Spring vegie garden tasks to do during the hungry gap | Growing Vegies | Gardening Australia

Spring vegie gardening jobs to combat the hungry gap. Subscribe 🔔http://ab.co/GA-subscribe
For gardens in cool-temperate climates spring is a big deal with plants in bloom and buds bursting. In the vegie patch it’s a different deal. It might look like a time of abundance with lots of flowers, there’s actually very little to eat: all the winter crops are past their best and the soil is still too cold for most of the summer ones.
Some people call this time of year the hungry gap!

But there is plenty to do. Even on their way out, winter plants can play an important role in the garden as their flowers provide food for insects – and the best plants can be saved for seed. Millie has earmarked her best broccoli ‘Spigariello’ for saving seed. She stakes it, ties it up and will allow it to set seed for next year’s crop.

Another successful crop has been the large carrot ‘Chantenay’ – for this you need at least five plants to make sure you’ve got good genetic diversity in the seed. Millie cages the plants off (to stop Squid pinching the carrots!) and will save seed from all five plants.

When growing carrots for the roots, it’s best to grow them in low-nutrient soil so they focus on storing energy (making a large root) rather than putting on lots of leafy growth. But now that Millie is aiming to grow them for their seed, she increases the nutrients available, planting a companion crop of peas to boost nitrogen being fixed in the soil, and giving them a liquid feed every 3-4 weeks.

Flowering coriander plants also get a boost of liquid feed to keep them healthy as they go to seed; Millie has always found her best crops are from seed saved from her own garden.

When to harvest garlic? It’s hard to say with so many varieties being grown across different climates, so look at your individual crop. Some plants will die back to the bulb when ready but others will only yellow in their leaves as they ripen. Other form a flower spike or ‘scape’ as they mature, and this can be harvested as a crop: “It’s like garlicy asparagus,” Millie says.

But the ultimate way to check is to dig around the bulb a little bit and see if it’s started to swell. If you think they look ready, then the ultimate check comes with sacrificing one – pull it out of the ground and cut it cross-ways; when you can see that the individual bulbs have started to separate you know they’re ready. But don’t harvest them after rain or when they’re wet, because they’re likely to rot! Wait until after some dry weather when they will store much better. Remove any mud and trim the roots to aid drying.

When it comes to spring planting you really need to hold your nerve and wait for the soil temperature to be warm enough, but you can still be growing your soil. In winter, Millie planted a green manure crop of mustard and peas in one bed, then a few weeks ago she chopped it back and covered it with aged manure and straw. It’s now breaking down well.

Doing this increases the organic matter in the soil but also increased the biological activity. This helps the future crops access the nutrients in the soil when the temperature is finally ready for planting.

To prepare a tomato bed for planting in 2-3 weeks, Millie uses a different approach. She clears the bed of the old crops, except for one or two plants being kept for seed saving. This is a no-dig bed so Millie doesn’t dig out all the roots but twists them off at the base to leave some roots in the soil – this adds organic matter at a deep level and will slowly break down in the soil. The tops go to the chooks! To open up the soil structure, Millie goes over the bed with a garden fork, gently lifting to aerate and allow water to penetrate. She also adds some gypsum as a source of calcium that won’t change the pH of the soil – this also prevents diseases such as blossom-end rot.

The soil isn’t yet warm enough to plant out the tomatoes but Millie plants out a few shoulder crops of leafy greens, including pak choy and lettuce, plus some radish.

Featured plants:
Broccoli ‘Spigariello’ (Brassica oleracea cv.)
Carrot ‘Chantenay Red-cored’ (Daucus carota cv.)
Peas (Pisum sativum cv.)
Garlic (Allium sativum cv.)
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