IT’S cold outside but subtle changes are happening in the garden.
The hens are starting to lay a little more frequently, the chives are popping back up through the earth, and the coriander is well on the way to flowering.
Inside, the gardener gathers her seeds and makes her plans: It’s almost spring and I’m delighted to be back at home in the Molong Express to share it with you.
For new readers of the paper my name is Steph. I’ve been growing food for my family, in Molong, for about 10 years.
I had the urge to start a vegetable patch shortly after having my first son. I’m not sure why it happened but I assume it was a natural extension of the way I often express my love: through food.
I wasn’t very good at gardening at first, but I stuck with it and, over the years, the garden has provided me with so many unexpected opportunities. I’ve worked closely with seed companies on seed trials and seed saving; I’ve won an award for the Garden of the Year and, spoken to many wonderful growers locally and from overseas.
Ultimately though, the thing that still fills me with the most joy is serving home grown food to my family.
Whether it’s a dish that contains just a little bit of home-grown garlic or an entire meal of home-grown vegetables and fresh eggs, it’s always delightful.
This is a feeling I want everyone to experience, which is why I started writing gardening columns for the Molong Express in 2023.
In these monthly columns I teach what to sow, how to tend and when to harvest, so that you can grow great food, year-round, for yourself and the people that you love.
Over the years I’ve learnt that the vegetable patch in August says a lot about the gardener’s stamina.
Anything that’s alive out there now reflects planning and hard work back in autumn – already an incredibly busy time of the year; full of harvesting and preserving.
If all has gone well, you’ll be harvesting a bounty of leeks, leafy greens, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages and beetroot or; perhaps like me, you had a less enthusiastic autumn resulting in August looking a bit more like carrots, parsnips and the kind of herbs that look after themselves.
If your veg patch has room, there is still a small window of opportunity to sow some cool season crops like carrots, radishes, peas, spring onions, parsley, and potatoes.
It’s important to remember that, planted now, many of these crops will still be in the garden in mid spring, when you may want to transplant your summer crops, so plan wisely.
Speaking of summer, it’s time to discuss the most important job of August – sowing our heat loving seeds indoors: tomatoes, eggplants, capsicum, and chilli.
These seeds require consistent warmth and plenty of light to germinate and grow into strong seedlings.
There are tips and tricks online about starting seeds indoors, without special equipment, but I use a heat mat and grow lights for consistency.
After germination the seedlings will need a lot of love and protection until they can be planted outdoors.
There are hundreds of varieties of vegetables available in our country and many of them can only be experienced by growing them from seed, so the hard work is worth it.
However; if starting from seed isn’t for you, lots of nurseries and hardware stores are starting to stock some beautiful varieties of vegetable seedlings too.
Since tomato, eggplant, capsicum and chilli can’t be planted in the garden until November, when the chance of frost has passed, you’ve still got a bit of a wait before purchasing them.
So, enjoy this period of rest and dream big for spring.
