“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” is how the English Romantic poet John Keats describes autumn. Here on the drought affected Downs we may not be quite as prone to mists as we once were, but autumn can still be rightly regarded as a time of mellow fruitfulness.
Apples and grapes are being picked on the southern Downs, sunflowers are ripe for the picking around Allora, and on the northern Downs the combines are firing up as the sorghum harvest gets into full swing.
It’s in the home garden though, that the mellow fruitfulness really exists. In my vegie patch we’re picking the last of the tomatoes and late corn before the first frost beats us around Anzac Day. Beans are being dried on the vine to be put away for winter soups and a big lot of pesto has been made with last of the season’s basil. We hope to have enough jars to see us through autumn, but my guess is that it will mostly be gone in about a fortnight. The stuff is delicious.
Besides being a time for harvest, autumn marks the start of preparations for winter crops. Garlic is a good one to grow yourself. If you’re trying it for the first time, don’t buy garlic bulbs from the supermarket and plant them out. For one, you don’t know what the variety is, and two, you may be buying chemically fumigated, imported garlic. Go for some named, good quality “seed” garlic from a reputable supplier like Eden Seeds or the Diggers Club.
On the Downs garlic is best planted in March or early April, and it’s ready for harvest in about late spring. Because of the long growing season it likes a fairly rich soil, so dig in some manure prior to planting and apply blood and bone every couple of months. Plant individual cloves with their pointy end facing up, spaced about ten centimetres apart and a few centimetres below the surface. Keep the soil evenly moist and mulch well.
Besides garlic, I’m also sowing some quick growing carrots, and parsnips, which are best picked once they’ve sweetened up after a frost or two. A lot of people ask me how I grow carrots – the secret’s in the soil. Carrots and parsnips need deeply dug, friable soil that’s not too heavy, and isn’t overly rich. If too much nitrogen is present or the clay content is too high, carrots will tend to bifurcate, or fork. I sow mine following a hungry crop of broccoli or leafy vegetables. To get even germination, an old trick is to cover the bed with shadecloth or hessian until the plants pop up. Then keep the bed evenly moist and weed free until harvest. Home grown carrots are superb.
Brassicas are the other main crop I’m sowing at the moment. Broccoli is a favourite in our household, so I’m putting in a couple of rows for harvest in late autumn, and I’ll also plant a decent patch of English spinach for use in warm salads, soups and Kylie’s delicious chicken risotto. Then there’s rocket, cabbages, and Tuscan black kale.
Sometimes called cavalo nero, Tuscan kale has double the nutrients of broccoli and looks absolutely brilliant in the depths of winter. It’s also bone hardy. Like all brassicas though, it’s susceptible to Cabbage White Butterflies, so use an organic spray like Dipel to keep them at bay.
If you’ve got any beds left over, the best thing you can do is sow a cover crop of green manure. I’m yet to figure out why it shares the same title as animal waste, but green manure is simply a broadcast sowing of quick growing crops like grains, legumes, and brassicas, which are dug back in to help benefit the soil and increase organic matter. This autumn I’m trying a mix of barley for soft, leafy bulk and mustard to help clean the soil.
Sowing is simple. Just rake the bed over to a reasonably fine tilth, and scatter the seeds randomly, but generously on the surface. Then rake again to cover the seeds with soil, and water, keeping the bed moist until germination has occurred. Once the plants reach about knee height, and before they set seed, dig the lot back in to the soil. The CSIRO has found that as mustard leaves break down, they act as a bio-fumigant, helping to suppress problems like root-knot nematodes and verticillium wilt.
Autumn is my favourite season. The weather is usually cool and clear, the colours are fantastic and best of all, my other favourite season, winter, is just around the corner. Bring on the first frosty morning!
