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Home » Edible Gardening Blog for Melbourne Based Gardeners » 2015 » August » 11

Daily Archives: August 11, 2015

How to grow New Guinea Bean Melbourne — New Guinea Beans (Lagenaria siceraria), are an ironic vegetable. They’re not from New Guinea but actually from Africa – and, they’re not even a bean! They are actually a climbing edible gourd or squash – a member of the cucurbit family. Its common name comes from a taste similar to […]

How to Grow New Guinea Beans in Melbourne

This entry was posted in How to Grow on August 11, 2015 by Leaf, Root & Fruit

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Is autumn the new spring? I’ve always loved spr

Is autumn the new spring?

I’ve always loved spring. The blossom-covered trees and the seedlings sheltered in the greenhouse hold a promise of a summer bounty. Until I moved to Kyneton, it was my favourite season of the year.

We have many deciduous trees and the spectacle of autumn leaves has me looking forward to this time of the year with great anticipation. The vibrant colour is already sweeping across our garden. For this time of the year the temperatures have been exceptionally high. But the nights are slowly cooling and soon enough we’ll be lighting the fire of an evening to keep us warm. For me, autumn has become the new spring.

I captured a few autumnal images of our garden to share with you.

What’s happening in your garden this week?

I’m receiving a large volume of new

🍎🌱❓ I’m receiving a large volume of new enquiries from folks who are itching to plant an orchard. If you are inspired to get planting fruit trees this year, here’s what you need to consider.

⌚❄️ The optimum time to establish an orchard is in winter (particularly July and August in the southern hemisphere), when deciduous trees are dormant and will have a chance to develop a strong root system during spring, before the onset of summer. Winter is also when there’s the greatest availability of bare-rooted fruit trees. I’m noticing some online retailers are already taking orders. Don’t buy just any old tree from the bargain bin. Make sure it is on the correct rootstock so that it doesn’t grow too big and that it is going to fruit at a time of year that suits you.

🐇🦜What’s stopping the ’roos, rabbits and deer from having a nibble? In a few years’ time, how are you going to protect your tree from cockatoos? If your budget can extend to it, a netted enclosure is a perfect way to protect your crops. Otherwise, there’s the option of ‘white ghosts’ of poly pipe and insect netting. If the purse strings are tight, then you don’t need to implement permanent crop protection now, but you do need to consider and plan for it.

🗺📐Layout and placement of individual trees is important for tree health and productivity. Some need morning sun; other types of trees are less fussy. Some trees need a specific microclimate, as my citrus grove does.

📖✏️ I’ve already written a lot of posts about backyard orchards. You can see them all over on my Substack.

🧠📈Getting everything just right takes a lot of consideration but that effort will repay you with increased yields for less work. My Introduction to Backyard Orchards workshop on Saturday June 14 gives a great overview of all these topics. If you need advice tailored to your individual site, then you can arrange a site consult. Together we can explore your property and discuss your vision. Head to the LRF website to find out more.

Frosty full stop ahead The overnight humidit

🛑 Frosty full stop ahead

The overnight humidity in March has been a catalyst for a rapid increase in powdery mildew. Outbreaks of pests such as whitefly and aphids have escalated. As usual at this time of year, the cooling soil combined with an abundance of pests and fungal diseases has resulted in a steady decline of my summer vegetable crops.

This waning plant health and productivity will be brought to a screaming halt when the first frost of the year marks the end of the growing season. In my garden this usually occurs towards the end of April.

Often my tomato plants hang on for weeks after the first frost. The netting I use to protect the crops from birds and Queensland Fruit Fly creates enough of a microclimate to shake off those mild early frosts. But unprotected crops such as basil, pumpkins and tromboncino will quickly turn to mush. It’s important to harvest all the pumpkins before the first frost. Frost will damage the skin, and while the damaged pumpkins are still edible, they need to be eaten straight away. They can’t be stored long term for use in winter and spring.

Yesterday we took the train on a school holiday ou

Yesterday we took the train on a school holiday outing to the Big Smoke. We had a fun day exploring Melbourne on a glorious autumn day.

One of our visits was to the National Gallery of Victoria to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibition.

