Growing

Making the most of what you grow
Tomatoes All Year Round
Growing your own food
Vegetable garden allotment

MAKING THE MOST OF WHAT YOU GROW

STRATEGIES TO EXTEND THE PERIOD THAT YOU CAN HARVEST AND USE VEGETABLES AND FRUIT

1. Grow miniature vegetables

Vegetables varieties are often selected because they are high yielding and travel well.  Huge vegetables may have been desired when large families were common but with more households consisting of couples and singles a lot of vegetables are wasted because they are simply too big to eat before they deteriorate. 

Try growing miniature vegetable especially bred to take up less room in your fridge as well as your garden.  They have the added advantage that you can grow more of them and stagger your sowing and harvest times.

There is quite a range of miniature vegetables available including beans, broccoli, cabbages, lettuces, pak choi, Chinese cabbage, corn, tomatoes, capsicums, eggplants, cucumbers, rock melons, pumpkins, watermelons, radishes, carrots and beetroots.  The New Gippsland Seeds and Bulbs Company sells seeds of some of them.  Check out their website www.newgipps.com.au

2. Pick micro-vegetables

Pick some of your vegetables when really young and serve as micro vegetables.  It is trendy and tasty to garnish dishes with tiny vegetables.  Plant lots of seeds and use your first thinnings as micro vegetables.  Carrots, beetroots, leeks, fennel work well.  You can also sow seeds of soft herbs such as basil and snip their baby leaves soon after germination.  Scatter these micro herbs over dishes for a tiny burst of flavour. Cress works well.

3. Eat baby vegetables

Harvest some of your vegetables before they reach full size.  If you wait until they are all fully mature you will end up with a glut which if you don’t harvest and process at the right time will quickly become over mature.  Baby beetroot, carrots, peas, potatoes are delicious.  You can eat immature leeks, garlic and spring onions (which are just young white onions).  If you pick broad beans and sugar snap peas when they are very young you can eat the pods and all.  Young artichokes are tender and versatile and do not have a big hairy choke.  Stuff zucchini flowers and pick them when they are quite tiny.  This way you will be more likely to harvest all your zucchinis without any of them growing into giant marrows. Harvesting some vegetables early gives more space for the remaining ones to grow.  Also harvesting stimulates plants like beans to keep producing.

4. Pick and freeze

Pick vegetables and fruit at their perfect state of ripeness and freeze what you don’t need immediately and process them later.  For example, freeze strawberries on a tray and seal in plastic bags (vacuum ones are great).  When you have enough you can defrost the berries to make jam, or syrups, jellies, sorbets, or add to drinks instead of ice cubes.  Freezing on a tray first means the fruits or vegetables don’t form a solid lump and enables them to withstand vacuum packing.   Be conscientious about picking your vegetables and fruit and you will have a bigger harvest over a longer period.  For example you can pick your tomatoes as they ripen, freeze them, and when you have enough have a sauce making day.

 

5. Cut and come again

Harvest just the leaves you need from leafy vegetables such as silver beet and the plant will keep on growing.  If the plant looks like it is going to bolt to seed cut out the centre to slow it down.  Some plants such as Chinese cabbages can be cut off and will sprout more leaves from the base.  Cut only a few stalks from your celery as you need them and the plant will keep growing.

6. Preserve your harvest

Bottle your fruit, freeze your vegetables, dry your fruit, beans and tomatoes.  Make your own sauces, jams, jellies, chutneys, fruit leathers, and pickles.  Store your potatoes, onions, pumpkins and nuts.  If you plan your vegetable garden well and preserve your bounty you should need to buy very few vegetables and fruits out of season.  While it may not work out much cheaper than buying green groceries at the shop growing your own gives a great deal of satisfaction and you know the history of what you are eating.

7. Save your seeds

Let some of your plants go to seed.  Some of them you can eat such as dried beans and corn (for popping).  Some seeds such as fennel and celery can be used in cooking.  Keep seeds for planting in the following season.  Recycle any leftover vegetable matter to make compost.

Tomatoes All Year Round

 Early spring

·        Plant a few pots of tomatoes in a glasshouse or warm spot to ripen before Christmas – the tiny salad varieties will ripen first.

·        Use any bottled, dried tomatoes or sauces from your previous harvest to make delicious pasta dishes.

·        Prepare your tomato beds and add compost to the soil.

 Late spring

·        Plant both eating and preserving tomatoes (eg roma) outside when danger of frost is over and the soil is warming up.

