HIGH SUMMER 2012 HARVEST

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HIGH SUMMER HARVEST

what grew November-January 2012


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Hot weather has sent carrot flowers shooting towards blue skies and purple chive flowers lend colour to a lush green garden. Tomatoes tease, slowly swelling, but too green to eat.

THE HARVEST

COMPANIONS

lettuce
silverbeet/chard
rosemary
lime balm
lemon balm
mints – peppermint, orange, spearmint, common, basil mint
nasturtiums
marjoram – golden
oregano
calendula
bay leaves
strawberries
raspberries
thyme – common, lemon
spinach
sow thistle
artichokes
amaranth
violas

OTHER

eggs

BRASSICACEAE

roquette
tatsoi

UMBELLIFERAE

carrots
parsley
coriander

AMARYLLIDACEAE (ALLIUMS)

spring onions
chives
garlic
red onion

LEGUMIONOSAE

Bean –purple climbing, rattlesnake, blue lake

INEDIBLE CUT FLOWERS

californian poppies
nigella


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green-bean-tomato-stakes

raspberry-picking-bantam-chook

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supporting-tomato-stakes-scarlet-runner-beans

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spring harvest

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september – october 2012


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With the thawing of the weather came a rush of lush green growth and flush of unfurling petals, but that’s not all, something momentous was happening. We could hear it, a great whirring, a low hum that ebbed and flowed, but was growing in intensity. We opened the door to a great commotion, a great whirling, tornado of bees overhead. They were swarming. The bee man Martin had said that Steiner thought that a swarm looked like the soul of a human being that has left its body…to me like ash caught in a whirlwind. They carried on all day and then as suddenly as they had appear they vanished. With unease we approached the quiet hive.

The hive has become too cramped for the growing colony and its ostentatious monarch.

The old queen, feeling like a change of scenery and a more spacious castle, ups and leaves without so much as a thank you, taking the majority of the flying worker bees, along with a huge amount of your honey! You’re left with a ragtag crew of young flightless cleaners, nursers and only a scattering of workers. But all is not lost, the old queen in her benevolence has left some virgin queens developing in their queen cells (much cushier than those hexagonal ones for the plebs!). The nursers feed the larvae up and when they emerge the fight is one! If one gets out earlier enough, the sneaky minx will just sting the others to death as they doze. If she is too slow there is a fight on our hands, its a death match, winner takes all. If you are unlucky then the victorious queen may be so injured she dies, the remaining colony will suddenly find itself on radio silent and listlessly will buzz around with no real purpose, it is doomed. Well, unless you go and order a new queen online, they come by matchbox I’m told.

Luckily for us our new queen was a warrior princess, the next day everything seemed back to normal. Even better she seemed a good sort and no surprise stings were to be had. A friend of ours had a particularly nasty queen, with a short sharp temper. If you get a feisty one the whole colony takes on her snitty ways and can be quite aggressive.


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artichoke-flower-heart-silverbeet-celery-bronze-fennel

chickens-isa-brown-allium-seed-head

bottle-brush-broccoli-flower-climbing-rose

THE HARVEST

COMPANIONS

coriander
fennel – sweet, bronze
lettuce
silverbeet/chard
rosemary
beetroot
lime balm
lemon balm
mints – peppermint, orange, spearmint, common, basil mint, vietnamese
edible chrysanthemum
violas
nasturtiums
artichokes – purple
angelica
marjoram – golden
calendula
chamomile
bay leaves
strawberries
raspberries

BRASSICACEAE

roquette
broccoli
kale

UMBELLIFERAE

celery
carrots
parsley

SOLANACEAE

chillies

AMARYLLIDACEAE (ALLIUMS)

spring onions
chives

LEGUMIONOSAE

broad beans

OTHER

eggs

INEDIBLE CUT FLOWERS

sweetpea
california poppies
salvias
lupin


nasturtium-yellow-flower

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PRE-SPRING 2012 HARVEST

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I feel like our garden has finally settled into the right rhythm. Last October we pulled almost everything out to start afresh. After we finished all the earth bag garden beds, we felt overwhelmed. We were confronted with bare earth and spring already over, beans leaves crisping from summer sun and snails nibbling every snowpea to the ground. Pansies were pretty to fill the gaps in the herb border over winter, but proved a ridiculously perfect home for snails to procreate, but now our first spring is approaching. Now finally our garden in producing a quality and quantity of produce we can be proud of,

something for every lunch and dinner.

 
Soon when the fruits begin perhaps for breakfast too. The perennials are really starting to flourish, bare earth is a distant memory.

So I thought I’d start documenting what we are harvesting each season, it should be interesting to see how it changes not over the months, but if I am dedicated enough, to see how it (hopefully) grows over the years. Who would have thought that we would be picking the last of the capsicums this late in the year!

Companions:
Snowpeas – Oregon Dwarf
Lettuces – Rabbit Ear
Beetroot – White Blankoma
Silverbeet – Fordhook
Chard – Bright Lights
Chives – Common
Chervil
Parsley – Continental
Dill
Rosemary
Oregano – Greek
Marjoram – Golden
Mint – Common
Mint – Orange
Savory – Winter
Thyme – Lemon
Thyme – Common
Coriander

Brassicaeae:
Mustard greens – Mizuna
Pak Choy – Red
Chinese Cabbage

Umbelliferae:
Celery – Stringless
Carrot – Red Dragon

Solanaceae:
Chilli – Pepper Fish
Capsicum – Mini Sweet Yellow
Capsicum – Mini Sweet Chocolate

Alliums:
Spring Onions



 
 
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STEP BY STEP CROP ROTATION – A YEAR OF SOLANACEAE & ALLIUMS

 

Deep Winter has been about planning, anything planted out has had a miserable stunted look to it, a bitter reminder that I should have planned my planting earlier when the weather was still sweet. There are still some sorry looking tomatoes and capsicums clinging to their withering stems, the eggplant lingered long enough to shelter a brood of ladybird larvae until they grew wings flew away home, and it curled itself up. A better time for dreaming about gardening than actually doing it.

One rainy day I logged into Google Analytics and noticed my post on the 4 Year Crop Rotation gets at least one view a day, often more. It gave me a delicious thought, would you dear reader like to walk through a year in my plot?

A week by week plan of how the rotation actually works?

 
Since November the garden has been busy settling in to its new digs, Legumes have been occupying my plot, taking nitrogen from the air and enriching the soil for a new year of Solanaceae.
So come on a journey with me a beautiful year of growing juicy tomatoes, chillies, capsicums and eggplants!

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In Australia where the sun runs screaming past plentiful and sprints headlong into harsh, bare earth is an absolute crime. Space is also at a minimum (1x2m) so a plan was absolutely necessary to cram as much in as possible. I’ve divided my plan into Solanaceae and Companions and this works beautifully as these fall neatly into the categories of
tall and low level plants and early and late planting. I read somewhere that tomatoes really shouldn’t be rushed into the ground until the temperature is reliably over 10C and according to the BOM this doesn’t occur until November in Melbourne. So while my Solanace seedlings wait to be planted out the companions will have the opportunity to
establish themselves as a nurse crop to shelter the young Solanace plants when they go in. When the weather grows spitefully hot, in Deep Summer, the tomatoes will have grown tall enough to shade their companions whilst they in turn protect the tomato roots from drying out.



 
 
 

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