The weather was mild and cloudy and seventeen adults came to work in the garden.
Snapshot
Today, people were very busy doing a range of jobs, including sowing seeds, transplanting seedlings, trench composting, removing old plants and, of course, watering and weeding.
Harvest
Our harvest was pretty leafy: warrigal greens, sweet potato leaves, sorrel, chickory, purslane, sage, oregano, a few beans and chillies.
Leafy harvest
Sowing and planting
We sowed broccoli ‘Green Magic’, garlic ‘Italian Pink’, turnips ‘Japanese Tokyo Market’, climbing peas ‘Snow Pea’, radish ‘Cherry Belle’ and carrots ‘Baby’. Mizuna seedlings were thinned out and transplanted.
The okra, which didn’t perform very well this year partly because of the mild summer, was removed, as were some bean vines.
Special mention
Nat and Joe did some trench composting in the secret garden, a job Michael was pleased to have some help with!
We had a visit from Georgia from the UTS Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion. She was interested in talking to some members about various aspects of the garden, including how it started, what we get out of the garden on the produce and social side and how sustainability fits in with what we do in the garden.
Amber, from St Helen’s Community Centre, is organising a St Helen’s open day on 12th May and has invited us gardeners to take part. It’ll be a nice, informal event, where we can show small groups of people around the garden, tell them about what we do – and invite people to join! – and have Michael give a demonstration of our composting and worm farming systems. Hopefully, the weather will be kind!
We talked about the sweet potato plant (near the tamarillo tree) and how similar the flowers of the sweet potato and morning glory plants are to each other (both plants are in the same genus, Ipomoea). Bunches of sweet potato leaves can often be bought in Asian grocery shops or Paddy’s Market. Some recipes for them are here: https://ourpermaculturelife.com/sweet-potato-greens-more-nutritious-than-the-tuber-do-you-eat-them/
Jan brought some recipes designed around using small amounts of a particular plant (e.g. two stalks of rhubarb, a few sorrel leaves) you might get as your share of the harvest. Taking home small amounts of produce is often the norm, so these recipes are very useful!
Coming up in the garden
We’ll continue our cool weather planting – and general upkeep of the garden!
On 19th March, it was a fine morning with sixteen adults and four children coming to the garden. We welcomed Judith back to the garden after her convalescence. The following Sunday, 26th March, was also fine and twenty adults along with two children came to the garden. We wished Helen well in her recovery too.
Snapshot
There wasn’t much rain leading up to 19th March, so watering was a priority. There had been some rain just before 26th March and this created good conditions for sowing more seeds for our cooler weather plants. There’s always weeding and tidying up to do in these still warm times of year! It doesn’t take long for the public garden bed to regrow to the point of needing cutting back again or for the weeds in the paths to need attention.
Harvest
Over these two weeks, we harvested snake beans, warrigal greens, purslane, green basil, Thai basil, nasturtium, oregano, rocket, land cress, sage, rhubarb and some green lemons. A few okra were picked but had really been left too long and were a little too large. Okra is best at around 6 cm long. Most of the basil plants had passed their prime and were removed, as were cucumber vines.
Sowing and planting
We did not do any sowing or transplanting of seedlings on 19th March, as very hot weather was forecast for the following days. On 26th March, we sowed some Forellenschluss lettuce and radish and also resowed radish, carrots, coriander and beetroot in the gaps in recently sown rows. Some silverbeet seedlings were also transplanted from their seedling bed to their final spots.
Special mention
A few weeks ago, the NSW Department of Primary Industries installed some insect monitoring traps in the garden. We’ve just heard back from the biosecurity officer about what they found in the traps. Both pests and beneficial insects were found. The pests were mostly sap-sucking insects, like thrips, scales and aphids, while most of the beneficial insects were microwasps. Fortunately, no especially nasty pests were found.
Some of the kids drew an interesting creature, design or … on the path (photo below). If anyone wants to know what it really was, you’ll have to ask them!
Garden art
Coming up in the garden
More seeds for cool weather plants need to be sown, along with some garlic – and more tidying up.
It was a cloudy morning, which kept the temperature at a pleasant level, and 17 adults and one child came to work in the garden.
Snapshot
The new sowings from last week were watered, other beds had cow manure and chook pellets dug in and some of the last summer plants (i.e. all the tomatoes) were removed.
Harvest
We harvested the last of the tomatoes (mostly green), sunflower shoots (which are edible), purslane, snake beans and warrigal greens (see photo).
Harvest
Sowing and planting
Cos lettuce (a variety which is a bit more tolerant of warmer weather), coriander, dill and perpetual silverbeet were sown, after preparing the beds by forking in cow manure and chook manure. Cow manure adds organic matter to the soil but not a lot of plant nutrients; the organic matter gives plant nutrients something to “hold onto” and prevents them getting washed out so quickly. Chook manure adds some organic matter too but also adds more nutrients than cow manure.
Special mention
Michael brought some tamarillo chutney he made from the tamarillos harvested from our tree that fell over recently. It was really delicious! There are still some tamarillos left if anyone wants to try their hand at chutney or whatever.
Growing under our former tamarillo tree, we found a sweet potato plant. The leaves are edible and bunches of sweet potato leaves are quite often seen in some green grocers. Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is vey closely related to the weed, morning glory (Ipomoea spp.), and their flowers are very similar. Both plants have leaves that are heart-shaped or have 3 or 5 lobes but you can see differences between them in the photos below. Morning glory often has slightly hairy stems and leaves too, while sweet potato does not.
Sweet potato (left), morning glory (right)
Coming up in the garden
When the current few days of quite warm weather pass, we’ll get back to sowing our cool weather crops. In the meantime, watering, weeding and mulching are the things to do.
Unfortunately, Helen was badly bitten by a dog last week and had to spend a couple of days in hospital following the operation. We wish her a speedy recovery.
Twenty-two members and three children came on Sunday. We picked more snake beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, Thai and sweet basil, sorrel, parsley, French tarragon, purslane, Warrigal greens, okra, eggplant, rocket, land cress, chillies, some bok choy and green onions.
