Have I ever told you how much I love autumn? It really is my favourite season, and already I’m hanging out for a late April day that starts cool, becomes pleasantly warm, and offers a clear sky of rich cerulean blue. If you’re like me, it’s perfect weather for sitting outside in the sun doing diddly squat. It’s also perfect weather for gardening, and my Mum can rest assured that amongst the bumming around there’ll be plenty of work happening too.
In temperate parts of the world autumn is traditionally the time for harvesting crops grown through summer, so at the moment I’m bringing in crops like beans, pumpkins, eggplants, broccoli, rhubarb, and late tomatoes. I grow smaller tomato varieties like ‘Tigerella’, ‘Green Zebra’ and ‘Jaune Flamee’ at this time of year because they’re less prone to fruit fly damage will bear up to 20kg of fruit on each plant. This makes them ideal for preserving at the end of the season.
Once crops are in and beds cleaned up, it’s time to start sowing seed for winter. Here at Thistlebrook we can expect our first frost as early as Anzac Day, so the first thing I do in March is sneak in some late beetroot, carrots and parsnips. We eat lots of carrots so I’ll pop in half a dozen rows to see us through winter. I always sow the seed directly into the garden. Carrots transplant poorly from punnets, and seed is much more economical – a few packets will set you back less than $15 yet yield dozens of kilograms.
Once the roots are in, my focus shifts to alliums, which are plants in the onion family. Garlic is a favourite of mine so I generally plant at least a bed full of nice fat cloves around the autumn equinox, roughly March 21. These won’t be ready until November. With such a long growing season, nutrition and drainage are important, so I prepare the soil thoroughly with rotted manure, compost, and even some pelletised chook manure.
I once tried planting supermarket garlic. What a miserable failure. Hardly any cloves sprouted, and those that did were sickly and weak. I’ve since learnt that most garlic we buy in the supermarket, especially the imported stuff, is sprayed with the chemical methyl bromide and sometimes a growth inhibitor to increase storage life. No wonder it performs so poorly. I get much better results from organic garlic that I’ve either grown myself, or that I purchase from a certified organic grower (Green Harvest and Eden Seeds are a couple of options).
Like garlic, another allium with a long growing season is the leek. I reckon leeks are a magnificent plant. They’re highly ornamental in the garden, easy to grow, and absolutely superb in the kitchen – leek and potato soup served with crusty, home made bread is a staple late winter meal in our household. Unlike carrots, leeks transplant well from punnets. I make 10 centimetre deep holes with a dibber, pop the lanky seedlings in, and water to wash soil around the roots. This results in lovely long, blanched shanks.
Onions are a trickier proposition. I won’t bother this autumn, but I could have sown short day-length varieties now. These onions start to form bulbs as the days get shorter right up until the winter solstice, but don’t they keep as well as the long day length varieties, and form bulbs as the days get longer. These are best planted in spring, so I think I’ll hold off until then.
Right, that’s the alliums done. Just a few more seeds to plant out. Peas do best in spring where I live, but we never plant enough for our needs and I’ll sow some shelling varieties like ‘Alderman’ and ‘Purple Potted’. Alongside these I might pop in a snowpea or two. In any spare beds I’ll sow a green manure, usually a mix of mustard to fumigate the soil, a legume to fix nitrogen, and oats to provide bulk. This will be dug back into the soil prior to the spring planting season.
The final plants to go in are leafy greens. I always grow the odd cabbage through winter as they’re frost resistant and handy to feed to the chooks, but my preference is for things like raddichio, rocket, mizuna, spinach and kale. These germinate readily, grow rapidly, and can be harvested a leaf at a time. They’re great in warm salads and stir-fries. Which reminds me: autumn is traditionally a time for feasting, drinking and making merry. Let’s all resolve to “seize the day”.
First published in The Toowoomba Chronicle 2nd March 2010. Photo by Justin Russell “Purple Podded peas”.
