Gardening in August

Welcome to your first monthly organic gardening chat! Here we’ll be talking about growing delicious food in our northern Tasmanian backyard gardens. We’re starting in August, which is admittedly a little on the slower side when it comes to growing stuff in your patch. It’s still too cold for most things to germinate well outside, even though there are faint rumblings of Spring approaching.

If you’re itching to get started though, there are some brave cold-tolerant varieties of vegetables which will give you your green fix outside at this time of year. Radishes, coriander, kale, peas, English spinach, and spring onions can be sown directly into soil or pots outdoors, and will be emerging before Spring has even begun. Just remember to leave off the mulch in sown-out beds for now, so that the soil can have a chance to start warming up when the time comes.

Another solid option for green thumbs in August is to plant yourself by the fire and do most of the gardening from there. Much can be achieved with some lazy armchair garden planning: bed layouts, summer crop wishlists, online seed ordering, and daydreaming about that first ripe tomato. Once you’ve done that, you’ll quickly realise that it’s not too early to start planting seeds from the nightshade family, which includes tomatoes, capsicums, eggplants, and chillies. Then you can go silly with potting mix, egg cartons and a squirty bottle. Just be sure to label everything!

While there’s not too much planting going on just yet, we enthusiastic gardeners still have plenty to keep us busy. It’s a good time of year to spread mulch on beds that aren’t in production, as this helps protect the precious soil biology from the elements, as well as suppressing those incorrigible weeds that seem to get a head-start every spring.

I also like to use this time of year to dabble in home-made biochar, inoculating it with worm tea and spreading it on my empty summer production beds. I always put mulch or compost on top of biochar applications, because, again, it protects and encourages the growth of the healthy soil microbes introduced with the inoculated biochar. Nature never leaves any patch of soil bare for long.

It’s also a good time to put in some bare-root perennials like rhubarb or asparagus crowns. They will need soil that has been well prepared with generous helpings of compost or aged manure, as they will need that nutrition to get properly established.

Right now, I’m harvesting beetroot, leeks, kale and carrots that have overwintered beautifully, as well as parsley, spring onions, radishes and coriander. All of these continue growing (slowly) over the winter months, and can provide your kitchen with flavour and freshness, even during the coldest weeks. Gardening for your kitchen is a very rewarding sport, one which has kept humans gleefully engaged for many thousands of years. Happy August, gardeners — may your efforts bring you joy and deliciousness.