Suburban Tomato

I’ve been writing Top 5s for a year now and whilst I had been thinking of stopping them I have ideas for a few (or maybe more than a few) more.  I thought January would be a good time do a series of retrospective ones, looking back at the past year.  The first of these is this one – The top 5 gardening lessons I learnt in 2012.

1. Planting cucumbers early is not a good idea.  This year I am growing 4 varieties of cucumber:

• Lebanese
• Catalan Pickling
• Summer Dance and
• Lemon

Thanks for Bek at Bek’s Backyard for the seed for the last two.  The Catalan Pickling are the fat ones (they got a bit big while we were away over Christmas).  The Summer Dance is the long one at the back and the Lebanese the shorter at the front.

I sowed seed of the Catalan Pickling in early July and grew them on in an unheated mini greenhouse until they were big enough for planting out in September.  In August I bought some Lebanese seedlings and grew them on in the mini greenhouse until September.  I planted both out and they did not do well.  It was simply too early.  Growth was slow and a few died.  The plants from seed I sowed later (in August) and planted out later (early November) have done much better.  The lesson is: don’t plant out cucumbers before the soil warms properly – you might get the occasional early fruit but the plants don’t seem to recover properly and the long term yield will be significantly reduced.

2. Winter and Spring are the best seasons for growing potatoes in Melbourne.  I grew potatoes throughout 2012 and I found that; potatoes which did most of their growing during Winter, and better yet Spring, produced by far the greatest yield.  This post provides more detail.

3. Setting fire to mint kills rust.  My mint developed rust, I researched and found that heat can kill the rust spores.  Click here for the post describing the experiment.  The upshot of which is that I now have very healthy and productive rust free mint.

4.  Garlic, particularly hardneck varieties prefer cold climates.  You can find the round up of this years garlic growing experiences here.  In a nutshell though; softneck varieties seem to suit Melbourne’s relatively mild winters better than hardneck varieties.

5. Planting tomatoes early is a good idea.  I sowed some Tiny Tim tomato seeds in May with the aim of getting some early tomatoes and that is exactly what happened – they started cropping in early December.  An experiment I will definitely be repeating.

What has your garden taught you during the past year?

Now I am not one for New Years Resolutions per se (this is largely the result of a complete inability to ever stick to any), so these are certainly not resolutions.  Instead I’m calling them statements of intent.  The things I will work towards in 2013 in my kitchen and garden during the coming year.

Look after my garden beds better.  I know I should look after my soil better.  I know the plants will grow better if I do.  I know that lots of manure and organic matter will mean far better crops.  I know all this and yet all too often I pull one crop then simply sprinkle some Dynamic Lifter (or other brand pelletised chook manure) around and plant something else.  This year though I will try harder.  I will source more manure, having chooks will help in this respect and why I’ve never collected sheep manure from mum & dads paddocks I don’t know.  I will spread compost around liberally and I will mulch thickly and dig that in as well.  I will also grow more broad beans and possibly even a green manure crop or two.

Preserve more.  I bought a Fowlers preserving kit recently on eBay so I have great preservation plans for the coming year.  I already preserve some of these things but this year my aim is not to have to buy or run out of any of the following:

• Tomatoes
• Passata
• Peaches
• Apricots
• Jam
• Chutney
• Sambal
• Bread and Butter Pickles
• Beetroot

For the record this year I managed not to buy or run out of both sambal and chutney but they were the only ones.  I had to resort to buying either a tin or jar of each of the others at least once (particularly unforgivable in the case of jam and beetroot I think).

Cook new things more often.  I admit to borrowing this from the New Goodlife’s goals for 2012.  I have a huge collection of cookbooks.  I spend a lot of time reading about food on the net.  Yet I have to admit to rarely cooking anything new.  This is partially because the kids might reject it, but mostly it is pure laziness on my part.  With this is in mind I’m thinking a new recipe a week shouldn’t be too taxing – especially as I plan to try a new Thai dish tomorrow so that’s this week sorted…

Grow peas successfully.  For the last two years I’ve germinated peas and then stood idly by while almost every single one is eaten by either slugs or snails.  This year will be different.  I will protect my pea seedlings.  I will ring them with coffee grounds.  Grow them next to beer traps.  Place plastic bottles over them.  Whatever it takes to actually grow some peas to maturity.  Oooo I can taste them already…YUM.

Keep better records.  I love Harvest Monday posts as they serve as a good record of what came out of the garden for that week.  Unfortunately Monday Harvest posts are about as far as much of my record keeping goes.  I did keep harvest weight records for much of the year but I wasn’t really as diligent about weighing things as I should have been and….well I could make excuses but suffice to say I could improve in this area.  But even more importantly than harvest weights I need to get much better at recording dates for sowing.  I do write it on the seed label but these are often moved, lost or generally forgotten so much of the information is missed.  With this is mind this year I have bought a diary to record both weights of harvests but also sowing, potting up and planting out dates so that I will improve my knowledge about what works best for my micro climate.

And those are the Top 5 things I plan to improve this year, the things I think will make the biggest impact to how I garden and cook.  I’m quite excited about all of them.  The next thing now is of course to remember that I intend to do them which could be something of a challenge in itself…