Sunday 27 January 2013

Leeks, Carrots and winter

The next few weeks I will be busy preparing beds to plant the majority of my winter crops. Today I started with the Leeks. Last winter the Leeks were fantastic. We started harvesting around May and this continued until they started to bolt in early spring. There are little other onion options at this time of year apart from those hanging and we tend to be running out mid winter, just when the leeks are in their prime. And we also prefer the subtle flavours of leek. Leeks also do well on heavy soils, seeming to take any battering winter can throw at them.

I start my leeks on October 15th. I take a small 1m by 1m space of bed, add some mushroom compost and COF and dig over and add all the contents of the packet. The leeks come up thick and fast and by late Jan they are about the width of a pencil. A few weeks back the bed that will house the coming seasons winter leeks are prepared by digging over 4l of COF per 10m with horse manure and mushroom compost added. This settled over the past few weeks and today I created 20 to 30cm deep trenches about 40cm apart. Some well composted manure was added to the trenches and watered thoroughly. The leeks I grew from seed are then lifted with a fork, soil shaken off and then moved to their new homes. I normally have many seedlings left over to share with others. I bury these seedlings to the first leaf notch and over the months move soil up the stem to blanch and lengthen the white stem of the leek.

Leek seedlings started Oct 15
Final Leek Bed. I had many leftovers so have added more rows throughout the patch so we have plenty for winter
What else am I planting over the coming weeks. Here is a snapshot.

  • 10m of carrots (Merida)
  • couple of metres of beetroot (these sell well over winter at the Cygnet Markets)
  • Broccoli (Arcadia and Purple Sprouting) - will be trying a new variety from Inspirations Seeds also Broccoli Marathon.
  • Brussel Spprouts
  • Cauliflower mix
  • Kale
  • Mizuna and Mibuna
  • Lettuce
Last year anything planted after Feb did not generally get large enough to grow well during the low sunlight months of winter. The exception to this was some Cabbage (Spring Hero) - see Inspirations seeds catalogue.

We are now picking Tomato daily, The first of the Roma's has been harvested from the Hothouse with the majority coming from the "kotlas" and "gold nugget" plants. Steve Solomon's greatly talked about "Legend" looks close to ripening and both bushes are packed with good sized toms. The Riesenstraube seem a couple of weeks off also, but when they come in we will be overloaded with cherry toms.

Tomato "Legend" - Looking forward to picking these soon.
The unknown hill billy tom (I sourced this from Kate at Vegetable Vagabond)is covered with good sized fruit. I believe these are a yellowish fruit so will be interesting to see how they taste, but they look like they will bear a very large yield of fruit.

Tomato "Hill Billy"

The indeterminate tomato vines seemed to have the growth checked from the hot weather and 41 degree day a few weeks back. I am not sure but from hearing how some other peoples toms are faring this may be the cause. They have a number of fruit on them however I am sure they are not as large vines as last year. The dry weather may also be a contributing factor but I did space my indeterminate toms no closer than 1m by 1m to assist with the possibility of a dry summer. We still have Feb and March left so I am sure we will all be picking buckets of indeterminate toms by late feb. I hope so as we are planning on making a great deal of sauce and chutney's.

After my early corn set back due to some thieving from either the avifauna  or slug/snail damage, the replacements are now coming on well with a number now setting their corn. While my spring/early summer broccoli was a fizzler this year (last year was the exact opposite), I am trialing a new variety this summer called "Summer Purple". They were planted late December and seem to be growing with all guns blazing.

Summer Purple Broccoli


Corn (The middle 4 rows are the 2nd plantings. The first were hammered by birds/snails or a ghost. The sides are top-ups not planted till early Dec (hope they ripen before the cold arrives)



Saturday 19 January 2013

The bulbing onions trial

In mid August, I decided to try red (red sheffield) and brown (creamgold) onions directly seeded in a pre prepared bed. Basically I prepared the bed 4 weeks in advance and did this.

- broadcast the equivalent of 4 litres of COF (Complete Organic Fertiliser per Steve Solomon)
- added a thick layer of mushroom compost
- dug the bed over and raked it level

I have heard of others successfully grow decent sized onions this way so I thought I would try it out this year tho I was skeptical as the temperatures in the Huon Valley are still quite chilly and frosty during August and this is generally a cloudy month. If I was to sow the seed direct at the ideal time of July, the cold wet soils would not allow for germination. Sowing direct in August I figured would not allow enough time for germination (they are slow) and growth to a good size before they start bulbing after the longest day of the year (Dec 21).