·        You can place some black plastic around the base of the plants and wrapped around stakes to surround them to keep them warm when it is cold and windy.

·        Don’t fertilize at this stage but a little sulphate of potash will help them resist disease and flower early.

·        You don’t need to prune your tomatoes or grow grafted tomatoes or even stake them to get a good crop

 

Early summer

·        When the fruit has set you can feed your tomato plants with some high potassium fertilizer to help with fruit production.

·        With any luck you may have some tomatoes for the festive season – at least the tiny tasty salad ones.

·        Keep the soil moist, regular watering is the key, don’t let the soil dry out your tomatoes may get blossom end rot. 

·        Stick your finger in or better still use a water meter to see if the soil is moist deep down.

·        Try applying some soil wetter if your tomatoes are developing a brown scab at the end.

 Late summer

·        Protect your tomatoes from sun burn and water them regularly, slowly and deeply around their bases. 

·        As your preserving tomatoes get very ripe, pick them, wash and dry them, remove their cores then freeze individually on a tray then bag and label.

·        Or wash, dry, core them and cook them in the oven, cool in the oven, remove their skins and freeze.

·        To use just let them thaw, remove skin, chop, and add to casseroles and sauces.

·        Watch out for heliothis moths which lay caterpillars in green tomatoes which then feed inside and emerge from the ripe tomatoes as big brown grubs. You can cover your green fruit or use tomato dust or try a biological control.

 Early autumn

·        Pick your tomatoes before the first frost.

·        Now is the time to bottle ripe, whole roma tomatoes. 

·        Follow instructions carefully when bottling tomatoes to ensure they can be kept for long periods.

·        Make some dried and semi-dried tomatoes.

·        Make tomato sauces using very ripe tomatoes if you want your sauces to be red not orange.

·        Use up any leftovers in chutney and relishes

·        Try fried green tomatoes.

·        Save some seeds from your tomatoes if you can.  Dry them and put in a paper bag and label for next year’s planting.

 Late autumn

·        Make passata with your frozen tomatoes. 

·        When they defrost the skins should come off easily and you can squash out a lot of the juice making the sauce making process easier.

·        Eat up your semi-dried tomatoes.

 Early winter

·        Use up your bottled tomatoes and passata to make warming, healthy and delicious dishes.

·        Use your semi-dried tomatoes in salads.

 Late winter

·        Keep enjoying your tomato preserves, don’t be tempted to buy tomatoes out of season, at this time of year the tomatoes in shops are looking rather wan.

·        Revitalize your dried tomatoes by soaking in hot water then dress with olive oil, herbs and garlic.

·        You can survive without fresh tomatoes for a few months, and cooked tomatoes are better for you anyway,

·        Just think of how good your first sun ripe home grown tomato is going to taste after a period of abstinence.

 Links

·        http://tomato.com.au/growing-tips/

·        http://gardenclinic.com.au/bug_watch/tomato_grub/

 

 

  