We sowed parsley and cosmos in the ends of beds. We also sowed radish ‘Cherry Belle’, beetroot ‘Early Wonder’ and ‘Detroit’, carrots ‘Baby Amsterdam’, perpetual spinach, coriander ‘Eureka’, onions ‘Evergreen Bunching’ and ‘Welsh Deep Purple’.
A common weed in our garden is Solanum nigrum, known as Blackberry Nightshade. It belongs to the Solanaceae or Nightshade family of toxic plants. Its leaves and green berries are particularly toxic.
It was a fine and busy day on Sunday with 27 members and 3 children.
We harvested more red and green snake beans, Thai and sweet basil, sorrel, okra, purslane, cucumbers, eggplant, tomatoes, rocket, rhubarb, green chillies, green onions, warrigal greens, mint, garlic chives, curry leaves and shiso. The spaghetti squash was removed and baby ones harvested. We dug in the green manure crop of buckwheat and fertilised beds with cow and chook poo and potash where there was a deficiency detected in last year’s broccoli crop. We sowed our first seeds of the season – silverbeet cultivars ‘Fordhook Giant’ and ‘White Silver’. Seedlings will be transplanted to other beds once they are established.
The dragon fruit had its first flower last week – a bit late this year due to the cooler weather, which is also affecting the papaya tree’s crop.
Thanks to Christine for bringing her delicious tamarillo jam for morning tea. There was plenty to share on biscuits. She made it from our huge harvest of green fruit from the fallen tree. The jam and Michael’s tamarillo chutney inspired more members to take home tamarillos. We still have plenty in the shed.
On 12th February, we had a sunny and warm morning and 21 adults took advantage of it to work in the garden. The following week, 19th February, was cloudy. Twenty-two adults and one child came to the garden and worked. All but weather at both ends of the spectrum is great for gardening!
Since the start of this year, we’ve been lucky enough to gain some new members. While we’ve welcomed them at our gardening meetings, they haven’t (unfortunately!) been mentioned in our weekly updates. To do a bit of catch-up, we’d like to welcome Kathryn, Ana, Li and her children, Kathy, Djamileh (who has returned for a while after being away), Sussan, Nat and Joe. We hope they enjoy the garden and being part of our gardening community.
Snapshot
We harvested produce from our remaining summer plants. As we are moving closer to our autumn planting, both weeks were taken up largely with removing spent plants, weeding – many weeds love warm weather! – and tidying up garden beds. Quite a lot of watering was needed too because the garden beds dry out so quickly in the warm weather. Mulching with straw was continued to conserve moisture in the soil and keep the soil cooler.
On 12th February, we finalised our autumn planting list, thanks to some guidance from Jock, who recommended particular varieties of different cool season plants that had been more successful than other varieties in the past. These recommendations were possible because of the careful record keeping that has been done every season in our garden – again by Jock!
Harvest
Some of our harvest is shown below and included larger amounts of some herbs than usual, as we were tidying up the public garden bed, which contains mostly herbs. We harvested snake beans, French beans, cucumbers, spaghetti squash, eggplant, tomatoes, pineapple sage, oregano, sage, green basil, Thai basil, fennel, nasturtium, chickory, curry leaves and Warrigal greens.
Another plant we harvested – because it had grown so large that half of it was dug out – was Tahitian spinach or celery stem taro (Colocasia esculenta –https://greenharvest.com.au/Plants/Information/TahitianSpinach.html). This is in the right-hand photo below and is the thick green stems with very large leaves on the end.
One of our members, Loan, says that the stems of this plant are commonly used in south‑east Asian cooking (it needs to be cooked!) and uses it herself. It is typically used in fish soup, after first removing the very thin skin, slicing it into bite-sized pieces and then boiling in the fish soup stock for 3 minutes or so (for example,https://www.vickypham.com/blog/vietnamese-sweet-sour-tamarind-fish-soup-elephant-ear-taro-canh-chua-ca-bac-ha). It can also be used in stir fried dishes, where it is peeled and sliced and again cooked for about 3 minutes.
Some of the produce harvested over these two weeks
Sowing and planting
Some cosmos, a flowering annual in the daisy family (Asteraceae) was planted in various beds using saved seeds. Cosmos attracts bees, butterflies and beneficial insects and is pretty to look at too!
On 19th February, some green manure was planted in the bed in the secret garden where the potatoes were grown last year. We used a combination of cowpea (a legume) and Japanese millet (a grass). The legume adds nitrogen to the soil and both plants add organic matter, which helps soil to retain water and plant nutrients better. Cowpea also helps to control nematodes in the soil. Certain nematodes can attack the roots of plants in the Solanaceae family, like tomato, eggplant – and potato. In a few weeks, just as the cowpea starts to flower, we’ll slash these plants and leave this plant material on the bed to slowly rot down.
Special mention
One unfortunate notable event happened recently. Our tamarillo tree fell over! It was laden with fruit, which was all still green. The sad remains of the tree after the branches were removed to maintain access along the walkway are in the photo below. There were several kilos of green tamarillos collected, so, if anyone has a recipe for green tamarillos, there’s a good supply available if you’re quick!
Something else unusual – but much more pleasant – was a green bean dish, which Hana, one of our members, made and brought for us all to share. The beans are cooked very slowly – for half a day – with tomatoes and some spices, a method Hana says is typically used in Lebanon for cooking beans. The tender beans, eaten with flat bread, were delicious!
We all gave Michael the very best wishes for his recent birthday too!
The remains of our tamarillo tree
Coming up in the garden
The cow manure has arrived! This can be dug in on our next workday to give the garden beds a bit more body for our autumn plantings. The seed order for our autumn planting is on the way, although we still have some seeds from previous years that should be viable and can be used too.
We had a sunny morning for our garden session with twenty-two adults and two children coming to enjoy some time working in the garden. We welcomed Kathy as a new member.
Snapshot
This week, we again continued removing ageing warm season plants. The soil was very dry after some warm days and plants badly needed some watering.
