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South Yarra Veggie Garden

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Courtyard edible garden make over south yarra

South Yarra Veggie Garden in a front courtyard

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Leaf, Root & Fruit

leafrootfruit
How do I label the plants in my garden? I have a f How do I label the plants in my garden? I have a few different methods, depending on the situation. They all work well to varying degrees, but they also have their limitations and challenges. So I'm on the lookout for some new ways to to try. Do you have any ideas for what I could use for labelling the trees and shrubs in my garden? Ideally I’m after a solution that is: ⏳long lasting. I want to produce them all at once and have them last for a few decades 🌬not prone to blowing away in the wind 🐦wildlife friendly (and not tempting to wildlife) 🔭easy to read from a metre or more 🔨simple to install in multiple scenarios such as onto garden beds, on stands at the base of trees, attached to branches or espalier wires 👌good looking 💲cheap and easy to produce. It’s a tough list of criteria, but I have plenty of clever readers who have provided me with an array of solutions. Do you have any to add? Read more about plant labelling options and what some of my readers have already suggested here: https://leafrootfruit.substack.com/p/plant-labelling-options
🕸💎🌹 I enjoyed a foggy start to the day wi 🕸💎🌹 I enjoyed a foggy start to the day with plenty of be-dew-elled spiderwebs and roses. It’s been an unusually warm autumn thus far, with only a few mild frosts. The mornings are crisp (not cold) but result in stunning, calm bluebird days. Autumn is my favourite time of the year. ❓What’s happening in your garden?
🍊 Citrus season full steam ahead 🚂 🍋 Lem 🍊 Citrus season full steam ahead 🚂 🍋 Lemon trees typically ripen some fruit all year round because they flower and produce multiple crops throughout the year. But oranges, limes and mandarins have a specific season. In Melbourne, May is the start of citrus season. Provided you kept the water up to your trees this summer, you should expect an abundance of ripening fruit over the next three months. You should also expect to see plenty of blossom forming. It takes around 12 months for this blossom to develop into fruit. 👀 I’m observing different annual growth patterns of citrus here in Kyneton. My orange and mandarin trees tend to ripen months later than they would if they were growing in Melbourne. My lemon tree produces all year round and the Tahitian lime has a huge crop every year from around June until November. I’m in for a solid harvest of oranges and mandarins this year, but I’ll need to wait a bit longer than Melbourne based growers to enjoy them. 🟢 My oranges are still green, and optimum ripeness is a long way away. Melbourne based folks are possibly already harvesting their first oranges. Read more about the challenges of growing citrus in a cool temperate climate like mine here: ➡ https://leafrootfruit.substack.com/p/growing-citrus-in-a-cool-temperate-climate I also have a five-part guide to growing citrus that covers everything from typical ripening times to planting and pruning citrus trees. Read part one here: ➡ https://www.leafrootfruit.com.au/citrus-varieties-melbourne/
🎃 All year round, like a pumpkin! I had mixed 🎃 All year round, like a pumpkin! I had mixed success with my pumpkins this year. The Jarrahdale and Queensland Blues did reasonably well but weren’t amazing. The butternuts struggled. The self-sown Australian Butter pumpkins performed best. Despite my average pumpkin performance, one of my gardening highlights this autumn is captured in photo below. The orange pumpkin on the left is an Australian Butter I had just picked. The brown pumpkin I’m holding on the right is a Jarrahdale. It’s not really that impressive in terms of size – Jarrahdale can grow to twice that size. But it is impressive for staying power. That Jarrahdale pumpkin was picked in April 2024. It’s a year old and the last of my 2024 pumpkins. That’s right, I managed to grow and store enough pumpkins to feed my family for a whole year. I grew masses of pumpkins during my first summer in Kyneton. That autumn I decided on a perfect position to store them. After hardening them off in a protected sunny spot, I stashed them in the potting shed, where airflow was great (or so I thought). Alas, within a few weeks some of them turned to mush and inspired a rush to find an ‘even better’ perfect position. Over the past few years, I’ve shuffled pumpkins around from place to place and I’ve finally found it. On the deck, on the south side of the house, right next to the front door. It wasn’t just pumpkins that I stored for over 12 months. We’ve also managed to enjoy spaghetti squash all year. There are two of 2024’s squash still ‘in stock’ and another 36 hardening off on the deck for the year ahead. Read more highlights from my summer growing season in my recent hits and misses post (free): ➡ https://leafrootfruit.substack.com/p/my-hits-and-misses-of-the-202425-summer-vegetable-season Read about long term storage of pumpkins here: ➡ https://leafrootfruit.substack.com/i/138292532/pumpkins
Instagram post 17884992633165451 Instagram post 17884992633165451
