WINTER

The cooler weather is here so it’s time to get cracking in the veggie garden! It’s not too late to get your veggies in start dreaming of your winter harvest!

It’s June, the start of winter and there is still time to get your veggies in and growing even in the cold winter weather.

Here in Moree it isn’t too cold and we don’t have excessive amount for frosts like the other parts of the country but we still need to have our veggies gardens ready to for our winter. The trick with this part of the world is having your veggies growing in the cooler months and finished before it heats up in spring and summer.

You can still plant many things from either seeds or seedlings.

Best stared from seeds: Asian greens (Bok Choy, Pak Choi etc), Beetroot, Carrot, beans (faba beans) and peas (snow pea, sugar snap pea, shelling pea etc), radish and lettuce.

Best started form seedling: Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, onions, English spinach, silverbeet and lettuce.

These are my spare seedlings. If one gets eaten or dies out in the garden I just have these on the verandah and can plant them out and fill a gap.

To get your seed and seedlings off to a good start you could cover with a cut off milk bottle. Simply cut the bottom out of it and take the lid off, place over the planted seed or seedlings and make sure it doesn’t dry out. This acts as a mini glasshouse, and protects it until it gets going. Once the seeds or seedlings have established just remove the milk bottle. Easy as that!

Mini Glasshouse to help get your veggies off to a quicker start! Also helps protects them from insects and animals.

If you have spare room in the garden be sure to put a cover crop in and keep the soil microbes going! Just cut the cover crop down about two weeks before you want to plant your next crop or before it sets seed. At this time of the year you could use something like, wheat, barley, chickpea, canola or you can even use packets of old winter sown seed that might be past its best.

This garden is only very new, it grow its first crop of pumpkins over the summer and the soil is very hard and lumpy so I decided to add a layer of compost/manure/soil and put a cover crop of chickpeas and faba bean in. These will be mulched back into the soil and it will be ready to plant for summer.

Winter is here so if getting going! Don’t have a veggie garden yet, get going. Don’t have winter veg in yet, get planting but most importantly enjoy the outdoors and digging in the dirt!

Happy Gardening Everyone!

I’M BACK!

‘A Smooth Sea Never Made a Skilled Sailor’

-Franklin Roosevelt

New Garden

With almost 2 years between posts many things have changed in the garden!

The veggie garden is compete, and producing and providing for our family of five.

A few major things have happened since I last posted. My area of Australia has been through the worst drought in recorded history and the world is currently navigating the pandemic of Covid-19. There are positives to both of these things if you look closely.

The drought brought brutal dust storms and heat, growing veggies was a very tough gig but I now have renewed resilience and great perspective of perseverance. We made it out the other side, we will certainly survive another round!

Since we have been locked in our homes and the country has closed down and so many people have turned to their backyards for santucary and sanity. This has given me the opportunity to connect with people through the medium of gardening and their VEGGIES!

This has lead me to rebooting my webpage. I am now aiming to do seasonal updates and if anyone has questions about growing veggies in hot, dry climates such as the Northwest plains of NSW I will do my best to help! So reach out and connect, get in touch and lets get in the garden together.

I will post the winter update in early June.

Stay tuned,

Happy gardening

Completed Veggie Patch — Bed all finished and in production! Tomatoes had just been removed and the beds were getting ready for a quick cover crop before the cooler weather. Corn is going well and pumpkins going crazy in the newest bed down the back.

September

“Spring is nature’s way of saying ‘Lets PARTY!'” – Robin Williams –

SPRING! It is my favourite time of the year and although in my area of northern NSW it may only feel like it lasts about 2weeks, I really do treasure it. Warmer, longer days, flowers coming out everywhere and a great new chance to plant next seasons veggies – what’s not to love.

Things are certainly happening in the veggie patch at the moment but it has not all been flowers and rainbows. I have been planting furiously but unfortunately there has been a horrible, hot, gale force wind that has been blowing for the last 3 weeks. The wind has burnt off almost all my pumpkin, squash, tomato and bean seedlings as they were coming out of the ground. The corn and a few older seedlings I bought have survived, just.. and surprisingly the last of the winter veg hung on better than I thought. I was sure that they were all going to bolt to seed but I still have my fingers crossed for a late crop of broccoli and cauliflower.

This photo shows just how exposed the patch is to wind.

If nothing else this wind has really proved to me that I must get my wind break going. The wind has been the biggest issue at the moment and I aim to have a decent and functional wind break in so next summer my first round of seedlings don’t suffer a similar fate during the August/ September winds!

I have tossed around many ideas of what plants I should use as my wind break and I have decided that I will grow a predominantly native hedge that will run down the Northern and Eastern boundaries of the veggie patch. I have chosen a few flowering gum tress, a number of different grevilleas and some fast growing wattles. As these are all evergreen they will provide year round shelter and also the added bonus as they will attract birds and bees to my garden and really add to the diversity of the space.

This little polly tunnel was made and designed with the idea that I could get the jump on my summer vegetables and protect them from any late frosts and it worked a treat. I planted tomatoes under it and they all came up and were looking good, frost risk was over so I removed it… wrong thing to do… What I should of done is leave it there longer to protect my seedlings for the relentless winds as all but 2 of them were wiped out. Next year I will do it again but leave it there until the tomatoes are much bigger, this way they might withstand the 33ºC / 60km winds?

I built this polly tunnel to protect against late frosts

So the current situation is that I am about 3weeks behind in where I thought my veggies would be; however, many lessons learnt and fingers crossed the wind has given up a little and the rain comes down.

(oh and I couldn’t help myself… I did get some new materials to start the 3rd and final stage of the veggie garden… Will update next month)

Happy Gardening!