Harvest
Our tomato plants, which are mostly cherry tomato varieties, are still producing fruit – and some pests are still finding some of them! We also harvested some spaghetti squash, beans (French beans and snake beans), cucumbers, Warrigal greens, sorrel and quite a few herbs, including green basil, Thai basil, parsley, green perilla, purple perilla, oregano and lemon verbena Some of our harvest is in the photo below.
Some of our harvest
Sowing and planting
The buckwheat, a green manure crop, germinated after 3 days or so. The only planting this week was planting more seeds in gaps in the buckwheat bed.
Special mention
One of the vegetables we harvested was spaghetti squash or vegetable spaghetti (Cucurbita pepo in the Cucurbitaceae or gourd family). When the flesh is cooked, it looks something like shortish strands of spaghetti, hence its name. It grows vigorously like its cousin, zucchini.
The ginger growing in the round tubs is noticeably less advanced than the ginger in the main garden. This suggests the soil in those tubs lacks nutrients, which we noticed a few months ago when lettuce was struggling to grow there. We’ll need to put regular effort into improving the soil in those tubs.
The grapevine was pruned back this week. The caterpillar below turned up on one of its leaves. Putting a photo of it into the iNaturalist app to identify it brought the answer that it would eventually develop into an Australian grapevine moth. We shouldn’t be surprised where we found it!
Larva of Australian grapevine moth
Coming up in the garden
This coming work day, we’ll aim to finalise our autumn planting list. The plan to dig cow manure into various beds is moving slowly because some recent wet weather around the farms supplying it has delayed delivery.
The morning was very humid, began cloudy and became very warm. Twenty-six adults and one child came out to work in the garden.
Snapshot
Today, we continued removing our ageing warm season plants. Lots of the sunflowers had blown over and were removed too. We are working towards our autumn planting.
Harvest
Our harvest included some of our several varieties of tomato – with and without caterpillar and fruit fly damage! We also harvested some beans, basil, land cress, Warrigal greens, sorrel, cucumbers, galangal, chickory, Vietnamese mint and sunflowers. Some of our harvest is in the photo below.
Some of our harvest – with several tomato varieties
We saved some heads of seed from the sunflowers to give us fresh seed for next year.
Sowing and planting
This week we planted buckwheat as a green manure in bed 11. Buckwheat is grown as a minor grain crop and its seeds eaten as a grain or as flour (e.g. Japanese buckwheat noodles). Its leaves can also be used like spinach. However, we’re growing it as a green manure both to reduce the loss of nitrate – an important plant nutrient – from the soil and to provide a mulch for our next planting in that bed. Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) belongs to the Polygonaceae family, the same family that rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum) and sorrel (Rumex acetosa) belong to. We’ll let it grow for a few weeks and then cut it down and leave it to slowly decompose on the soil surface.
Special mention
There are some turmeric flowers around. They’re very attractive (photo below)!
Turmeric flower – and leaf with distinctive ribbing
Coming up in the garden
We’re going to put another bed under green manure but a different type. The bed in the secret garden that had potatoes in it will be sown with a mixture of cow pea (a legume) and Japanese millet (a grass). The legume, cow pea, will add nitrogen to the soil and the two plants together, after they’re cut down, will act as a mulch for our next planting.
Michael also suggested we give the soil in our beds a boost by digging in cow manure. This will be done in the near future as beds become cleared.
It’s time to start thinking about our autumn planting too. Suggestions welcome!
On 15th January, it was a sunny and warm morning in the garden with 25 adults and five children spending time working with the plants.
The following Sunday, 22nd January, was showery but 17 adults optimistically came to the garden. The showers persisted and not much gardening was done in the end!
Snapshot
On both days, plants that were past their prime or heavily attacked by pests or disease were removed. Sunflowers that overshadowed other plants and deprived them of light were also removed. Some sunflowers provided nice flower heads for a vase arrangement.
Harvest
As in recent weeks, we harvested some beans and green leaves (tatsoi, Cos lettuce, sorrel, mizuna, purslane, basil and some other herbs). We also harvested some tomatoes, although, without being netted, the tomatoes have been attacked by pests. When a tomato caterpillar gets into a cherry tomato, there’s not much left to eat! Mesh bags have been put over some clusters of tomatoes so, fingers crossed, some of them might be clean. Cucumbers are also starting to be big enough to harvest.
Sowing and planting
No sowing or planting was done in either week. The planned sowing of green manure was postponed.
Some of the earlier plantings of beans were removed as they had run their course and some were infected with rust. The tatsoi was infested with aphids and removed. Aphids were also on cucumber vines, which were sprayed with soapy water to remove and deter the aphids.
Coming up in the garden
In the warm weather, and the weather is finally becoming more like summer now, the garden beds are drying out quickly. We’re going to put down straw mulch to conserve soil moisture and keep the soil a bit cooler. The plants will appreciate it!
A fine morning brought out twenty-one adults and two children to work in the garden. It was great to see familiar faces again and to have a big group coming together once more now that lots of people are back from their recent festivities!
Snapshot
Some recent rain meant the soil in the garden beds wasn’t bone dry, so heavy watering wasn’t needed. Some plants that had come to the end of their prime were removed and garden beds were generally tidied up.
Harvest
As we have of late, we harvested some beans and green leaves (tatsoi, Cos lettuce, sorrel, mizuna, purslane, basil and some other herbs). A patch of baby carrots was re-discovered and harvested too! Some sunflowers that would go well in vases were cut as well.
Sowing and planting
No sowing or planting was done this week. Some mizuna and other mustard greens, a cucumber vine and some bean vines were removed, as they had outlived their usefulness. Some sunflowers were removed to give other plants (e.g. eggplant, okra, Thai basil) more room and light – sometimes there can just be too many sunflowers!
Special mention
Some sulphur-crested white cockatoos have found our sunflowers quite tasty (photo below)!
Sulphur-crested white cockatoos breakfasting on sunflowers
Coming up in the garden
We decided to plant green manure crops in one or two garden beds to give them a short rest and improve the soil in them by using the green manure crops to add organic matter.
