Seasonal crop rotation is indeed... in progress!
A very long time ago…right back at the beginning of Kitchen Gardening Days at Glenmore House, how I would fret at the constant number of visitors to the garden and what they might think, when the productive garden resembled nothing like the Beatrix Potter-like image so many of us carry in our minds, as the exemplar of how a productive garden might present. Or if not those of the illustrated nursery-rhyme variety, then likely an exquisite French potager or a glory garden of well-tended genteel perfection from the eastern states of America perhaps; or even a photograph of the kitchen garden captured right here; primped and preened and fluffed in preparation…on one particularly perfect day!
Productive gardens are almost always represented as tidy gardens of straight rows of plump veg, and although there are plenty, plenty of advocates suggesting different ways of growing these days (I’m inclined to include myself amongst them) I’ve always felt a niggle when it comes to ‘garden visitors’ as opposed to ‘garden workshop participants’. It’s the latter who hear the whole story - invested as they are in learning the why and wherefore, for it’s the why and wherefore that underpins a produtive garden; design principles and aesthetics aside. It’s they who look and ‘comprehend’ as opposed to just ‘looking’. Of course there are plenty of garden visitors who look and see and get it! And I do think expectations are altering, in tandem with the times…
Anyway…there’s simply no way a productive garden can present as it may in a photograph all the time. It’s a living, breathing entity, that changes not just seasonally, monthly or even weekly…but daily. Perhaps with a team, where like some municipal garden, things are ripped out and put back in ‘for show’ it might be possible…but the garden here (although on regular view) is not ‘for show’. It’s for real!
And so it was that right back at the beginning, I had two signs made to subtly underpin the fact that the kitchen garden was quite honestly in a state of flux! Seasonal Crop Rotation in Progress: how those few simple words instantly alleviated the pressure…explaining away the gaps, the overgrown, the bare, the (purposely!) gone to seed!
Those five words suggest to me, a place of activity; a hub of excitement. And while I love all the rest of the garden for myriad reasons…it’s to the core, the beating heart that is the productive garden, that I’m most drawn…to see what happened overnight, to see what’s occurred during the day; or even the difference made between embarking upon and completing a task. Each job carried out leaves its mark, even if that mark is space for the next task to occur. It’s in the doing, that I find the thrill! And even on those rare occasions where I’m the one who’s the garden visitor…it’s to a kitchen garden I’ll be drawn in the first instance…the ornamental…can wait.
Anyway, hub of activity the kitchen garden has certainly been these last weeks! (At least on those days I’ve been able to commit fully). The entire process of this season’s crop rotation began weeks ago now - I must surely be six or seven weeks in (nor am I finished), and though plenty of late summer produce still thrives; those early plantings I first made are burgeoning. Some, like the row of kohlrabi seen as one in the image above, are already ripe for the plucking! I do often wonder if I grow kohlrabi purely for its visual beauty…the lilac ribbed, deeply veined blue/green leaves and its bright purple bulbous form that develops a cloudy bloom as each swells to fruition. Growing next to a row of crinkly cavolo nero, they complement each other so beautifully and though the kale is weeks off eating (if I’m to wait for its sweetness to develop once touched by a frost), the vision may be short lived, as really…the best eating for kohlrabi I think…is now. Or very soon’ish. So before I’ve even finished sowing for the season, the vision I’ve been striving to create will vanish in the name of eating it!
I’m lingering with this image for a moment so those who are growing can digest a hint of companion planting - or at least the attempt. I really can’t say if it’s a true piece of information or not, but from time to time you will hear the suggestion to grow landcress with brassicas. The thinking as I understand it is: should the eggs of the white cabbage moth fall off the leaves where they’ve been laid by the moth on its brassica leaf of choice (really? why would they fall?) and the newly hatched caterpillars gobble away at a land cress leaf instead, it’s likely to kill them. Ugghhh. I first tried this scam years ago and as a result, have rather a lot of landcress growing all about the garden! I’m inclined to let it pop up - and to develop through its full cycle, all the way to flower and seed. And so it was that back in January, I took a whole lot of stems of dried/ripe landcress seed pods and laid them down in the bed where I intended to grow brassicas this season. Many germinated and although I don’t have a carpet of them, there are enough surrounding the burgeoning seedlings of cabbage and cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi and kale. Enough to do the job with the white cabbage caterpillars? Probably not, but it’s the reason they’re there and growing quickly…adding a layer of leaves close to and protecting the earth in what has been, ‘til the brassicas truly get a move on, a thinly planted and therefore exposed bed. So anything…to cover bare earth, mulch aside, is a good thing.