GROWNING YOUR OWN FOOD

• Sitting down to a meal made up of food that you have grown yourself is one of the most satisfying experiences of life. It has connotations of self-reliance, good husbandry and the possibility of staving off the outside world. We have enjoyed this experience on our small five acre plot of land. We raised a small flock of Wiltshire Horn sheep on our paddock and grazed four Belted Galloway cattle and their calves on the Common bordering our property. We had a large vegetable garden, herb garden and orchard as well as a variety of chickens for eggs and meat. At that time we had a mobile butcher who did the rounds of local farms slaughtering animals on their properties so there was no stress for them and we learnt how to slaughter and dress our sheep. Our meat was delicious and one fattened cow and a couple of young sheep produced enough to last us a year. Our vegetable garden was bountiful and we preserved a lot of our produce.
• However, being fully self-sufficient requires the utmost commitment. It takes time, careful planning, an unexpected amount of resources and a great deal of effort and vigilance because gardens are constantly beset by pests and weeds, animals get sick, entangled in barbed wire, lambs get taken by foxes and chickens get killed by your pet dog. You have to do without avocados because your tree in the glasshouse didn’t survive the cold despite your best efforts to protect it. You find that you don’t fancy plucking the chicken you have just killed and forget the produce you have frozen in your freezer or bottled in your cellar. You need to have a hungry family of eight to consume everything you produce or you start to find you are wasting food.
• Even though our animals were extremely hardy there came a time when we could no longer justify keeping them. Many years of severe drought had taken their toll. Our vegetable patch is now under renovation as we have realise that we need to protect our growing plants from too much sun in summer and too much frost in winter.
• Ours is a harsh climate. In winter the temperatures can drop to -8˚C even -11©C (enough to blacken all but the most hardy vegetables) and in summer the temperature can soar to 40°c (enough to desiccate tender plants). We don’t usually get a lot of rain and in drought years, which seem to be becoming more common, we may only get between 400-500 ml per year. We are raising and narrowing the beds so we don’t have to bend over so much which decrepit knees and backs object to. We are giving them a roof of special shade cloth and putting in weeper hoses that will go under thick mulch to make the most of our precious water that comes from our small dam or out of our water tanks.
• We have learnt a great deal from our experience at food production. We know that we could become virtually self-sufficient if we really wanted to but we also recognise that doing so may not be realistic for many reasons. For example, most people work for a living and have a lot of other commitments so that they will not always able to attend to animals and the productive garden at the optimum time. Also growing your own food is labour intensive and if you knees or backs aren’t in the of best shape this may be beyond your capabilities. Furthermore, if you are thinking of growing your own food to save money then you need to really need to think about your inputs into your garden and start your own compost, collecting your own manure and raising your own plants.
• However, growing your own food does not have to be an all or nothing affair. Anything you grow is a contribution to reducing the resources spent on growing food elsewhere and transporting it into your cupboards and is also a contribution in ensuring that you have fresh and ripe food to eat. You can be selective about the food that your grow, perhaps growing food that is hard to find, or food that grows well in your particular area, or food that does not travel or keep well (think of red but rock hard strawberries found in the supermarket or worse, mouldy ones that you discover at the bottom of the punnet). Growing your own food can be immensely rewarding and this blog is designed to share some tips about doings so in demanding continental climate like ours.

VEGETABLE GARDEN ALLOTMENT

For a southern hemisphere garden with a cold, frosty winter

• Our vegetable garden has eight beds with two rotations. This allows plenty of space to grow a large variety of vegetables and prevents the build-up of disease and pests and allows plants that have similar requirements to be grown together. It also allows us to let some beds remain fallow over winter so we can pile up vegetable matter and manure and so make compost in situ. You could simply have two beds and divide each one into four areas. Salad vegetables are grown wherever there is some spare space as they grown quickly and don’t prevent us from growing our major crop.
• Each year rotate the vegetables you plant in any one section of the bed to prevent the build-up of disease and pests. There should be a succession of crops as below:
 
• BED A
• 1. In one section of the bed leafy greens and roots are grown from September until September
• 2. They are replaced by pumpkins that are grown from November until March
• 3. This part of the bed then remains fallow from April until September
• 4. Tomatoes and capsicum are then grown in this part of the bed from November until March
• 5. The bed is then left fallow from April until September
• 6. Sweetcorn and melons are then grown from November until March
• 7. This part of the bed is then left fallow over winter
8. Leafy greens can then be sown again in this part of the bed in spring.

• BED B ROTATION
• Broad beans and peas are grown in a section of the bed from April to November
•  They are replaced by crucifers that grow from January to September
• They are replaced by zucchinis, cucumbers that grow from November until March
• The bed then remains fallow from April until August
• Potatoes are planted in September and remain until
• Onions, leeks and garlic, are grown from April until February
• Broad beans and peas then can be sown again in this section of the bed.
• Opportunist salad crops
• These fast growing vegetables for salads can be grown wherever there is a bit of free space. Grow quickly, without check and pick when young.
• In August – plant seeds of coriander, parsley, chives, baby spinach, radish, mesclun, rocket, lettuces
• In September – plant seeds of baby beetroot, peas (for shoots), radishes, coriander, rocket, lettuces
• In October – plant seeds of basil, baby tomatoes, salad shallots, lettuces, nasturtiums
• November – more of the same

• CHOOKS AND VEGIES
• It is a good idea to build the chook pen next to the vegetable garden with an entry to let the chooks into the garden. In winter it is especially good to let the chooks in as there are no precious plants for them to destroy and their scratching turns the soil over and they eat pests. In spring and summer they could do a lot of damage so you need another enclosed area on the other side of the chook pen for them to scratch in. When building the chook pen it is a good idea to place broken glass on the surface of the area you are going to concrete to form the floor of the roost. This will stop rats from burrowing under the pen and coming out at night to eat the chook food. Also, make sure you bury the wire netting or turn it out from the fence at right angles to stop foxes digging under the fence and eating your chooks.