The queue to enter the exhibition was in the Great Hall with its ornate stained-glass roof. To celebrate the event, there were several huge inflatable balls hanging in the roof space. The yellow globes with black spots are striking against the colourful roof.

As we chatted with the kids about them, 8yo Angus said, "They look like giant nashis covered in fruit fly sting holes". And I must agree, as soon as he said it, I could see it too.

Yes, it's got to that point. The whole family is on Queensland Fruit Fly alert. We're seeing them everywhere!

(The Yayoi Kusama exhibition was great by the way)

On Sunday morning we almost had a frost. Then,

🥶On Sunday morning we almost had a frost. Then, all day today has been cool and overcast. I even noticed that some of my neighbours have lit their fires. There wasn’t a single Cabbage White Butterfly flitting around the garden this afternoon.

🦋A return to warm days is forecast for later this week, but I reckon Cabbage White season is all but over. So today I chanced taking the netting off the first crop of brassicas. I’ll keep the netting on crop two and three for another fortnight, just in case. Crop three seedlings are especially small, and the netting will help to provide a microclimate to help them establish. Crop one really needs more space than the netting allows.

🕸Removing the netting will improve airflow and help to keep any fungal diseases away. It will also provide better access for me to weed around the plants and to keep on top of harvesting.

🎁I knew there were some monster broccoli heads waiting under the netting, but I was amazed to find a huge cauliflower head as well. The brassica glut of 2025 is underway. I will consistently harvest broccoli, cauliflower until October or possibly even November. The first cabbages are heading up nicely but are another fortnight or so away I reckon.

❓What surprises have you found in the garden lately?

🥦How to grow broccoli:
➡https://leafrootfruit.substack.com/p/how-to-grow-broccoli

Nature shows the way to perfect pumpkins. I’ve

Nature shows the way to perfect pumpkins.

I’ve had mixed success with my pumpkin crops. Despite plenty of irrigation, the plants have not coped well with the dry summer. There are plenty of pumpkins, but not as many as in previous years. I’m hearing similar reports from other growers.

Despite their inconvenient habit of growing themselves in the ‘wrong’ spot, self-sown ‘compost’ pumpkins do best for me, and this year was no exception. Rampant vines took off at the base of each of my avocado trees. The seeds must have germinated from some worm castings that we spread in winter. The vines loved the extra water that was meant for the avocados and quickly climbed through the canopy of the young trees and up into the shade cloth structures that I put there to create a microclimate. The structures prevent the chickens from foraging directly under the trees which helped the pumpkins to establish. Interestingly, the chickens have hardly touched the pumpkin vines as they’ve rambled through the chicken run in their quest for world domination.

I love that about gardening. You can have the best plans and execution this side of the black stump. The finest irrigation systems. All the determination in the world. But in the end Mother Nature just laughs at you and does it her own way.

❓ How successful were your pumpkin crops this summer?

My crops of broccoli, cauliflower and cabbages are

My crops of broccoli, cauliflower and cabbages are establishing well.

Crop one is booming. Some of the broccoli plants are developing heads and many plants are pushing up against the insect netting. I’m busting to take the netting off as soon as possible and to get in there and weed them, but the Cabbage White Butterflies are still abundant. The plants are big enough to cope with a bit of leaf munching, I just hate when the caterpillars invade the developing heads and leave their frass everywhere. In my part of the world, the temperatures are about to plummet, and the Cabbage Whites will soon dwindle. I reckon I’ll chance removing the netting in the next week or so.

Germination and seedling survival rates in crop two – my main crop – were poor. So I had to re-sow and transplant a huge portion of the plants. It means that the bulk of crop two plants are about 10 days behind where I had planned for them to be. Ten days doesn’t sound like much, but in my part of the world that can mean winter harvest will be delayed by weeks.

The third crop is a small one and what I’d consider to be marginal. Planting crop three too early in the season would mean the residual warmth in the soil would cause it to grow too fast. This would result in crop three producing heads at the same time as crop two and create a massive glut in August. However, if I delayed planting crop three for too long, then the young seedlings would stagnate in the rapidly cooling soil. They would likely be overrun by weeds and probably amount to nothing. It’s a difficult dance to get right. But when I do, I harvest broccoli and other brassicas from April right through to November. For growers in my part of Central Victoria, the weather conditions in early March are highly variable and can have a huge influence on success and the timing of harvest of this third crop.