You might guess by now that I’m on a crop rotation roll for this post! And so it should be…there’s been rather a lot of ‘other’ (from frocks to curtain headings!) just lately, and so, timely as it is…I think this topic for the week is right where it must be!
While I mention mulch…just because an urgent message popped up on my phone and simultaneously, the top of my insta feed displayed a quite magical garden (truly…utterly divine in Italy)…I am still, after all the years of ‘mulching’ our earth, always staggered when I see English and European gardens that still, for the most part, do not have a covering of mulch to accompany their planting, but display (albeit beautiful) dark, crumbly soil. Exposed. Just saying…’tis what has come from growing in a hot climate, exposure and adherence to regenerative principles and care of the precious soil we have, which we know can so easily disappear if not covered.
Anyway…back to the rotation! At the same time I began sowing the first of the brassica seedlings, I also began trickling in the first seedlings of lettuce, celery, bulbing fennel, radicchio, coloured chard and leek. Already we’re eating the delicate leaves of new season’s lettuce, while each of those others will take time to grow on to reach their potential. Since then, I’ve made another two planting efforts of each of those same varieties as…successional sowing truly is the name of the game.
Once again, if we come back to the real purpose of the kitchen garden, it exists to supply the kitchen with produce - the seasonal, organic mainstay of our diet. And thereby (hopefully) our health. Successional sowing, is the only way to maintain that supply. From time to time it all goes awry and we experience a hungry gap, though I’ve become much better at closing the gap over the years and this season we’ve barely skipped a beat. There was a week when lettuces were thin on the ground and I am always staggered at the tiny size and great expense of buying an organic lettuce in the city (the only way I’m likely to find one around here). From the garden, I pick huge baskets of crunchy leaves that squeak with delight as I load them from basket to bench! I could never afford to buy that quantity of leaves! And as for the spinach and chard that threads its way into every dinner (soon to be joined by kale), I just know we wouldn’t eat half the quantity if I was buying it. Of course I don’t and can’t grow every single morsel we put into our mouths; but it is without doubt the garden that makes an enormous daily contribution. And adds hugely to my delight in preparing our daily food.
But back to the crop rotation! So far, I’ve mentioned only seedlings, rather than seed. And a significant portion of the garden here in any season, is grown from seed. Whilst much of the self-sown is already well on its way (thinning some of it is a job I intend to do this coming weekend), I hadn’t had a chance to prepare for the purposely sown ‘til this week. The main reason being…that because I like to grow tall, clambering varieties, I need to put the effort into building frames and supports before I can sow the seeds. So…last weekend I shifted, re-erected and re-tied a series of wigwams for peas and made a start with the broad bean boxes. The individual ones of those are quick and easily enough done, though I admit to waiting for Thalia’s assistance on Monday to erect the long one…simply by dint of the fact that one person needs to stand back and say if the stakes are lining up…or no…to lean them this way or that before tapping them properly into position. Previous experience has taught me that making the long one on my own is….extremely time consuming, dizzy-making and frustrating! And so with the uprights in position and the main horizontal ‘keepers’ tied in as well (which also require one to stand back to see if they’re aligned while the other person holds and moves a long rod up or down a smidgen), I can now complete the short sections to compartmentalise the frame myself!
Structures in place, the character of the winter/spring garden is now almost set. And as those structures take shape, so the ideas for planting possibilities come to the fore. It’s now the real fun can begin! But first…there was compost to add and mulch to cover. And then….
In tandem with the Lunar calendar’s ideal seed sowing day, I pulled my saved seed from last year out of hibernation and set about soaking the four different pea varieties: Telephone, Sugar Ann, Golden Pod and Purple Podded Dutch, along with broad bean Aquadulce and….a packet of Globe beetroot seeds and the ripe seeds from a flower head of parsnip. That was yesterday morning. Back I went to my desk…got on with my jobs and…later in the day than hoped but with just enough time before dark…I set about sowing. (While it’s easy to sow wet pea and broad bean seeds, it’s not so easy to do the same with beetroot and parsnip, so it’s a good idea to drain those first and spread them out on a sheet of kitchen towel for half an hour or so!).