My trial is now complete. The crop was a fizzler proving to me that there is not enough time generally to grow big onions via direct seeding in mid August. At least on my soils anyway. Added to my delima was the invasion of the weed sheep sorrell which i believe came in the sheeps poo that had been added to the bed the previous summer. I was forever weeding out the tops to no avail as the roots extend quite some distance underground (see an earlier post dedicated to this weed). The dry weather over the past 2 months may also not have helped and due to being on tank water, I did not irrigate a great deal. I was going to leave them to keep growing, however I pulled the plug when most leaves fell over and also needed another bed to prepare for the winter crop.

The yield I got was 2.5 kg from 2 packs of 'creamgold' brown onions. The yield is not worth even discussing from the red onions.

the small creamgold onions
Next year I will raise seedlings in the hot house early July for planting out mid August and will see how that fares. Two years ago I did plant a punnet of brown onions and finished with some large onions that are worth the space in the patch. In Qld I used to grow onions from seedlings successfully also. However I will rely more on my preferred onion, the potato onion for the majority of my onions harvest next year. No that is not two vegetables or mis-spelt. Potato Onions are grown from the bulb and each bulb expands to about 8 to 12 new bulbs. And are much more suited to my climate. I only grew a handful of potato onions this year as I was two late in getting the bulbs to plant in April/May and planted what I had for re-planting next year.

And now to a picture of the yields from the red onions. Goes to show that no matter how long you have been gardening, some times you have wins and sometimes losses. But I always learn more from the losses!!!!

The massive red onion harvest (Note I did abort two rows due to their woeful size on Dec 21)

On a more successful note, my garlic harvest was what I have come to expect since moving to Tasmania. Those amazing purple Tassie garlic that are so easy to grow.

More Garlic than the kitchen can use, however I also use garlic for preventing worms in the chooks and pigs.

Friday 18 January 2013

Western Tasmania and tiny things

Next week I am off to north western Tasmania, The Tarkine Wilderness as many would know it by. My work fellows and I are off looking for something no bigger than 2.5mm long by 2mm wide. This little creature is a hydrobiid snail and we hope to discover the presence of one or two (more if we are lucky) threatened species in water catchments. What are hydrobiid snails. Read this to get an idea. click here.

To get to these creeks where these snails may occur, you need to cross hell and back. Tasmania's rainforests contain some very difficult vegetation to bash through. Coming from Queensland where you might bash through some Lantana for a while, or detour past a thorny dry rainforest community, nothing still comes close to what is in front of you out in beautiful western Tasmania. Gahnia and Bauera is arguably the worst. The best way to get through this dense thicket is to fall forward and pick yourself up in the extreme cases. However horizontol (Anodopetalum biglandulosum) is my pick for the toughest. My frame lends itself more to bashing through gahnia/bauera thickets, than climbing over 1 to 4m high horizontal branches and popping up and down looking for craps to crawl through. Last year my colleague and I could not climb under due to a mushy waterlogged deep clay bog and flowing creek, so we had to climb up to 4m in the air carefully guiding ourselves over this horizontal.

If you want to take that windows desktop picture, this is the country to do it. Literally every 5 mins you could stop for one of those perfect pictures. Here are a couple from my last trip.

Hope to survive and blog soon!!!






Tuesday 15 January 2013

Bacon, Prosciutto and home made snags

As soon as you feel sad to see the pigs you have raised free range from 6 weeks of age head for the abattoir, the meat arrives and the rewards of the 6 months of rearing is felt. Yesterday we picked up the meat from 2 of the 3 pigs and spent the evening preparing a leg for prosciutto, the belly and loin for bacon and shoulder minced with some added backfat to prepare some sausages.

I have adopted the preserving rules that are set out by the well known Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall of River Cottage fame. The preservation of the bacon goes something like this.