Gosh most of April was dry. Dry and warm. The snak Gosh most of April was dry. Dry and warm. The snakes are still out basking in any bit of sun they can find. Aphids and Cabbage White Butterflies are in high numbers for this late in the season. At the start of April, the weather cooled for a few days, and I thought the cabbage whites were dwindling. Most insect pests of vegetable crops hate the cold. I risked removing the netting protecting my most established brassica crop. (The smaller plants stayed safe under the netting for a few more weeks.) For the rest of April the cabbage white numbers bounced back but fortunately didn’t cause much damage. I’ve been picking huge (caterpillar-free) cauliflower and broccoli heads all April. The next two crops are getting much bigger and I took the netting off this week to give them some breathing room. Like the unusually warm weather this autumn, the Cabbage White Butterflies are still hanging on. We need a good cold snap over a series of days to finally finish them off for the season. The cabbages have been covered in aphids, but last week’s frost – the first for the year – has put a dent in their population. Take that, aphids! Some Kyneton locals received their first frost on the morning of April 6. But Jack Frost missed my garden on the town’s outskirts and I didn’t get that final full stop in the summer growing season until 2 May, later than usual. The harlequins are hardly to be seen. Since they arrived on my property a few years back, I’m noticing that their numbers are out of control in my garden only in spring. Interestingly, while I hardly saw any this summer, my neighbour Bruce reports that they were the worst they’ve ever been in his garden. How can things be so different in two vegetable patches less than 100 metres apart? Even the dreaded Queensland Fruit Fly outbreak is subsiding. I still find the odd piece of fruit with maggots in it, but they move slowly and aren’t appreciating the cooler weather. Sure, the days are warm, but the nights are too cold for these sub-tropical fruit felons and my precious late-season Fuji apples appear safe. Read more about what's happening in my garden in my recent update (link in bio)
☀️🫘 Summer sensations saved in a seed! 🫛 This month I’ve been busy saving seed from some of my summer crops. Different types of vegetables are more suited to seed saving than others. Bean seeds typically come out true to type, so they are perfect candidates for seed saving. Sometimes runner bean pods hide in the foliage, and they develop too much before they are discovered. Rather than trying to eat coarse, stringy beans, I leave these pods to fully mature and save them for seed. I’ve now picked all the shrivelled pods and am drying them for planting in spring. 🍅 I’ve also been busy saving tomato seeds. Usually, I just squeeze some seedy pulp onto paper towel and allow it to dry. This works fine if you just want to pick off a few seeds and plant them. However, this year I wanted to experiment with saving bulk quantities of tomato seed. Picking large quantities of seeds off paper towel individually doesn’t seem very efficient. So I tried a fermentation-based method that meant placing seed-laden pulp into a jar of water for a few days at room temperature. After it fermented I could easily remove the pulp by draining off the excess water, replacing it with fresh water, shaking and draining again. I dried the seeds on plates, and the small clumps that formed were easily broken up into individual seeds. I’m now waiting for the results of my germination test for the tomatoes and saved bean seeds. 📖 Read more about seed saving in these Vegetable Patch from Scratch articles: Seed saving: what varieties to save seeds from: ➡ https://leafrootfruit.substack.com/p/seed-saving-what-varieties-to-save How to save seeds for planting next year: ➡ https://leafrootfruit.substack.com/p/how-to-save-heirloom-seeds-for-planting How to test the germination rate of your saved seeds and store them: ➡ https://leafrootfruit.substack.com/p/saving-seed-storage-germination-rate
I’ve had a lot of fun with my leafy greens trial I’ve had a lot of fun with my leafy greens trial this summer. Each month I’m sowing many different salad greens: 🟢 Lettuce 🟢 Celery 🟢 Silverbeet 🟢 Spinach 🟢 Pak choi 🟢 Mustard greens 🟢 Kale 🌱 I’m growing different varieties and observing how they respond to different times of the year. Heat stress and photoperiodism have had wildly different influences on each crop. Silverbeet is bulletproof. But I’m observing that other crops, such as celery and spinach, need to be planted at specific times in my garden to thrive. For lettuces, variety selection is critical to avoiding bolting (flowering and setting seed) and the associated bitterness. I’m learning plenty about the intervals of time required between succession crops of all these plants. Nothing is linear in a garden and the leafy greens are no exception. The variation has greatly exceeded my expectations, and the data set I’m generating is immense (yes, as in all my gardening activities, there is a spreadsheet involved). The trial is ongoing and I’ll be incorporating my findings in the various How to Grow guides for each of them. Don't miss out. Sign up to my Substack to have them delivered straight to your inbox (link in bio)
Over the last week I've been reviewing the summer Over the last week I've been reviewing the summer vegetable growing season. 🥔 My potatoes produced well, even better than usual. I put this down to planting a bit earlier than usual and spacing the tubers further apart. This gave the plants more room to grow and resulted in more and much larger tubers. I also remembered to mulch them as the plants began to flop over, which helped to stop the tubers on the surface from turning green. The potatoes were a big win this year. I grew kennebec. 🥕 My carrot seed didn’t germinate as well as usual. I’m not sure if this was because of dodgy seed or the seed bed drying out slightly. We have fewer carrots in the bed this summer, but gosh, they are big, fat and mostly straight. If you want to be self-sufficient in just one crop, make it carrots. If I store my crop carefully, I reckon we will have enough to get us through to when the next crop is ready in December 2025. 🫛 The beans and snow peas were as reliable as ever. I’ll need to tweak the timing of my succession planting slightly, especially for the snow peas. I had a short gap in the harvest window in December and again in early February. The beans could have gone in a fortnight earlier than they did and the harvest period would have been longer. Succession planting is something that needs continuous refinement. Good record keeping allows me to do that. ❓ What were the big successes in your patch this year? What did you learn and how will you do things differently next summer?