I do wish I had more of the hinged copper rings I commissioned a few years ago (and regret selling all the ones I did!) but…this is the most successful method I’ve had with sowing peas direct. Even so, I still cross my fingers and say a prayer over each one! I gave up sowing a pea seed to each leg of the wigwam (which makes perfect sense) when the bower birds came in to give me so much grief. These days, I sow the seeds (which annoys me but is how it must be) inside the copper ring which keeps other pests at bay, then add a wire cylinder to deter the bower birds. The next bit of grief will be when the seeds do germinate and begin clambering up the poles and I’ll have to net to keep those bower birds away (or perhaps they might emigrate for the winter - one can only hope!).
The broad bean seeds went in five per individual ‘box’, in the same layout as the number five is represented on a dice…a total of twenty seeds as the long frame is made up of four sections and I continue to grow the main broad beans in this way year after year because…it works! And you know how I love my broad beans! Over on the other side of the garden in the ‘guild’ beds, I have yet to build the second individual frame, or to prepare the soil for both, so I’ll sow those at the weekend (although that will not be a designated Lunar cycle seed-sowing day…it’s just impossible to do it all at once and to get the day right!).
Next…were the parsnip and beetroot seeds, sown too close together and yet…I cannot pull the neighbouring aubergines out for some time yet, because they’re fruiting so beautifully, so that’s just the way it is! I’ve covered the two rows with a piece of net…in an effort to keep the soil damp and…pesky birds at bay - when I see signs of germination, I’ll hook the net up over some stakes to give them air space to grow…just until they’re established and then the net can come off those altogether.
It seems to me that as fast as I take nets off one part of the garden, I’m putting them out somewhere else! I did take the nets off the main brassica bed last weekend, as the plants were exploding out of their cages, and ever since it’s been as if someone’s opened a can of white cabbage moths! They’re fluttering about and laying their eggs all over! Although I wipe the odd tiny yellow egg off, it’s almost easier to cast a hawk eye each morning and evening over the brassica leaves and pick off any caterpillars - their chlorophyll green generally stands out against the blue grey brassica leaves but my oh my!
I carted barrow after barrow of spent fennel stems…the ones that had towered all around the edge of the kitchen garden, down to the compost; thinking to myself all the while how funny it is, that something looks so suggestive of a particular moment in time in which one may revel…until it just doesn’t! That switch can flick almost in the blink of an eye…at least within the passing of a day or two…and once I cut the first stems of long-gone-to-seed fennel down, I simply could not stop…one clump after another, after another went with snip after snip after snip of the secateurs…and as each one came down (with a flutter of seeds to the ground and all over me and my hat!) I could not have been more delighted with the clean, clear space left in its wake. I haven’t quite finished the task…there are three enormous clumps across the back of the garden still to go…one of them such an amazing specimen, its stems resemble the black bamboo I’m so fond of harvesting from local friends!
Out in the floating fennel box though, just beyond the kitchen garden gate and forming part of the ‘bee superhighway’, I’m always trying to ramp up the number of fennel plants and so once again, those stems have been tipped into the garden head first, in hope of additional germination!
Fennel stems I cut earlier…about a month ago, in the middle of the Guild beds, are sprouting fresh feathery foliage and I know I’ll be whizzing up the first batch of fennel frond pistou any minute now. How I’ve missed having it on hand these last hot months! There’ll be no shortage now…
Although I haven’t completed planting the kitchen garden ‘proper’, down the back is also mid-overhaul, with overflow rows of fennel and extra leeks already sown, and more prep underway so I can continue to successionally sow in the weeks ahead. My intention, is to be fully planted by the end of this month.
While all this kitchen gardening activity occurs though…life goes on. Work…and a mid-week impromptu picnic for which a quickly compiled Aubergine Torta was a life saver! Here’s the link to the recipe from a post last year, but I think I mentioned more recently that I find it so much easier (and also quicker!) to bake the slices of aubergine rather than frying them in batches in a pan as I think I suggested in the original recipe. I had four trays of slices on the go at once on Tuesday, when Clemmie announced a very dear friend was popping in for lunch (whereas we had intended to meet on the coast for Clemmie’s birthday and it all changed when the weather was less than ideal!). It was a case of last minute aubergines to the rescue!!
