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Duncan in the vegetable patch with a seedling

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⚠️🌸 The Signs of Spring #1 👀 Sure it ma

⚠️🌸 The Signs of Spring #1

👀 Sure it may feel cold and wintry, but if we care to observe them, the signs of spring are everywhere at the moment.

🪺 One such sign is the nesting of the White Browed Scrub Wren. This is one of the first birds to begin courtship and nesting behaviour. They’ve been quite busy in our garden for several weeks now.

🚴‍♀️Last year they built a nest in my bike helmet. This year, it’s Caryn’s turn. Her bike and helmet is in a different shed and they’ve decided it’s the perfect place to nest. However, some of them are just beginning to nest in my helmet again this year. Last week we had to act quickly before they established a nest in Emily’s bike basket.

🐦 You may notice plenty of other birds engaging in courtship behaviour. They know spring is coming, and they provide an optimistic reminder for us all, that the end of winter is in sight.

❓What signs of spring are you noticing in your own garden?

#whitebrowedscrubwren #signsofspring #bikehelmet #birdnest

🌳🌳🌳A new orchard in the making 🌳🌳🌳

🐝 I volunteer as the working bee coordinator for the local primary school. It’s a good opportunity to use my skill set and contribute to the community. At the next working bee the school community is going to plant an orchard. Some of the younger, current students will benefit in another year or two. But it's also a great legacy to leave for future students. This was made possible by a grant from a local not for profit organisation (thanks @sunburycobaw). I was given the job of planning the varieties and shopping for the trees, which is always an exciting job.

✏🗺 Designing school gardens is a little different from designing backyard orchards:

🗓 🍐 Many stone fruit trees are ready for harvest in January – when there’s no one there to harvest the fruit. Often, the birds get the lot when these are planted in school gardens. It’s important to choose varieties of fruit that ripen during the school terms.

↔️ 🍎 Spread the harvest. Don’t select a dozen fruit trees that all ripen around the same time and produce a tremendous glut that the kids can’t get through. Choose a combination of early, mid and late season varieties to ensure that kids can pick fresh fruit for many months.

🌱 🌳 Size is important. Choosing dwarf fruit trees helps to keep them small. This reduces the need for pruning, makes it easier to net the trees, and easier for younger children to pick the fruit.

💪 🍏 Plant reliable and disease resistant varieties. I’ve noticed that some fruit tree varieties that performed well for me in Melbourne do terribly up here in Kyneton. Both Divinity Apricot and Hick’s Fancy Mulberry have really struggled in this cool-temperate climate. Selecting varieties that grow well here will ensure that every tree planted will contribute to many recess and lunchtime snacks. In the school orchard I’ve focused on apples, pears and nashi, because that’s what grows well here.

➡ Head to my Substack and check out my fruit tree ripening chart and my guide to rootstocks for more info.

#workingbee #kyneton #schoolgarden #gardeningwithkids #communitygarden

🤣 I’m often mocked for my obsession with grow

🤣 I’m often mocked for my obsession with growing a Christmas tomato. But I’m not the only one who strives to achieve this gardening glory.

🎅 🍅 Every spring, many hopeful gardeners plant precious tomato seedlings into the garden with the hope to develop and ripen a tasty tomato before Christmas. It is a tough feat to manage and can be seen as a badge of honour to some gardeners.
I’ve managed to ripen a tomato before Christmas every year that I’ve lived in Kyneton. Last year I ripened my first tomato on 25 November, a full month before Christmas.

✋I often have such achievements dismissed by fellow gardeners.

🤷‍♂️ “Who cares about Christmas tomatoes, what’s the big deal anyway?”

Or more often

🪟 “Yeah, but I bet you use a greenhouse, it doesn’t count if you use a greenhouse”.

🏆 Apparently, there are some unwritten rules in this achievement. According to some (usually those who haven’t grown a Christmas tomato) using a greenhouse is cheating. I’m not so sure about that. I don’t feel there are such rules. In fact, the more effort I go to ripen a Christmas tomato, the more rewarding it is.

🌱 This year I’m running a side-project to grow a Christmas tomato using only rudimentary equipment. No greenhouses, no heat mats, nothing fancy. It’s going to take more effort than my usual method, but I’m sure that it can be done.

💲 I want to show you that you don’t need to invest hard-earned money in expensive infrastructure such as greenhouses and propagating mats to grow food.

📝 Check out my latest blog post for my plan. It’s packed full of useful information on propagating tomatoes from seed, including what’s important, and what’s not.

➡ Head to the Leaf, Root & Fruit webpage to read it.

❓ Up for the challenge? Join me on the quest and see if you can grow a Christmas tomato as well.

#christmastomato #springplanting #greenhouselife #gardenchallenge

🏇 🍅 And they’re off and racing! ❓ Who e

🏇 🍅 And they’re off and racing!

❓ Who else checks their freshly planted little seed babies several times a day? Just waiting for that first sign of life as they emerge from the soil? It doesn’t matter how many tomatoes I’ve grown over the year, I still get a kick out of planting seeds and watching them germinate. I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of it.

