November in the Patch

Lovely bit of rain and what a start for our seeds & seedlings we have been nurturing over the last couple of months

The vigour of growth in the vegetable garden is always helped along by enriching the soil. I have worked a combination of sheep & chook manure, blood and bone and mushroom compost into the soil, ready to plant the greediest of the vegetables; the pumpkins, zucchini and cucumbers. Because of my space constraints zucchini and squash are planted alternately along the edge of a garden bed to hang over, and in this way they will take up minimal room, and my cucumbers are growing in a pot fed fortnightly a with a liquid brew of compost, chook and sheep manure, comfrey leaves.

Our wonderful range of beans that Virginia kindly donated can be planted: Jade Beans are a favourite for flavour; Scarlett Runner Beans are the traditional, old fashioned climbing beans unsurpassed for flavour; Purple King Climbing Bean is a good variety for warmer climates. It does not matter if the seeds are sown too close together, as they are easy to thin out later when the seedlings come up.i have planted them out in my egg carton seed trays as i have a big problem with Slater's, they eat off the young emerging shoots before they even break the surface, then planted out in the last weeks of Nov. When the first flowers are starting to grow into little beans i plant another half dozen plants then I always have a steady supply of good healthy plants. Virginia suggested to me to plant several varieties of beans for saving at opposite ends of yard.

I'm trying a three sisters bed of corn modified to suit with some climbing cucumbers at the outside edge of each row. They will climb up the sweet corn plants and the bed will give you a double harvest.

This is the perfect time of year to plant those tender vegetables, the ones that are frost sensitive. Tomatoes need warm soil and warm weather to thrive and ward off diseases. if there is a late November cold snap water them with a seaweed and fish emulsion as per directions hopefully they wont suffer too much of a setback, and avoid them becoming weakened to most diseases. At the bottom of my planting hole, two or three crushed chicken eggshells (cheap organic source of calcium) blood and bone heaping tablespoon of pure worm castings, two plain aspirin tablets. Aspirin has been shown to increase disease resistant of tomatoes, in addition to increasing blossom production. Fill hole with a little soil then plant on top. I then water fortnightly with worm tea , seaweed concentrate and two aspirin watered down to a weak tea colour and sprayed on plants as a foliar feed.

The garlic and onion bed has been successively planted from autumn right through the coldest part of winter. If the garlic foliage takes on a peculiar colouring then it indicates that it is just becoming mature, and if it bolts to seed it does not affect the bulbs. But the opposite is true with onions. The potato onions are starting to divide up into their individual bulblets, and are thriving.

Garlic, which I'm not sure where it came from, are little sweet nuggets of flavour.