Bacon
- 2kg of salt
- 1/2 kg of brown sugar
- bay leaves crushed up
- lightly crushed juniper berries (20 or so)
- cracked peppercorns

The above is all mixed and rubbed into the bacon. The bacon is left in this mixture in a box and each morning and night the liquid that is drawn out is drained and the bacon is left on its otherside. This is done for 3 or 4 days. The salt is all washed off and then the bacon is hung covered in muslin to dry for no less than 4 days. If the bacon is left in the salt for longer than 4 days, the bacon can be a little too salty for a rasher, but this can be rectified by placing the rashers for breakfast in water when you get out of bed and this will extract some salt before cooking. I highly recommend River Cottage DVD called Pig in a day for people interested in curing pork or making snags. The flavour of the bacon is fantastic and not tainted by the nitrates pumped into bacon these days.

The sausage making is a real delight. I have learnt there is a real art to this, but a little practice and you do get the hang of it. And I highly recommend you fry up a little of your mixture before making a sausage to taste you have the mix right. One of our sausages is a paprika style snag and I am really looking forward to eating these. If you have the money, a quality machine is worthwhile. Our sausage maker is a little basic and slower, but it achieves the same result (however we were still making sausages close to midnight!!!). We also use natural beef intestine for the casing.

The prosciutto is simply buried in a lot of salt (25 kgs). It is left in the salt for 3 days per kg of weight with a day taken of. so about 23 days for my leg. It is then hung for around 9 months. This is a long term project and the first time we have tried this so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

Oh, and we had the first roast pork for dinner. And it was delicious. I think I could almost taste apple in the meat as they were feed a large quantity of apples for breakfast.

The sausage maker

The final snags which hang over night to dry off before freezing


Saturday 12 January 2013

Tassie Tomato ripening

I have some Tomatoes ripening. As you can see in the photo below, this is the first tomato I will be picking this year (and I will pick tomorrow morning to go on my bacon and egg muffin!!!). The variety is kotlas and this year confirmed the results of two years ago that it is a very early ripening tomato.

"kotlas" tomato ripening Jan 12th 2013

As an update on the other varieties:

  • Steve Solomon's highly recommended Legend looks like it will mature around the end of Jan. His recommended Gold Nugget is also close at hand with their small yellow cherry toms.
  • Riesenstraube which means bunch of grapes in German will be that. I do not think they will be ready till February, however they have a profuse amount of flowers and grapes and I am hoping for a bumper crop of red cherries off these.
  • Hill Billy has a large number of good sized tomato already formed and I have been surprised by the vigorous growth of this unknown variety to me. Hard to tell how far away from ripening but I would say later this month.
  • The indeterminates are a little further off still as to be expected. In the hothouse there is some roma almost ready along with tommy toe. Out in the veggie patch, the rouge de marmande are still growing and have fruit on them along with Mamma Mia. There is one of the four Rouge that seems to have been a dud seed and is small and growing too slowly for our summer. The Romas are also moving along but the fastest growing of my indeterminate vines has been Break 0'day. I reckon the majority of harvest will be mid Feb onwards from this lot.
kotlas close up
 The corn has been growing well since my inital mysterious disappearance of half the first plantings in late October. I think it was birds but never caught anything in the act. Nevermind, this just means my harvest should last longer with half the crop more advanced the the other half.

Corn

Tuesday 8 January 2013

Spud harvest "Pink Eyes"

After getting home yesterday I decided as a spur of the moment thing to harvest the pink eyes potatoes. After the past month of dry weather and the recent hot weather, the spuds had almost completely died down and the spuds were perfectly dry for storage. There is something quite relaxing as you pull back the soil and hay to see what surprises await. And even better is that this area that was initially grass is now a new 4m by 1.5m garden bed.

The final result of the harvest from this bed was about 22kgs of spuds. less than pink eyes grown in soil from my data last year but a good return for a patch of grass I say. This years total pink eye spud harvest ended in 32 kgs. This is enough to supply us with spuds until the harvest of the longer keeping spuds in March and April.

This bed will be fed more manure and lime to aide in the further breakdown of the barley straw mulch that is there and will be planted to Purple Sprouting Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts in early February which is when most of my winter vegetables are planted. We are still eating stored carrots from the last winter carrot harvest (as they go to flower in spring we harvest all the remaining carrots).