✅ Here's a guide to some of the things you could ✅ Here's a guide to some of the things you could consider planting this May in a warm temperate climate like Melbourne. 🌞 I prefer growing vegetables over winter to growing summer edibles. Winter vegetables require less care and attention. 🥦The white cabbage butterfly is less prevalent in the cooler weather and your young brassica seedlings will stand a better chance of surviving. There should be plenty of seedlings to choose from, including cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and kale, at your local nursery. 🌱 My planting guide generally refers to vegetables planted in the garden (as opposed to a greenhouse). This planting may consist of seeds directly sown (my usual and preferred method) or plants transplanted as seedlings. 🥕 The Vegetable Patch from Scratch series is popular with both novice and seasoned gardeners alike. It covers everything you might want to know about growing vegetables. It might save you a bit of time and frustration by steering you away from preventable crop failures. ➡ Check it out: https://leafrootfruit.substack.com/p/a-vegetable-patch-from-scratch-series
Over the last week I've been reviewing the summer Over the last week I've been reviewing the summer vegetable growing season. The tomatoes were a mixed bag this year. I harvested my first ripe tomato on November 23, which is very early. My quest to grow a Christmas tomato without a greenhouse was also successful with the first fruit harvested from that experiment just before Christmas. The salad and slicing tomatoes grew well in the dry heat and fruited abundantly. At the top of my favourites list is Black Cherry. There are a few different varieties masquerading as Black Cherry, but I’ve finally found the Black Cherry: super sweet, resistant to splitting and highly productive. Next up is Wapsipinicon Peach, bigger than the cherry tomatoes but full of flavour and with a distinct furriness to the skin. Jaune Flamme has been a stalwart for me for many years. It’s a reliable early cropper that produces masses of tasty fruit all summer long (although it is prone to fungal diseases so doesn’t typically do well in areas with humid summers like Melbourne). It’s my second year of growing Earl of Edgecombe and I hereby upgrade its status and crown it my favourite slicing tomato. The huge orange fruit don’t easily split and are packed full of flavour. Next year I think I’ll grow fewer tomato plants. That will make harvesting quicker and I’ll be able to focus on enjoying the tastiest of the tasty. The kids enjoy Pink Bumble and Green Zebra, so those varieties will continue to get a gig, but otherwise I’ll stick to my favourites and maybe trial one or two new varieties. The following varieties are getting the chop from my list of tomato essentials: Stupice Broad Ripple Currant Tigerella The saucing tomatoes were reliable. I grow San Marzanos, and like all Roma tomatoes, they are especially prone to blossom end rot, which typically results from inconsistent watering. With the dry conditions this year, they were especially badly affected. How were your tomatoes this season? Did you have a stand out favourite variety? Any that you won't bother to grow again? Head to my Substack to Read the rest of my Hits and Misses from the 2024-25 Summer Vegetable Season.
Time to reset and reflect Every year, as the fros Time to reset and reflect Every year, as the frosts put an end to my summer crops, usually in April, I reflect on the season just gone. The growing season is fresh in my mind so it is the perfect time to record in my gardening diary all sorts of ideas. What should I grow more of next year? And less of? What crops did well and what performed poorly? What did I grow too much of? What crops do I need to increase in size to meet demand? What should I do differently? I also do a quick stocktake of my seed collection and put together a shopping list for next planting season, which begins in just a few short months. Here are a few of the hits and misses from my patch this summer. I wonder how many successes and failures we shared? https://leafrootfruit.substack.com/p/my-hits-and-misses-of-the-202425-summer-vegetable-season
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