It’s time to start thinking about our cool weather plantings. If there are any particular cool‑weather plants anyone would like to try, please suggest them but do some homework first on whether they’d be suitable for Sydney’s climate and our garden conditions and also where to buy the seeds.
It was a sunny and warm morning to start the New Year. Thirteen adults and two children spent time working in the garden.
Snapshot
Watering, applying worm juice and harvesting were the main activities of the morning.
Harvest
We harvested green and purple beans, sorrel, tatsoi, cos lettuce, mizuna, purslane, along with various herbs, including basil, sage, oregano and Vietnamese mint.
Sowing and planting
Some tatsoi seedlings were thinned out and moved to give them all a better chance to develop to a decent size.
Special mention
Michael has dug some compost into the bed we recently harvested potatoes from to help improve the soil.
The tomatoes are suffering a little from an insect pest, tomato caterpillar (a type of budworm) – see photo below. These pests burrow into the young fruit, feed on it and make it completely inedible.
Tomato caterpillar inside cut cherry tomato
There’s some information about this pest here. This linked article mentions netting the whole tomato plants as one way of trying to keep these caterpillars at bay (more specifically, by keeping the moths these caterpillars turn into away from the tomato plants so they can’t lay their eggs on the plants). Another method of control mentioned is to use a spray containing a bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis. This bacterium is a biological control agent and this method of control is an accepted organic control method. Because of the personal protective equipment recommended when using the spray, we will not be using this method. Now that we have had the framing for our tomato netting replaced, we can put up netting … next year!
Coming up in the garden
At the moment, given La Niña is still around, we can probably look forward to pleasant warm mornings on work days. The sunflowers are still putting on quite a show.
With some light showers in the morning on 18th December, twelve adults and two children came to the garden to work. Luckily, the weather fined up for our solstice party in the late afternoon – more on this below! On 25th December, most people had other engagements and we had seven adults and one child spending a relaxed couple of hours working.
Snapshot
Harvesting beans, watering and feeding plants, along with some transplanting seedlings, is the usual routine at the moment. The sunflowers keep growing at a stunning pace!
Harvest
On 18th December, we harvested mostly beans, cucumbers, mizuna, land cress, basil and other herbs. We also harvested the potatoes grown in the potato bags. These were the last of the potatoes for this year. The varieties were the same as in the nearby potato bed: Sebago, Dutch Cream and King Edward. The harvest showed mixed results and confirmed potatoes do better in a garden bed!
On 25th December, we harvested much the same as the previous week without potatoes.
Sowing and planting
Some okra seedlings were moved to even up the spacing in our plantings. A few Japanese climbing cucumbers were also moved to reduce crowding. Some unknown leafy greens have been very densely sown in one of the round metal tubs. These were also thinned out a little.
Special mention
The tamarillo tree has a large crop of tamarillos developing, so start looking out recipes for tamarillos!
Coming up in the garden
Watering, weeding and attending to the public garden bed, which is quite overgrown, are what to expect.
Summer Solstice Party
We held our Summer Solstice Party on 18th December – the summer solstice, which is the day with the most daylight hours, was on 22nd December. About 40 people came to the party and brought a wide variety of delicious food, some of which had garden produce in it. It was great to see people who hadn’t been able to make it to the garden for a while, as well as people who come more regularly. The event really underlines the bonds the garden has made among people in our local community.
Today the weather was sunny and warm. Nineteen adults and two children worked in the garden. Some more people came to watch the hive of native stingless bees being opened.
Snapshot
The usual warm weather activities of watering, weeding and thinning out and moving seedlings were the main jobs today.
Harvest
We got a few handfuls of both green and purple beans, a few cucumbers, rhubarb, celery, lettuce, sorrel, purslane, basil, sage and other herbs. Some more potatoes that were missed in the dig last week were found today too!
Sowing and planting
We planted some bought French marigold seedlings mainly amongst the tomatoes. French marigolds are good companion plants which are useful in reducing some pests – and also have attractive flowers!
Special mention
The main event today was the opening of the hive of native stingless bees, which we have under the curry tree, to harvest honey. Our bees are the Tetragonula carbonaria species, one of the eleven species of Australian stingless bees. Most Australian stingless bees live in the warmer, more northerly parts of the country but not in the arid centre. Tetragonula carbonaria can cope with the climate down to about Nowra. You can find some of the story about getting our hive in the garden update of 10th November, 2019 and some later updates for 2019 (https://sthelensgardeners.wordpress.com).
A year ago, after the hive had been in place for two years, we planned to harvest the honey from the hive. Alas, the honey box was empty! The access to it had been blocked off when we first got the hive, although we didn’t know this at the time, and the bees had not been able to get into the honey box to build their honey pots (see update of 14th November, 2021). So, we unsealed the access, put the hive back together and packed up the honey harvesting tools, hoping we’d come back in another year and find some honey.
This year, we had our fingers crossed, as the bees would have been able to get into the honey box and spend the last year producing honey for us (and for themselves!). Jock brought all the necessary equipment, set up everything and people gathered around to watch – anticipating being able to taste some honey. After some trouble with the lock on the cage containing the hive, we got the hive out and Jock explained the process of harvesting the honey. He then opened the hive, lifting off the honey box, and we found NO honey! The bees had blocked off access to the honey box themselves – tricky little creatures (see photos below). This is a riddle, which we’ll need to ask someone with more native bee knowledge about. Again, we replaced the hive and packed up all the gear for another year ….
Native beehive with access blocked to keep bees inside (left). Lower boxes of hive with top honey box removed – gap along top short edge blocked up by bees with propolis (right).
Coming up in the garden
We’ll harvest the potatoes we’ve been growing in bags next week.
Urban Agriculture Showcase, University of Sydney, 18th November, 2022
As people probably know, we gave a talk at the urban agriculture day at Sydney University recently. If you’d like to watch our talk, you can find it here. It’s the first talk in Session 3. You can also watch all the other talks given on the day, as well as talks from previous years’ events, which are on a variety of themes loosely related to agriculture.
