Breaking a myth…
I often get asked, can we even grow anything in winter? And the answer is YES! It’s much easier than summer growing and cheaper too. Let me tell you why. In Autumn and Winter growing food is almost effortless. The mild nights give plants a chance to cool off and absorb lots of water, the warmer days excel growth, NOW is the perfect time for easy growing. None of this shade house up and down nonsense. None of this watering every day with recycled water from your shower or bath business, Mother nature takes care of the watering for us. And is easy to grow from seed, just place them in the ground around the depth of the seed and let Gaia take care of the rest. Hopefully, you have saved some from last year’s crop or gotten some free off you neighbours. (if you would like to learn the art of seed saving and more please attend our Organic Gardening Workshop)
But…. You only have a few weeks left to do your winter planting.
If you leave your winter crops until winter it will be too cold for them to grow big enough to grow big strong heads. Brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower) require a cool crisp cold temperature to form those nice big heads on them, but if you wait until winter the plants themselves will not be big enough to accommodate the size. To get big strong healthy winter plants, you will need a few weeks of warmth to get them going. If you miss your autumn window of opportunity you will be in for a long and unproductive winter in your edible backyard paradise.
*You only have until mid-April to get your winter crops in!
Where do I start?
You can start by pulling out all your lingering summer crops! Time to go tomatoes, time to go basil time to go eggplant. For most of us suburban farmers space is limited, so sacrifices must be made as the competition for real estate in your raised vegetable garden or planter box garden bed is fierce. With our days, still warm and the days getting shorter we need to get our seedlings and especially our seeds in while the warm sun is creating the perfect temperature in our soils to trigger the signals into the seeds to spring into life.
*Fun fact- Seeds breathe and are alive. They have a minute ‘respiration’ rate and can lay in the ground dormant until the right conditions appear.
Summer soils are made in winter.
This is the perfect time of year for building up your soil, because healthy soil means healthy plants, means healthy people. You can build up your soil with homemade compost, composted manures and don’t forget the mulch. Trace elements are also essential to add in each season new planting. So the 4 key things we want to add to the soil before planting are;
- Compost
- Manure
- Trace elements
- Mulch
Want to get started today?
If you would like help setting up, we can take the guess work out and help you get it right the first time. You can save time and money by growing your own organic vegetables at home and all you need is a simple raised bed or planter box in an unused corner of the yard.
**Take advantage of our April special, this month all our Raised Garden Bed Packages are reduced by 10% **
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