I know I’ve suggested the last couple of weeks that I hadn’t been anywhere near the pool (in the perfumed notes below) to see if the Osmanthus fragrans was still filling the air, so on Tuesday morning I went to look on purpose and what did I find? Just enough sprigs to bring inside to fill the atmosphere with its intoxicating apricot scent! And one lone fig on the tree for the birthday girl. Not an exciting birthday, but one marked with flowers and love all the same.
I’m writing to you a day early this week because…tomorrow I’ll be gone before dawn!
And if you’re local…Sydney environs’ish…it’s The Collectors’ Plant Fair this weekend! Celebrating 20 years and at a new venue, in Penrith. As a once-upon-a-time stall-holder there and longtime supporter…I aim to go on Saturday, so maybe I’ll run into you amongst the the fun of it all. On a serious note….supporting the growers…the nurserypeople who ply their special plants is so important…for without them, we’d lose the variety with which to play and create the joy that gardeners and garden visitors alike, so revel in. The fair is on, on Sunday too. How I’ll hope to bump into you there! Equally…I just noted that Camden Park has its Autumn Heritage Plant Sale this Saturday, with trees, shrubs, roses and other treasures all propagated from that hugely, historically significant garden. Oh dear….not in need of anything and yet…torn….
‘Til next week, sending warmest wishes,
Mickey x
Productive garden notes:
Eating from the garden:
The very last potatoes (I dug up some surprises!). Onions, garlic aubergines, zucchinis (trombonchino), tomatoes, coloured chard and spinach; lettuce, rocket, red elk mustard (is back…popping up all over - ahead of what I sowed purposely and is now a thick carpet of highly potent microgreens). Basil, lovage, mint, rosemary, thyme, chives. Calendula and nasturtium petals, fine nasturtium leaves and a handful of tiny amaranth leaves. Rhubarb…and a lone fig!
Going / gone: beans, potatoes and….although I thought long gone, when I pulled out the row of parsnips gone-to-seed (the image of which led last week’s post) I happily discovered 5 parsnips that had not yet bolted! They were baked the same day and simply delicious…an unexpected treat
Seed saving: parsnip, bean, tomato
Sowing: peas, broad beans, cima di rapa, carrot, beetroot, parsnip (if we ate them, turnips but I decided a few years ago to skip growing them). Could plant garlic…I usually wait for Anzac Day but I’m a bit tempted to try earlier this year - no panic!
Planting: brassicas (kale, cavolo nero, cabbage, broccoli, kohl rabi, cauliflower), lettuce, radicchio, fennel (bulbing), bok choy and leeks… and continuing to plant these successionally. At last I planted our the flowering Stock…and even on a lunar calendar ‘flower’ day!
Ornamental garden notes:
Picking for the house: tansy, dahlias, Cottonwood hibiscus, amaranth, ginger…a few roses and those few sprigs of Osmanthus fragrans (although there are still frangipani I’ve rather stopped visiting the swimming pool and so…I’m less inclined to bring them in)
Perfumes and aromas: frangipani, nicotiana, more buds of white flowering ginger have opened, and yellow flowering ornamental ginger too, Osmanthus fragrans. At some point during these last days, the Heliotrope was casting its delicious cherry-pie perfume in a wider arc
Pruning and other: I took to the Macleaya cordata in the Arc, the Port Wine Magnolias in the Courtyard and…there’s a succulent I’ve been growing from a cutting generously given to me in Victoria a couple of years ago that had sent up a towering trunk. I’ve been umming and ahhhing and decided…to cut it off at the base from where it had grown and around which several babies have sprung. I cut off it’s head with a short piece of trunk and…planted it just nearby…in the hope of ultimately creating a large clump of this giant rosette forming beauty! It may sit looking like that for a couple of years before doing anything! (I also saved the bare trunk…it’s down the back…maybe…you never know…it might shoot something out in a desperate attempt not to die and shrivel up!). Thalia has been clearing lawn gutter detritus in advance of a garden tour next week.