On this sunny and warm morning, twenty adults worked in the garden.
Snapshot
Watering, particularly the trees in the large wicking pots, was the first job. We did a little seed sowing and thinning and moving seedlings. Picking lots of beans and digging up potatoes were the main rewards today.
Harvest
A good amount of beans, both Stringless Pioneer and Purple King, was picked. We also harvested the last of the silverbeet, some mizuna, tatsoi, Amish Deer Tongue lettuce, golden streaks, ruby streaks, garlic (hopefully the last green shoots) and basil (Green and Thai). The main harvesting effort went into our second bed of potatoes, planted at the end of July and made up of Sebago, Dutch Cream and King Edward varieties (photos below).
Digging up potatoes (left); Potato harvest (right) – Dutch Cream (top), Sebago (left), King Edward (with pink blush, right) Photos: Kerri
Sowing and planting
We sowed some radish and some silverbeet. Land cress, tatsoi and lettuce seedlings needed thinning and moving. The okra seedlings were given some Charlie Carp fertiliser (high in nitrogen) to encourage them. The tomatoes are mostly growing well and regularly need small shoots in elbows removed. French marigold seeds that we’d saved previously and planted recently have not germinated, so we’re going to buy some seedlings.
Special mention
The potato harvest is one of the big events of the year!
Coming up in the garden
The native stingless beehive will be opened soon to see how hard the bees have been working to produce honey.
Today we had 22 adults and two children working in the garden. We welcomed Lea, her daughter Zoey and son Sol as new members. They have recently arrived from Brazil, where they ran a permaculture farm for six years.
Snapshot
Much the same as last week, there was plenty of watering to be done, weeds to pull out, tired plants to pick and remove and some sowing to do. The trees in wicking beds have been drying out quite quickly in the warm and breezy weather and need regular watering! Seedlings of various plants all needed some Charlie Carp fertiliser to give them a boost (it gives plants mostly nitrogen, which encourages overall growth).
Harvest
There was a good amount of mizuna picked (the very last!), along with silverbeet, chickory, Warrigal greens, beetroot leaves, tatsoi, sorrel, purslane, lettuce (Cos and Amish Deer Tongue), basil, dill, land cress, Lebanese cress, radish, cucumbers (Spacemaster) and beans (green Stringless Pioneer and purple (!) Purple King – picked with scissors, not fingers to avoid damaging tiny beans coming on). Some of our harvest is in the photo below.
Bean and cucumber harvest
Sowing and planting
We planted Japanese Climbing cucumbers, radish and silverbeet. French marigolds, which are good companion plants and also have bright flowers, were sown, using saved seeds, among the tomatoes. Cos and land cress that had both germinated quite densely were thinned out and moved to some other beds.
Special mention
The first sunflower of the season has bloomed (see photo below)!
First sunflower of summer 2022
Coming up in the garden
Two notable events are coming up and are not to be missed:
the remaining bed and the bags of potatoes will be harvested soon and
It was a warm and windy day but the wind didn’t deter 26 members from working in the garden this morning.
Snapshot
The recent warm weather – and wind – has really started to dry out the soil quickly, so watering will be the main job to keep on top of into the approaching summer. Weeds and various seedlings germinating from old seeds in the compost are also appearing and need to be removed. Older leafy greens were removed today, as some of them become less tasty as the weather warms up. Areas cleared out had fertilisers and compost dug in and some new plantings were done. The grapevine was pruned, as was the choko (quite severely).
Harvest
All the mizuna, rocket and the Daikon radish were harvested. We also harvested silverbeet, lettuce (Lollo Rossa, Amish Deer Tongue, Green Cos), sorrel, chickory, garlic, celery, beans, pepino, radish, dill, basil, mint and coriander.
Sowing and planting
A variety of seeds was sown: radish, silverbeet, rocket, climbing beans (next to sunflowers, which will support them), rockmelon and cucumber. We also sowed rosella (Hibiscus sabdariffa, Family Malvaceae), which produces attractive flowers that can be used for cordial or jam (more information is herehttps://tuckerbush.com.au/rosella-hibiscus-sabdariffa/) or just admired! Some more (bought) eggplant seedlings were planted too.
Special mention
Flowers are starting to come out on the papaya tree (photo below – look closely!).
Papaya flower (right in the middle)
The cucumber vines are starting to produce some good fruit. Cucumbers are in the cucurbit family (Cucurbitaceae), along with melons (watermelon, rockmelon), pumpkin, choko, zucchini and squash. Plants in this family usually have different male and female flowers. The flowers of each sex on our cucumber vines are in the photos below.
Cucumber flowers: female (left) with ovary, that will turn into fruit, under petals; male (right) with thin flower stalk
Jock mentioned a recent article from the Sydney Morning Herald about an interesting herb we grow called perilla (SMH, 15th November, 2022, Good Food section – https://www.goodfood.com.au/recipes/news/shiso-and-perilla-everything-you-need-to-know-20221030-h27hyv). Botanically, it’s Perilla frutescens and it’s in the mint family (Lamiaceae). There are different varieties and we have a purple variety, which is also known as shiso, its Japanese name.
Coming up in the garden
More watering and weeding! We started our watering roster this week and will need to keep it going over the warm weather.
It was a cloudy but fine morning and 22 adults and one child came to work in the garden, including Hana, a new member.
An action shot of the garden from today is below.
Hands in the earth (Credit: Floris, USyd)
Snapshot
Watering was the main job, along with some weeding. There are quite a few seedlings from seeds in the compost and these seedlings need to be removed.
Harvest
A variety of greens was harvested: silverbeet, kale, mizuna, tatsoi, ruby streaks, golden streaks, lettuce (Lollo Rossa, Green Cos, Amish Deer Tongue), rocket, chickory and sorrel. We also harvested rhubarb, celery, Daikon radish, kohlrabi (only one plant developed a bulb), carrots, asparagus, garlic, dill and curry leaves.