Delicious Pink Eyes


Sunday 6 January 2013

Goodbye Porkers

Today I said farewell to Pancetta, Loin and Harry, my three pigs. This was the second time I have raised porkers from weaners and this time the effort to move them to Cradoc Hill  abattoir was simple. Thanks to a friend who has an excellent trailer set up, after a few minutes of looking at their favourite apples in the trailer, they slowly walked on in and started munching. The gate was then shut for the short drive to their destination. I still found it a little emotional this second time round as I lead them to their quarters for the night, but at least they have lived a good life. Nothing like those poor things that live their life on concrete  where they are unable to run around and frolick about.

The porkers a month ago.

Pigs bring a great deal of personality to your small holding. You do need to have some good strong fencing and if not some quality electrical fencing. When they get to 50kgs, their incessant need to rub and scratch can do some serious damage to infrastructure. I put some effort into building my fencing and have got through raising two lots without the need for electrical fencing, however next time round I will use a solar electrical system as the fencing is slowly weakening.

They say pigs have the intelligence of a 3 year old which I would agree with. For their water source, I salvaged an old laundry tub and put it into the ground. It still had the old plug which the porkers learnt to pull out. After frustration, the plug was removed and water repellent glue was put in to ensure they did not drain their water source.

A good wallow is also required. I dug some holes which the porkers widened, however I will need to widen and deepen this wallow next time round as on hot days it dried out quickly and I had to keep turning the hose on to replenish.

Whilst death is never fun, like tax it is a necessity if you want to raise your own meat source.

Farewell to Pancetta, Loin and Harry.

some sausages and pepperoni made from the first lots of pigs.

Friday 4 January 2013

Hottest day in how long?

Unless I misheard, I think they said on the news tonight that Hobart had it's hottest day in over a century?? The temps soared to a max of 40.6 Celsius today with it 29.9 at 9pm. This is extraordinarily hot for Tasmania.

I had prepped this morning with a soil soaking hose in the veg patch, and everything pulled up quite well. There was heat stress on the curcubits, and the corn leaves were rolling a bit. The spuds showed the biggest sign of stress but they pulled through two high 30 degree days last year so they should be fine.

The pigs and chooks did not enjoy the heat. I kept popping out to the pig pen to add water to their wallow and to hose them down. The poor things do not take well to the heat.

As I have a weather station and the Grove BOM station is not the best for comparison I plan to give the monthly averages as time goes by. This will obviously only be of interest to locals. The December averages were as follows:

                   Dec 2012               Dec 2011
Min Avg         9.2                              8.9
Max  Avg       22.2                           22.1

Rainfall:        38.4mm

The porkers did not take well to the heat.

Heat stress on the spuds

Heat Wave and soil moisture

It is a new experience to those that move to Tasmania. Over the year, we go from low sunlight levels in winter with waterlogged soils. Then when summer arrives, just as quickly as we are waiting for the soil temperatures to rise and we leave the soil open to the elements to assist for tomato/pumpkin/corn germination, the soil does a 180 and is dry and parched and mulching becomes important. Today is forecast to reach into the high 30's. Maybe even nudge 40. It is under these temps I find mulching of serious benefit to the vegetables and fruit tress.

One of Tasmania's gardening gurus (Steve Solomon) is an advocate for no mulching to prevent the dreaded slug and snail wars. Last year I adopted his philosophy however it was a constant battle to keep the soil moist to not stress the vegetables. This year I have returned to mulching. So far the soil beneath the mulch is retaining much more moisture which is a blessing when you live on a rural property and water is not simply turning the town water tap on.

I find sugar cane mulch is very easy to spread within the veggie patch, with it's looseness allowing water thru yet ensure an even coverage over the soil. It is surprising how far a small bale can go. Barley Straw is good however it does have a tendency to blow away if the winds pick up, and windy it has been this season in Tasmania. I do not use hay bales within the veg patch to prevent  the grass seed germination battle, but as described earlier use it for creating new garden beds due to its cost effectiveness and usefulness with potatoes.

This morning many gardeners including me where out hosing to get as much moisture to help the plants get thru the heat. One thing this heat reminds me of tho is why we moved from Queensland. It is fine to have a day or two in the mid to high 30's, but tomorrow while other towns on the mainland are sweating through more of the heat wave, we in Tasmania will return to those glorious mid 20's.