Last year I got the timing of planting brassicas a bit out of whack and drowned in broccoli in August. I resolved to increase the time between planting crops. This year I've planted crop three much later in March.

And there’s good news for Melbourne-based folks – you still have another six weeks to plant your brassicas.

Adversity in the apples... The apple and pea

🍎 Adversity in the apples...

The apple and pears have handled the dry conditions surprisingly well and the trees are covered in masses of ripening fruit. But this year has been a tough one in the orchard for other reasons.

Humidity in spring led to quite a bit of apple scab on the skin of the fruit. Pretty much every fruit on my Fuji apple tree is covered in blemishes. The Granny Smiths and many other susceptible apple varieties are affected too. No big deal, it’s usually only skin deep and the fruit is quite edible (although I can’t convince the kids of this).

I think the very wet spring of 2022 drowned most of the overwintering codling moth larvae, and during the following two harvests I hardly spotted a single infested apple. But this year they are back with a vengeance. Around half the fruit on my apple trees is infested with codling moth.

Codling Moth larvae tend to make a bee line for the core of the fruit. So most of the flesh is still salvageable. Which is more than can be said for old mate QFF. They ‘wriggle and jiggle’ their way up and down and round and round their host fruit rendering it completely inedible. If you’re lucky, you’ll notice the indicative sting marks on the surface of the fruit before you bite into it.

My Queensland Fruit Fly outbreak is more severe this year than last year. They seem to prefer the stone fruit and nashis to my apples, but I still find plenty of maggoty apples. It’s like the buggers know exactly which pieces of fruit don’t have Codling Moth larvae in them. I never find the two pests in the same piece of fruit. The fruit fly outbreak is still not as bad as I fear it may one day become, but between the scab, the Codling Moth and the Queensland Fruit Fly, gosh there’s an awful lot of wastage in my orchard this autumn. I’m no longer cutting up fruit to inspect it. Most of it is just heading straight to the freezer and then into the compost.

This year’s apples are a write-off. But I’ve got my fingers crossed for more favourable conditions next year. I’m planning to step up my efforts to control both Fruit Fly and Codling Moth.

❓How are your apples and pears looking this year?

I felt it was never going to happen. But it fi

☔ I felt it was never going to happen. But it finally rained. The 21 mm was just enough for me to roll up the hoses – for now. The harsh summer heat is subsiding, and the wind is dropping. But scratch an inch or two below the surface and the soil is still bone dry. It’s going to take a lot more slow and steady rain before I fully relax. Only then will I turn off the bore pump and consider the hoses stashed for another year.

♨ Most parts of the garden are haggard. Crisp brown leaves adorn the outer canopy of many shrubs. It takes a closer look to confirm that they are still alive. The normally bullet-proof pittosporum hedges are sparse and see-through. They dropped a lot of their leaves to cope with the drought stress. It’s like someone lifted the main drapes of these living walls and all we’re left with is sheer curtains. It’s completely changed the feel of some parts of the garden. The hedges should survive but will probably take a year or more to fully recover.

🍂 Despite the dry, the season has turned and autumn in is full swing. I love this time of the year. It’s the season of change. The colour on the deciduous trees is enhanced by the early morning light, and that magical golden hour of dusk. Be-dew-elled morning spiderwebs give way to clear blue skies by midday. Just like us humans preserving our autumn abundance, the bees buzz from flower to flower frantically preparing their hives for the onset of winter.

🍎 The most reliable and productive fruit trees in my local area are apples, pears and nashi. So that’s what dominates my orchard. This means autumn is always a time of abundance in my garden. In a good year, I can harvest several tonnes of fruit from my orchard.

Autumn inspires gratitude.

➡ Check out my FREE monthly planting and garden update for more happenings in my garden and what you should be planting in yours (link in bio)

My to-do list for April Planting season is ov

✅ My to-do list for April

Planting season is over for me. The garlic is already leaping out of the ground and the last crop of winter brassica seedlings is planted. But there’s still plenty to be done this month:
🎃 The spaghetti squash are completely spent and the pumpkins are nearing the end. I harvest these as the vines die back. The pumpkins and squash will all be hardened off in a sunny but protected spot on the deck and then stored for use over the winter.