Sowing and planting
There were a few sowing and planting jobs to be done: sowing zucchinis, cucumbers, rosellas, rockmelons; resowing okra; planting lettuce and basil seedlings people had pricked out and potted up a couple of weeks ago, French tarragon and eggplant. What wasn’t done from that list will be done next week.
Advanced chilli plants, donated by Thi, were planted, as seedlings had not developed well.
Parsley is in short supply at the moment and any parsley seedlings were moved to the edges of beds.
Special mention
Powdery mildew is starting to infect the brassicas (rocket and mizuna). These plants need to be harvested (harvest the whole plant), keeping the healthy leaves and throwing the infected leaves in the green bin.
Tatsoi and celery are going to seed and won’t last long. As plants go to seed, they lose their palatability. Whole tatsoi plants can be harvested.
Floris, the urban agriculture researcher from Sydney University, brought a video camera and recorded comments from those willing to say a few words about what the garden means to them. The clips will be edited to make a video for the urban agriculture event at the University on 18th November. The clips also have some great material for our social media pages, which are in the making.
Looking into one of the compost bins revealed an amazing sight (photo below).
Population explosion of worms in compost bin (Credit: Floris, USyd)
Coming up in the garden
What’s literally coming up in the garden is ginger! There are a few shoots in the beds and new tubs and also in the patch of ground where it was planted.
A fine and warm morning saw 23 adults and one child working in the garden.
Snapshot
Warmer weather means more watering and weeding, along with general tidying up to discourage pests. Beds were prepared for more future plantings by digging in compost and adding fertiliser and some planting and sowing were done. Plants gone to seed were removed, crowded plants were thinned, beans were trained up trellises and a variety of plants harvested. A small bale of lucerne hay was dug into a convenient bed to add organic matter and nitrogen to the soil (and to make room in the shed!).
Harvest
A range of produce was harvested: sorrel, red veined sorrel, silverbeet (plants that had gone to seed were removed), kale, rocket, mizuna, ruby streaks, golden streaks, Warrigal greens, celery, radish, daikon radish, basil, dill, coriander, parsley, sage, oregano, shiso, fennel, Lebanese cress, French tarragon and rhubarb.
The big harvest of the morning came from one of the potato patches (photo below)! Three varieties of potato were dug up: Purple Congo (a fair crop), Kipfler (a moderate harvest) and Red Pontiac (a good harvest).
Half the potato harvest
Sowing and planting
Some more beans were resown (Lazy Housewife) and snake beans were sown under the teepees built for them to climb. More basil seedlings were also planted.
Special mention
Tim and companions were thanked for the table found and repaired, which we are now using. Jan from kil.n.it, the ceramic studio behind the community centre, was thanked for the ceramic plant labels (photos below).
Ceramic plant labels by “kil.n.it”
Members were warned about rhubarb leaves. They are not for eating because of their high oxalate content. Rhubarb stems are the edible part of the plant and must be cooked. Warrigal greens also have oxalates but only need quick blanching to remove the oxalates.
Coming up in the garden
Next week, we’re planning to plant some cucurbits (cucumber, zucchini, spaghetti squash), okra and rosella (both in the hibiscus family).
We’ll also be doing video or sound recording of anyone who would like to comment on what they get out of coming to the community garden – socialising, learning (more) about and doing gardening, getting fresh organic food, meeting other local people, enjoying a dose of fresh air in peaceful surroundings … the possibilities are endless! These comments are for the urban agriculture meeting at Sydney University on 18th November.
We had a sunny gardening session today with 23 adults and three children joining in.
Snapshot
The weather has been warm lately so watering was a priority. Some tired plants were removed and preparation done for more sowing and planting. Fertiliser and compost were added to soil for new plantings and teepees built to support snake beans to be planted soon. Stink bugs on the Tahitian lime were removed.
Harvest
The harvest was quite small and included silverbeet, celery, lettuce, mizuna, radish, asparagus (one spear!), dill, parsley and green garlic.
Sowing and planting
Eggplant seedlings were planted, Amish Deer Tongue lettuce thinned and replanted and radish sowed. We also planted some perilla seedlings.
Special mention
As we found last week, garlic had turned into witches broom. Several more garlic plants have sent up green shoots and Michael harvested these and emphasised how tasty they are and how expensive green garlic shoots like these are to buy from green grocers.
Another noteworthy event is that the first ginger shoots have showed themselves (photo below). We look forward to a good harvest in several months!
Spot the ginger shoots
Coming up in the garden
Next week, we’ll aim to build some more teepees for snake beans and sow snake bean seeds. Spaghetti squash and more cucumber are also on the planting list, as are chilli seedlings that are being raised for planting but have made slower progress that expected.
Another fine, but cloudy, day brought 22 adults and one child to the garden for the morning.
We harvested silverbeet, celery, asparagus, celtuce, lettuce (Green Cos, Freckles, Rouge d’Hiver, Lollo Rossa, Royal Oakleaf), kale, land cress, radish, parsley, coriander, apple mint, rhubarb and garlic. Our one child today had a lot of fun picking radish for the harvest but her mum told us her daughter doesn’t eat radish because it’s a vegetable (horror!).
In the process of stacking our bunches of various greens this week for people to take home, it turned out that some rhubarb leaves got mixed in with the silverbeet. All parts of the rhubarb plant contain substances known as “oxalates”. Eating plants containing oxalates can cause unpleasant symptoms, which worsen as the amount of oxalates eaten increases. There are higher levels of oxalates in the leaves of rhubarb than the stems. Cooking rhubarb stems makes them edible, but the leaves are not eaten because of the higher levels of oxalates they contain. There is more information about this here:
NSW Department of Primary Industries, Primefact 359, 2006, p. 10
In future, we should keep each type of plant we harvest in a separate pile.
The changeover from our autumn and winter plants to spring and summer plants continues. Much of the silverbeet has started to go to seed and the plants that have started to do this were picked and removed. Lettuce and celtuce were treated the same way.
