When sitting down to write, at 5.30am on the Monday of the
week of my monthly garden guide, I look back at what I have written in previous
years at this time. April, more than any other, seems to be the month full to
the brim with the wonderful joy of food gardening. Topics from the last few
years include deep hay, garlic, self-sown winter vegetables, the 3 stages of
eating beans, what to do now to keep your fennel producing, broad beans,
onions, harvesting sunchokes, bio-char, picking pumpkins, fungi and your soil,
lacto-fermented pickling and so much more. I would like these, and all the 5
years’ of my garden guides, to be available for everyone to peruse so I will slowly be adding them to my blog
Vegetable Vagabond, where they will be easily found.
The perennial food garden, expanded
I have patches of food throughout my whole garden, for
several reasons. First and foremost because many plants are social creatures
and benefit from mixing it with other, complementary friends. This is called
companion planting and also permaculture guilds. That is a topic in itself for
another day. Second, when something dies down, why not have something else
popping up there for a while? Why not have daffodils amongst your sunchokes or
scatter coriander seeds amongst your asparagus as it dies down? In my garden,
marigolds, rocket and the little, native Tasmanian violets pop up everywhere
there is space, all by themselves.
Here are some vegetables that you only have to plant once
but can harvest year after year and amongst whom you can dot some flowers or
herbs or quick growing greens, for use after the main crop dies down.
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Horseradish
- some people say it can become invasive but mine never has and I wish it would
as there is nothing more delicious than hot, roasted vegetables, straight out
of the oven, with freshly picked horseradish root grated over. Or, grate it and
immediately pack into small jars, with a little salt. It keeps in the fridge
for years! Don’t screw up your nose until you have tried it as fresh
horseradish is so much deeper in flavour than the stuff in jars. Once you have
dug, harvested and replanted your horseradish roots a bit later in autumn, you
could plant a quick-growing Asian green like bok choy or mizuna or flowers such
as alyssum,
which will self-sow as well.
·
Multiplier
onions - Walking onions and potato onions – I love these because I am a
lazy gardener who eats from the garden everyday and they provide all year round
as well as multiplying at the same time. Lucky us! Some multiplier onions are
also known as “walking onions” because they form a cluster of little onion
bulbs in the summer, on a seed stalk. As autumn sets in, the stalk bends over
and the already-sprouting bulbs touch the soil and root. So, after a while, your
permanent onion area slowly expands! These onions make terrific spring and
early summer green onions and as the patch expands, I pull some up to use as
well. You could have them in your asparagus patch or you could plant some in
flower beds.
Potato onions also make top-set
bulbs, but the great thing about them is that they also make a “nest” of rather
large onions underground. Some are as large as smaller storage onions. They
taste great and store very well. You can remove the larger underground onions
to store or use, taking some of the smaller ones to pickle, as well as some of
the larger topset bulbs. Then, by planting the smaller bulbs, both topsets and
underground bulbs, you can keep your potato onion planting going forever!
·
Sunchokes
– aka Jerusalem artichokes or fartichokes! Wonderful as medium to tall border
plants that will grow in the toughest conditions with no care. However, you
will get better bulbs for eating if you give them compost and deep mulch. I
have them as a narrow hedge and backdrop to part of my garden. Once I dig them
in autumn, I replant some, at the same time digging in some compost, then plant
lettuce there but you could plant winter flowering annuals. Next spring/ early
summer I am going to sow bush beans amongst the sunchokes, which will have
started growing by then, to give them some wind protection and support, in a
similar way that people sow climbing beans amongst their corn.
·
Other
perennial vegetables include globe artichokes, rhubarb, fennel bulbs, chives,
garlic chives, asparagus….. and many more.
Garlic
Plant out soft neck varieties such as Tasmanian purple, now,
into damp soil but do not water until you see little green shoots appearing, or
you risk them rotting. These will be ready to harvest before Christmas, when their
soft stems brown off and flop over. If overwatered at this time the water seeps
down into the garlic head and can cause rot or cause them not to store well.
Plant out hard neck varieties later and into May. Later they
will produce tall, curly, green stems called scapes, which are fabulously
delicious. I leave some to grow scapes but most I cut off so more energy goes
into growing the bulbs. These will be ready to harvest in January or even
February and have a hard stem, right down into the garlic head. In a wet
summer, these survive better as they are less prone to rot because of the way
they grow tight around the hard neck.
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April jobs
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Sow now
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Asian greens
Radishes
English spinach
Broad beans
Miners’ Lettuce
Chervil
Coriander
Spring onions
Lettuce
Sugar snap peas under cover
Green manure
Sweet peas
Winter annual flowers
Plant now
Spring bulbs
Garlic
Evergreen shrubs and trees
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