Your Cart is Empty
It’s been a fabulous growing season!
After a very dry spring, January started with rain, and it has continued to be a pretty perfect summer for veggies.
Right now, while you’re sweating through the humidity to keep up with the weeding and mowing, you also need to be planning for winter.
Brassica seedlings can go in now for a late autumn and winter harvest. You can plant a second rotation in April for spring harvest. Protect from cabbage moth if necessary, with exclusion netting, though I haven’t seen so many around the last few weeks.
You may just squeeze another crop of beans and definitely sow your snow pea and sugar snap seed now. Field peas too if you have room.
Salad greens of course - make sure the seed bed stays moist on the hot days.
Coriander will be perfect as will English spinach and silver beet. Radish will be ready in 5 weeks from seed.
Carrot and beetroot will germinate quickly and can overwinter in the beds. Cover your seed bed with hessian or shade cloth to keep it damp and improve germination.
Beetroot will germinate a couple of days before carrot if sown at the same time. Both these crops need a weed free bed and well-prepared soil without a heap of nitrogen. Soak your beetroot seed overnight before sowing in a bowl of water with a pinch of borax to improve germination and prevent hollow beets.
Feed your beds with compost or a good quality organic pelletised fertiliser and remember to check pH and adjust as necessary. Sow on a cover crop in the beds which will not be used over the winter, or top them up with compost, cover with newspaper or cardboard and then cover with lucerne hay so they will be fed and rested and ready to plant in spring.
You may just fit in another burst of sunflowers as well if you sow them now.
Don’t forget to water and weed!
It’s a crisp, sunny Wednesday morning, and a small group of volunteers are happily greeting each other at the SAGE Garden in Moruya. Over the next few hours, these volunteers will plant, weed and harvest the fresh produce, and deliver it free to local organisations that help people in need.
This month in May, it's all about harvesting and storing the last of the summer produce and enjoying the change of season with the new flavours that accompany this.
We are definitely experiencing an Indian summer which means the Autumn flush of growth is spectacular and many summer crops are continuing to crop prolifically.
Backyard grower Alison Walsh shares what's she's doing in her backyard in March.