Recently planted rocket and mizuna were thinned and the extra seedlings put into gaps in suitable beds. Parsley, which until recently was in great supply, is now not so plentiful and was moved to edges of beds. It will come on again soon. Sunflowers were also moved to the corners of beds, where they are most easily managed. We moved spring onions to our dedicated onion bed. We also planted some French marigolds along one side of the tomato bed. French marigolds are a useful companion plant, repelling some pests. The marigold flowers can also be eaten. Thai basil seedlings were planted and saved land cress seeds were sown. We saved mizuna seeds from plants that we had kept to let go to seed.
Jock gave a demonstration of how to prick out individual, small seedlings from a pot containing many small seedlings and transfer each one to a separate, small pot to let it develop to the point where it could be planted out. This is a very common step in the process of propagating plants from seed.
All the garlic we planted early in the year was stolen but Jock discovered that one plant had remained hidden and was missed! With all the recent rain, it has not behaved as proper garlic should (photo below). The tops should have turned brown, signalling that it was ready to harvest. However, this plant has lots of green shoots. These are the result of the recent unseasonable rain leading each of the newly formed garlic cloves to sprout, resulting in “witches broom.” This has been affecting garlic growers around Sydney, as Jock heard reported on ABC radio in a recent Saturday Breakfast show in a segment on gardening (ABC Radio Sydney, Saturday Breakfast, 22nd October 2022, about 41 minutes into the programme https://www.abc.net.au/sydney/programs/saturdaybreakfast/saturday-breakfast/14085862).
Garlic plant forming “witches broom” owing to lots of rain
Another large group of gardeners worked in the garden today in the fine weather. There were 30 adults and two children. We welcomed Chi and Mark as new members.
We harvested silverbeet, English spinach (and then removed the plants), celery, asparagus, celtuce (you can eat the stems too!), lettuce (Green Cos, Freckles, Rouge d’Hiver, Lollo Rossa, Royal Oakleaf), kale, radish, parsley, pineapple sage and garlic.
Some plants are nearing the end of their season. The silverbeet and lettuce will go to seed as the weather warms up (some of both is already starting), as will the celery.
As some previously sown seeds of various bean varieties did not germinate, we resowed seeds of the appropriate variety in the gaps. A patch of bush beans (Stringless) has germinated well. We also sowed beetroot (Detroit). Myrtle, one of our members, provided some seedlings of tatsoi (Chinese Flat Cabbage, a cut-and-come-again salad green) and winged beans (often grown in tropical areas) and we planted both. A few extra tomato seedlings (cherry varieties and one Scorpio) were planted, as well as some spring onions.
Various beds are being prepared for other plantings in the near future, such as basil, eggplant, okra (resowing) and more beans!
One side benefit of growing beans (or peas) is that they can produce their own nitrogen plant food themselves. Nitrogen is one of the main nutrients plants need and is a major component of Charlie Carp and blood and bone fertilisers, which we need to use because most plants cannot use nitrogen gas (from the air) directly. However, beans and peas are legumes, which have particular bacteria (various Rhizobium species) in their roots that can convert nitrogen from air in soil pockets into a form of nitrogen the plants can use themselves.
Sunflowers that were planted pretty randomly around the garden by children – who had a good time doing it! – were moved to corners of beds, where it’s more convenient to have them, and we look forward to another spectacular summer display.
The Nagami cumquat tree, which has had yellowing leaves for a while, was given some Epsom salts (a magnesium supplement) to try to restore some green to the leaves. The cause of the yellowing isn’t clear, so we’ll give the tree an iron supplement too in a couple of weeks.
With warm weather come some new pests. Bronze orange bugs (also affectionately known as stink bugs) have started to appear on the Tahitian lime (photo below). These bugs are native insects and will attack citrus plants (Rutaceae family). As there is no suitable, specific, organic spray for them, control them by squashing (!) them or trying to knock them into soapy water.
Our finger lime (Citrus australasicus) has had flowers for a while and there are now some tiny fruit that have set and are developing (photos below). As finger limes belong to the citrus family, they are fair game for bronze orange bugs, so we’ll need to keep an eye on our finger lime – and other citrus trees – and kill any of these bugs.
Young bronze orange bug (stink bug) on Tahitian limeFinger lime (left), flower (middle), tiny developing fruit (right)
Despite the threat of rain and cloudy weather, 18 adults and one child came to do some gardening this morning.
After the recent rain, no watering needed to be done. We applied the usual worm farm juice, tidied up some beds, weeded beds and paths and collected a decent harvest of silverbeet, lettuce (Lollo Rossa, Rouge d’Hiver, Green Cos, Royal Oakleaf, Freckles), celtuce, celery, radish, asparagus, parsley, sage (no rosemary or thyme!) and the last of the broccoli (see photo below).
Part of our harvest
The last of the broccoli plants were removed. Those in bed 14 needed to make way for the Jerusalem artichokes, which are starting to make some headway. There’s still plenty of lettuce but, as some is starting to go to seed, it needs eating – it’s best to remove whole plants to eat at this stage. There’s also a good supply of silverbeet but it will also go to seed as the weather warms up. The varieties of lettuce we’re harvesting at the moment prefer cooler conditions to grow well. There are varieties of lettuce that grow well in warmer weather, like Amish Deer Tongue, which we planted last week, so we’ll have new lettuce coming on again in a while.
Seeds recently sown have germinated with reasonable success. The bean seedlings are generally going well, as are the rocket, newly planted cucumbers, white radish and mizuna. The okra seeds have not done so well and we are still waiting to see carrot seeds germinate.
Perhaps the big event of the morning was planting tomato seedlings. Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is in the Solanaceae family. Some people who tried to raise seedlings at home did not have much success. We planted seedlings that some members brought and a couple of wild ones that had come up from our compost, making 15 seedlings of various varieties: four Cherry Black, two Beam’s Yellow Pear, three Nonno’s Italian Pear, four Cherry Red Pear and two unknown varieties. They were watered in after planting.
The basil seedlings from the crowded punnet of seedlings that were untangled and planted last week are doing very well. A great job done dealing with a very fiddly punnet of seedlings!