🌱 🫑 🍆 These little beauties are making a great start on the next summer of abundance. If you have access to a greenhouse, heat mat or some other form of protection, then now is a great time to sow seeds of tomatoes, capsicum and eggplants.

➡ Check out my guide to growing great tomatoes. Head to the Leaf, root & Fruit website to read it.

#tomatoseeds #tomatoseedlings #tomatotime #heatmat

✂️ Now is a good time to give your raspberries

✂️ Now is a good time to give your raspberries a prune. This encourages good airflow to reduce disease and allows for easier access to pick the fruit.

🌞🍂 Raspberries are usually either summer fruiting (floricane) or autumn fruiting (primocane). Traditionally these are both approached very differently and I find folks can often become bamboozled on how to approach pruning.

Raspberries don’t actually need to be pruned to produce fruit. In fact, spent canes (ones that have already fruited) will often throw out short lateral growth the following spring, and these will produce some fruit. However, pruning in winter will reduce the congestion around the plants, making netting and harvesting easier. It will also enable better airflow, which can help reduce pests and fungal issues.

I've dramatically simplified raspberry pruning in my blog post on growing them. Check it out.

➡️ head to the Leaf, Root & Fruit website to find it.

#homegrownraspberries #backyardorchard #berrypatch #macedonranges

🍋 Lemons that are missing their skin are a sign

🍋 Lemons that are missing their skin are a sign that there are some very hungry pests about.

🐀 Poor old possums often get the blame for this delinquent activity, but it’s not them. It’s rats who have bred up over the summer on an abundance of vegetables. The rats need to find a new food source once those summer vegetable crops have finished and been removed.

🍊 Citrus season kicks off in May, and by June many citrus trees in temperate climates are covered in ripe fruit. Citrus are a reliable source of food for rats in winter.

📈 This summer was one of the worst that I can remember for damage caused by rats. I’ve never observed them in numbers like I have this year. And I know I’m not the only one. Many of my readers are telling me the same thing.

🌞 It’s useless trying to control rats in summer. There’s so much tasty food available for them and they aren’t interested in baits on traps (or poison baits if you use them). Plus, their numbers are too high for you to put a dint in the population anyway. But winter and early spring are a great time to focus on rodent control. The cold weather causes them to relocate to warmer spaces (such as roof and wall cavities) and they have to work a lot harder to find food. Baits become a lot more attractive to rats in winter.

📉 Reducing the population numbers now will mean there’s a smaller breeding population to cause damage next summer. Remove as many food sources as possible, including from rat hotels, and limit access to food scraps in chicken runs.

❓ How have the rats been in your garden this year?

#ratattack #gardenpest #pestcontrol #centralvictoria

🔎 Yesterday I noticed that the Silver Wattle (A

🔎 Yesterday I noticed that the Silver Wattle (Acacia dealbata) is flowering.

🍅 This is my usual nature-based indicator that it is time to sow my tomato seeds using a heat mat or a greenhouse. This year, I’m trying something a little different (see my recent planting guide and garden update for more info).

🌳 The Silver Wattle is a widespread tree indigenous to many parts of SE Australia. It is relatively easy to spot at a distance and is a great way to keep track of the seasons and variation in climate in different areas of the state.

📖 My records show the following dates for the flowering of the Silver Wattle:
30/07/19
14/07/20
31/07/21
13/07/22
12/07/23
13/07/24

☀️ Day time temperatures have been relatively mild this winter. The overnight minimums have been quite cold and there’s been some heavy frosts. I’m noticing the slightly warmer temperatures are impact different aspects of my garden. I had expected the Silver Wattle to flower even earlier than it has due to the warmer weather, but perhaps the cold nighttime temperatures have balanced it out?

👨‍🏫 Come along to my upcoming workshop on seasonality (this Saturday July 20) to understand more about planning your gardening activities to work with nature and becoming a more efficient gardener.

#phenology #tomatotime #silverwattle #centralvictoria

‼️ Wowsers… my asparagus is on the move and

‼️ Wowsers… my asparagus is on the move and it’s waaaay earlier than usual. I haven’t even given the plants their winter haircut yet.

❓ There could be a few factors at play causing these spears to emerge very early.

🌡 Temperatures this autumn and winter has been very mild. So the asparagus could be breaking dormancy early.

🧬I think that more likely it’s genetics. When cross pollinated by a male plant, the female plants produce little red berries that blackbirds love. The blackbirds then deposit the seeds all over the place. This results in feral asparagus plants popping up everywhere.

⚖️ Some of the biggest spears I have ever harvested have come from feral plants. Last winter, I wanted to plant out a new bed of asparagus, so I carefully lifted the crowns form the most productive feral plants and planted them. I now have a garden bed full of asparagus plants with a huge diversity of genetics. I see this as a good thing as this diverse gene pool may give rise to plants with different characteristics such as:
💊 Increased disease resistance,
💪 greater productivity,
☀️ better drought tolerance,
⏰ earlier (or later) harvest times to extend the season.

✌️ Only two plants out of dozens are showing signs of early emergence and they were both transplanted last winter from feral plants. I remember when planting some of these crowns that the biggest ones were split into two or more pieces. Therefore, both of these plants could have come from the one original seedling.