Happy heat waving!!!

mulching has made it much easier to keep the soil moist this year for the Oca (Oxalis tuberosa)


Wednesday 2 January 2013

Powdery Mildew

With this warmish and dry weather we are having at the moment, is anyone noticing some powdery mildew on any of their plants?? Here is an interesting snippet I found on facebook (austraflora page).


Powdery mildew is one of the most widespread and easily recognised plant diseases. Powdery mildews are most severe when the weather is warm and dry, and they affect virtually all kinds of plants. Powdery mildews are characterized by spots or patches of white to grayish, talcum powder-like growth.

Here is a useful treatment you can make yourself:
Mix together 1 tablespoon of baking soda with 3.5L of room temp water, along with 1-2 drops of liquid soap (this adheres the solution to the plant). Add a teaspoon of vegetable oil, then shake well to create an emulsion that will help contain the spores (and limit re-infection). Spray in the evening when it's cool, and repeat as necessary.

Why does this work? The solution changes the pH balance of the surface of the plant, making it an unsuitable environment for powdery mildew to proliferate.

Powdery mildew on pumpkin leaves

Tuesday 1 January 2013

Pink Eye Potato and bandicooting

Nothing matches the delight of eating home grown spuds. Last year we harvested 110 kgs (yes I weighed the many harvests on our scales) and once these ran out the kids did not seem to take to the dutch cream or kennebec purchased from the local fruit & veg store. We ended up buying a variety called kestrels which i had not heard of but did us till our new season pink eyes were ready.

This year I was in need of new beds to extend the veg patch, and the amount of grass and digging in front of me did not go down too well on the back. So I embraced the no dig method and will not go back. What I have done this year is create news beds by starting with spuds under hay. The process I follow is quite simple:

1 - Pick a day where the wind is very gentle.
2 - mow the grass short as.
3 - place manure on the surface (sheep poo is excellent for how easy it spreads and will be covered so the weeds will not germinate.
4 - Take newspaper and about ten sheets thick lie on the ground and keep a hose close by to wet it down.
5 - Continue over the area you want a future bed in.
6 - I then place spuds at about 30cm apart on top of the wet newspaper.
7 - I then put hay bales over all this and more poo and soil. The key is to ensure the top is not just hay, but soils and manure with blood and bone also. You want some fertility into the new bed as well as enough to grow the spuds well. Note: spuds help prevent much of the hay bales seeds germinate but not all. Regular pulling out of any germination helps, or you can use another source of mulch which is more expensive.
8 - water well and watch the hay reduce in height over the weeks and the spuds come up.

Eventually you get some spuds, and a new garden bed that is fertile. At the end of this the hay is still not fully composted. That is fine. I add some compost or have a bag of loose manure from Mitre 10 into a hole within this bed to plant into.

Pink Eye Potato under hey and soon to be a new garden bed.

But the best rewards we have experienced lately is the art of bandicooting into the pink eye potato for x-mas. If Bandicooting is a new concept to you, it is basically carefully pulling back the hay (or soil) and picking a few ready spuds before actually harvesting the lot. We let the spuds fully die back before harvest but have still been enjoying them for dinner since mid December. So far we have bandicooted 10kgs and I hope to get another 30 kgs of pink eyes which do not store as long as others but will carry us through to the harvests of the other spuds growing. Last season I planted Kennebecs and Uptodate and we all really enjoyed these. This year I have branched out to see if there are others we enjoy more. These are:

I do have the King Edwards under soil as based on last years yields I did get a slightly larger harvest from the spuds in the soil. However due to the need to create a number of new beds, I opted to do the majority of spuds under hay. I have also used this method to create the herb bed from last season to good success and some normal flowering beds which are still in progress (but these beds are subject to the local wildlife so careful plantings are needed in this flowering beds)

King Edward spuds under soil
Whether I get near the 150 kgs target is too be seen. I should match last years harvest at least based on the fact I purchased more bags of certified spuds to begin with, however the reduced yields under hay may eventuate. Last year I seemed to harvest 5kgs of spuds per metre. Either way I will go hard next year. The new beds created from this season will allow me to go hard with spuds under soil and have much more space for the rest of the vegetables and free beds for future plantings.

Part of last seasons spud harvest