Among the plants in the garden that are flowering at the moment are three that also belong to the Solanaceae family. These are tree tomato or tamarillo (Solanum betaceum), potato (Solanum tuberosum) and pepino (Solanum muricatum) (see photos below). The flowers have five petals. We’ll have to wait till the warmer weather to see some other Solanaceae plants flower (e.g. tomato, chilli and eggplant).
Tamarillo tree (tree tomato) (left), flower cluster (middle), flower (right)Potato plant with flower clusters (left), potato flower (right)Pepino bush (left), pepino flower (right)
Know your ladybird beetles
There are about 500 species of ladybird beetles in Australia. Most are beneficial, with aphids being one of their favourite foods, but some are pests. The 26-spotted potato ladybird, which feeds on leaves of potato plants, is often not a problem but, when its natural predators are absent, it can increase in numbers quickly and cause substantial damage. Is the ladybird in the photo below (snapped on the leaf of one of our potato plants) one of these 26-spotted potato ladybirds?!
Another busy Sunday with 24 members and one child! We harvested a huge crop of silverbeet, broccoli, celery, English spinach, sorrel, radish, chicory, asparagus, celtuce, lettuce (Green Cos, Royal Oakleaf, Lollo Rossa, Rouge d’Hiver and Freckles), land cress, parsley, kale and green garlic.
We sowed lots of seeds this week!
We resowed some climbing beans (Blue Lake, Lazy Housewife and Purple King).
We sowed:
saved seeds of rocket and mizuna
bush beans (Jade, Simba, Stringless Pioneer)
lettuce (Amish Deer Tongue)
radish (Cherry Belle)
mustard (Golden Streaks and Ruby Streaks)
white radish (Daikon)
coriander
carrots (Baby Amsterdam and Baby Pak).
The Muncher cucumbers previously planted did not germinate. The variety Spacemaster was planted in their place, so now all cucumbers in bed 7 are Spacemaster, a bush variety. The frame we built over the bed will give them that extra support and help keep the fruit off the soil.
Basil seedlings, that were very crowded in their punnet, were disentangled and planted and will hopefully grow well.
We decided to try to reduce the aphid infestation on the Chinese mustard cabbage plant marked for saving seed by spraying the aphids off with a jet of water so we can keep the plant.
A representative from Whites Creek Community Garden in Lilyfield visited to enquire about how we managed a communal garden. Their council (Inner West Council) is encouraging them to go communal rather than have private plots. Jock explained how we operated successfully and what the benefits were of making “community” the operative word in community gardening and abolishing the obsession with Sydney real estate. We wished them well!
The beautiful weather on Sunday brought out a record 28 members and 2 children. We welcomed Mark as a new member.
We harvested a bumper crop of broccoli. We have been harvesting broccoli for three continuous months now. We picked abundant silverbeet and lettuce (Cos, Lollo Rossa, Rouge d’Hiver, Freckles Bunte), celtuce, good beetroot, some garlic, coriander, celery, spinach, sorrel, land cress, asparagus, chicory, parsley, rocket and kale.
We sowed climbing beans (Lazy Housewife and Purple King), bush beans (Jade and Stringless Pioneer), radish (Cherry Belle), okra (a green variety called Mammoth Spineless and a red variety surprisingly called Red) and planted sweet basil seedlings. The children sowed sunflowers. Where sunflowers germinate will always be a bit of a pleasant surprise!
The Purple King climbing beans planted in the “watched space” in bed 3 last workday have started to germinate (photo below). The bean seedlings are close to the metal frame. Near the middle of the photo, there’s also a seed from a pumpkin, or some other member of the cucurbit family, that has germinated. That seed has come from our compost. We’ll remove the seedling. The same thing has happened in bed 7, where we planted cucumbers recently. We have rogue cucurbit seeds germinating there. This is not unusual in our garden.
Watch this space – Purple King climbing beans planted several days ago have begun germinating (bed 3)
One of the Chinese mustard cabbage plants we’ve kept to save seed from (also in bed 3) has become infested with aphids. The seeds won’t be ready to collect for several weeks so we will either need to try to control the aphids or remove this plant to reduce the number of aphids calling our garden home and spreading to other plants.
We had another fine, sunny work day with eighteen adults working in the garden and socialising.
We harvested more leafy greens, including silverbeet (Fordhook Giant and Perpetual), lettuce (Green Cos, Freckles Bunte, Royal Oakleaf, Red Tango, Rouge d’Hiver, Forellenschluss), kale, celtuce, red dandelion, chickory, celery, parsley, land cress, oregano, asparagus and beetroot. The photo below shows some of our harvest.
Green harvest
Beetroot leaves can be eaten raw or cooked like silverbeet or any other leafy green vegetable. The celtuce (also known as stem lettuce) we harvested had grown stems about 20 cm long (sorry, no photo!). The stems can be eaten as well as the leaves and taste like celery (more information here: https://www.theseedcollection.com.au/Celtuce).
The spring planting continues! We planted two varieties of climbing beans this week, Purple King (bought seeds – photo below) and Lazy Housewife (saved seeds) – the latter variety may well have been named because it doesn’t need de-stringing but there was agreement it should be renamed! These should germinate in a week or so. Based on brown edges on the leaves of broccoli plants recently grown in bed 3, we suspect the soil in that bed has a potassium deficiency. Before the Purple King beans were planted, some potash, which is a potassium supplement, was forked into the soil to start correcting this deficiency. There’s more information about potash (or potassium) here: https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/factsheets/the-power-of-potassium/9436862.
Watch this space for Purple King climbing beans
We also planted a bed of cucumbers, which meant building a frame to support the vines off the soil. Apart from structural soundness, our frames always have some artistic appeal! A photo of this year’s is below.
Five mounds of cucumbers planted along with their classy trellis
Members also took home some pots with seeds to raise to seedling stage for planting out later. These were Thai basil, lime basil and two varieties of eggplant, Black Beauty and Rosa Bianca.
St Helen's Community Garden 