Vege patch to-do list
This month’s moon calendar, and edible crops to sow and tend now.
• What to plant for autumn and winter.
Sow beetroot, carrots, kohlrabi, Asian greens and silverbeet everywhere now; and brassicas, leeks, spinach, lettuces and spring onions in warm northern parts while peas and turnips can be sown down south. Plant brassica, lettuce, spinach and celery seedlings all over the country now too.
• Give soil a boost with a green crop.
Don’t forget that fast-growing vegetables take a lot of nutrients out of the soil, so it’s worth replenishing it by using cover crops over autumn and winter. You sow these crops thickly, like grass, and, while growing, they protect soil from erosion, suppress weeds, provide a habitat for beneficial bugs and (with some) return nitrogen to the soil. Then you lop them off at the ankles and dig them in by late winter or early spring and they break down and improve soil structure and return all that valuable organic matter to your soil. Different cover crops have different benefits: broad beans return nitrogen, lucerne has a vigorous root system so is a good choice to break up heavy soil, phacelia or buckwheat attract helpful bugs, mustard helps clean up harmful soil fungi and marigolds deter soil nematodes. Or try and achieve all that with a readymade mix!
• Don’t have rhubarb? Plant it now.
It’ll form a deep root system while the soil is still warm, and you might even sneak a harvest next spring, although new rhubarb plants really take a couple of seasons to reach full production. Give rhubarb a spot with deep, moist soil and plenty of sunshine, and don’t be afraid to pile on nitrogenous fertiliser! Aged chook poo or manure, compost, blood and bone, sheep pellets… rhubarb is a gross feeder and will appreciate it all. • The pigment that give some lettuces red or red veined leaves (which is called anthocyanin), actually helps the leaves to absorb UV radiation when they are growing in low light situations – such as winter conditions with the shorter hours of daylight.
Try red lettuces for winter greens. • Dig up and store main crop spuds.
Potatoes are subtropical and the tops will blacken and the in-ground tubers will turn to mush in the first frost, so dig your main crop spuds up as soon as the leafy tops have died down – by which stage the skins will have cured enough that they should keep well. Brush off loose soil and store in a paper bag or sack in a dry, dark place – too much light and tatties will turn green. Jo McCarroll