Winter has arrived (albeit later than usual)

The past two months has seen many sunny days and warmer than usual evenings for this time of year. Until the past week, we had only seen 1 decent frost and another very light one. However last week saw the rains return with over 70mm of rain and the past two days have dropped below zero Celsius and the return of heavy frosts or fog. In my patch the frost was not quite as severe as the fog settled in but the kids down the road played there 9am soccer games on a bed of crusty ice.

I have been a bit of a lazy gardener over the past month hence no posts. The soccer season kicks in at this time of year and I am usually busy getting the weekly newsletter for the Cygnet Sea Dragons out, coaching the U8 and U14 Youth team, maintaining the facebook page and generally helping out. https://www.facebook.com/CygnetSeaDragons.


What I have done lately in the patch is lay weed matting down over the paths and cover with sawdust. This will greatly assist my weeding chores come spring, tho there seems plenty of weeding to do at the moment.

So what has been or is being harvested at the moment as the winter solstice has arrived. Here is a summary:

- The Oca was recently harvested (Oxalis tuberosa) - If you do not know what this is (also called New Zealand Yam - but it is not native to NZ) it is a little tuber that mirrors I suppose sweet potato but I think much better in flavour. We roast it and love it

- Broccoli heads are being picked, Kale is plentful

- Winter carrots are growing well and we are getting down to the last of the summer planted carrots. same for beetroot.

- Brussel Sprouts are almost ready

- Cauliflower heads are forming

- Mizuna/Mibuna/lettuce/English Spinach

- Leeks

- Garlic is shooting up

- Potato Onions were plated last weekend. These are a little different to onion in that they are onions (Allium tribe) however you plant the onion and it forms about 8 to 14 onions at harvest. These type of onions also do not bolt to seed and are not as fussy as normal onions. Many in colder districts often find just as their onions are bulbing, they suddently go to flower which is a sign that something checked their growth along the way and set them into seed formation (common problem with celery also). Potato Onions do not have this problem and are fine planted in the cold moist winter soils. (I do still grow normal onions and have seeded them in the hothouse for planting out in August)

- Green manures are growing rapidly now

- Purple Sprouting Broccoli is large in preparation for covering our Broccoli needs in late Aug, Sept and Oct.

Recently I bought some Pink Eyes in preparation for planting out in August.

For the time being, I will continue to potter about and when the sun shines do a bit of weeding as well as harvesting, but this is the time of year I like to take as much of a break from veggie gardening as I can.

Till next time

Broccoli "Arcadia"

Jerusalem Artichoke - left in ground to pick as we eat

Kale "Borecole"

Mizuna and Mibuna

Turnip "Hakueri"

Parsley

Garlic

Leeks

Tic Beans as Green Manure

Brussel Sprouts

Kohl Rabi

Carrots "Merida"

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)

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