❓ Perhaps I have accidently bred a new early shooting variety of asparagus? I’ll mark both plants and see what comes of them over the next few years.

📨 In a fortnight I’ll be sending all my subscribers another How to Grow guide. It’s chock a block full of great tips and insights about growing asparagus.

➡ Sign up to my Substack and ensure you receive it straight to your inbox.

#asparagusspears #plantbreeding #plantgenetics #asparaguscrowns

They’re here! Today I observed Wood Ducks inspe

They’re here!

Today I observed Wood Ducks inspecting the dead trees on our road side. They will spend the next few weeks scoping out tree hollows for potential nesting sites.
This behaviour is extremely seasonal and usually initiates in the second week of July.
Long term readers will know that I use nature based indicators to inform the timing of my gardening activities. It’s call phenology.

This year I’m switching the activity that dictates when I sow my tomato seeds (indoors on a heat mat – it’s way too early to plant tomatoes into the garden). Instead of the usual flowering of the Silver Wattle (which remains a great phenological indicator for warm-temperate gardeners such as Melbourne based folks) I’m using the nesting behaviour of the Wood Ducks. I wrote about my reasons for this in my recent monthly garden update and planting guide.

I had all my “ducks in a row” in anticipation of this moment. Seed stocktake conducted (back in June), potting mix ready, heat mat rolled out, labels prepared. So today it was a quick job for 4yo Emily and I to plant our tomato seeds. The 2024-25 planting season has begun!

Read more about phenology in Part 9 of the Vegetable Patch from Scratch series. Head to my Substack to read it.

#phenology #woodduck #tomatotime #springplanting #kyneton

🇪🇸 Cherry Tree Spanish Bush Pruning Update:

🇪🇸 Cherry Tree Spanish Bush Pruning Update: Winter 2024

✂️ My cherry tree has responded well to the Spanish bush pruning that I conducted back in December 2023. You can see the structural framework start to come together.
I accidently left a couple of the branches slightly longer than is ideal. They are around 40 cm and should have been trimmed back closer to 25 to 30 cm. I’ll rectify that when the tree breaks dormancy in spring.

🍒 Cherry trees are very susceptible to diseases caused by pruning. As such, they shouldn’t be pruned in autumn or winter. Only prune cherry trees when they are actively growing.

❓ What is Spanish bush pruning I hear you ask?

📽 It's a method of pruning cherry trees to help to keep them small. Check out my blog post for more information and a handy little “how to” video.

➡ Head to the Leaf, Root & Fruit website to find it

#cherrytree #fruittreepruning #backyardorchard #homegrowncherries

❄️There have been a few heavy frosts of late b

❄️There have been a few heavy frosts of late but overall June was relatively mild in this part of the world. There were many sunny days, which made a pleasant and unexpected change from the typical grey, dreariness of June.

☂️ My citrus grove microclimate has done a wonderful job of protecting some of my more sensitive plants from recent frosts. The finger lime tree is still ripening the last of its fruit and I have started picking a few oranges.

💪 The Tahitian lime tree is laden with fruit this year. It has been incredibly productive every year since we moved here.

🍊 My citrus trees grow well in this protected microclimate, but the mandarins and oranges don’t develop a lot of sweetness. They need warmer temperatures than what they experience when they are ripening.

🍋 Lemons and limes don’t need to develop sweetness so their flavour is less affected by the cold winters here.

👨‍🔬 I decided to experiment and in spring 2022 I planted five new citrus trees into the citrus grove. They are different varieties of oranges and mandarins that should ripen later in the season. Each tree has a few fruit set on it this year. The fruit is still not quite ripe and I’m hopeful that they’ll hit peak ripeness in spring, with warmer weather. So far, they look to be ripening a bit earlier than I’d hoped, but in future years, hopefully bigger crops will allow the last of the fruit to ripen later in the year. At least bigger crops will allow me to experiment further with different picking strategies to optimise flavour and texture.

🎅 Some of my young citrus trees developing their first crop of fruit. There are only a few on each tree, and like a kid at Christmas, I can’t wait to taste them. The more patient I can be, hopefully, the better the flavour will be.

📖 Check out my five part guide to growing citrus for more information.

➡️ Head over to the Leaf, Root & fruit website to read it.

#coldclimate #citrustrees #melbournegarden #kyneton

🥦 My brassica crops are hitting peak productivi

🥦 My brassica crops are hitting peak productivity.

⬇️ I reduced the number I planted this year and refined my list of varieties planted in each of the three successive crops. Different brassica crops have different lead times from sowing to harvest. As I gain more experience with this, I am selecting specific varieties for each successive planting to ensure an even harvest over six months. This should reduce gluts significantly, and it has, but there’s still incredible abundance.

🕵️‍♂️ I’ll continue to record my observations and refine my planting strategy over the coming years. One day it might even be perfect, but then, nature will probably throw me a curve ball and I'll experience feasts and famines anyway. I like that though- it keeps things interesting.

📖 Read more about succession planting in Part 13 of the Vegetable Patch from Scratch series.

➡️ Head over to my Substack to read it.

#broccoliharvest #wintervegetables #winterharvest #successionplanting

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