🌱 A stitch in time saves nine. The autumn break helps plants such as cape weed and clover to germinate. I’ll be busy scratching young weed seedlings out of the vegetable patch with a flying Dutchman’s hoe.

🍎 Harvests of berries, apples, pears and nashi will continue in April. I’ll keep picking the saucing tomatoes and I’ll be busy making as much passata as possible.

🫘 I’ll continue to remove spent summer crops and plant green manure crops in their place. This helps to protect my soil biology over the winter.

🥶 Every year in April, as the frosts put an end to my summer crops, I reflect on the season just gone. The growing season is fresh in my mind so it is the perfect time to record in my gardening diary all sorts of ideas about what I can do better next year.

📋 In April I also do a quick stocktake of my seed collection and put together a shopping list for next planting season, which begins in just a few short months.

🎨 I’m looking to make some big changes in the orchard this winter and looking to plant a nut grove in another garden space (more on these two projects in future Substack posts). So while I’m in the mood for planning, I’ll be investing some time in garden design.

🍂 Towards the end of the month, I’ll begin the epic task of collecting the leaves that have fallen on our gravel paths. These will be piled up to create leaf mould and added to hot composts.

➡ Check out my FREE monthly planting and garden update for happenings in my garden and what you should be planting in yours (link in bio)

WHAT TO PLANT IN APRIL

🌱 WHAT TO PLANT IN APRIL 🌱

🍂 With the onset of autumn, planting options change. I prefer growing vegetables over winter to growing summer edibles. Winter vegetables require less care and attention.

🍀 St Patrick's Day has been and gone. It is the traditional day for planting out winter vegetables in Melbourne. However, I like to wait until the weather cools. This helps to avoid damage from Cabbage White Butterfly. It’s most important that when you select brassica seedlings, such as broccoli and cauliflower, you choose the youngest seedlings.

📖 I've put together a very detailed planting guide for autumn on my website. It has plenty of advice on selecting seedlings to plant and how to grow them.

📝 If you're short on time and want less detail, here's a quick guide to some of the things you could consider planting this month in a warm temperate climate like Melbourne’s.

🫘 My planting guide generally refers to vegetables planted in the garden (as opposed to a greenhouse). This planting may consist of seeds directly sown (my usual and preferred method) or plants transplanted as seedlings.

Our family doesn’t eat much garlic, but I like t

Our family doesn’t eat much garlic, but I like to grow it so we have a bit on hand. I add cloves to some of my passata, and use it in my cucumber pickles. Plus, it is such an easy crop to grow.

I grow a hard neck garlic, but I have no idea what variety it is. It’s normally quite resilient, but the last two years it has suffered from rust. This is a fungal disease that is exacerbated by high humidity. The fungus hampers the growth of the plant, and it can reduce yields. Despite the rust outbreaks, I’ve still managed to harvest decent crops.

To manage this disease, folks will often advocate for sourcing new, disease-free cloves to plant, and avoid planting where affected crops have grown in the past. But I’m not convinced. So last year I planted garlic saved from the rust-affected plants. The rust returned, but I’m not sure if it was the high rainfall in spring that influenced this. Would planting disease-free cloves have resulted in the same outcome?

So this year I’m trying something else. My neighbour Bruce grows wonderful garlic crops just 200 metres from where mine have succumbed to rust. He’s kindly offered me some of his garlic to grow alongside mine. I’m intrigued to see what will happen:
• Will the rust spread from mine to his? That would tell me I’d need to avoid planting infected crops again and source disease-free garlic to plant in future years.
• Will the plants grown from my garlic succumb, but plants grown from his stay resistant? Genetics are the key to avoiding many diseases, and avoiding rust in garlic is possibly no different.
• Will the spring remain dry and both crops remain rust free? This would indicate that environmental conditions have the biggest impact.
• Isolated in his own garden, but growing in similar environmental conditions to my crops, will Bruce’s plants remain disease free?

The answer to these questions will help me to better understand and manage the rust fungus. I’ll report back to you next spring – stay tuned.

In the meantime, check out for my guide to planting garlic:
➡head to my Substack to read it

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