. Cos lettuce - or any of the "rabbit ear" lettuces, parsley and silver beet can be picked leaf by leaf as you need them, instead of harvesting the entire plant.
Prices may rise, but your vegies will be growing even higher - and be delicious.
This week I am:
- Staring amazed each time I pass our choko vine. I assumed our vine gave almost no fruit because our climate has a shorter growing season than say Brisbane, where a well-fed choko vine may seem to chase you as you wander down the garden path . Instead, in the coolest, shortest summer we've ever had, our choko vine has gone bananas (which are also doing nicely) and has covered a lemon tree, half the Jerusalem artichokes and an avocado tree. And it is flowering, with tiny fruit! All our nine vines needed, it seemed, was constant watering, something I will remember in future years - assuming we have enough water to indulge the choko vines.
- Treating myself to perennials, just a few more "pretties" for the front flower garden, a definite luxury, one we do not need and so feels all the more luxurious for indulging in it.
- Picking large amounts of finger limes and urging everyone to try them, and then to eat another and possibly take a few away with them.
- Glorying in the first golden flush of nerines.
- Wondering why one zucchini bush is suddenly giving us three or four fruit a day while the two bushes on either side have succumbed to mildew. Possibly I should let one of its progeny grow to seed-bearing size to try to continue its mildew resistant genes, but as it's a hybrid, who knows what we might end up with if we planted its seeds.
- Watching the first Chinese pistachio leaves change colour, and realising Autumn really is here, not just on the calendar but in the garden.