Village Farmer

What an unusual time it is in covid-19 world. We are busy in our market garden enjoying the beautiful Autumn and from all accounts on social media it is how many people are occupying their time.   The lovely rain through February and March along with this warmer April weather has provided wonderful growing conditions.  I’m sure many of you have been planting lots of vegie seeds and should be seeing good germination and growth.  While it is likely that this milder weather sh […]

So what is a hot bed?  A hot bed is a warmed, protected environment, created by heat generated from decomposing organic matter.  It is used for producing early crops in cold climates, when soil temperatures during winter are too low for seed germination.  Using hot beds to increase soil temperature through the cold winter months is a traditional technique and one of the practices used by French market gardens in their intensive polyculture. In our col […]

It is very easy to forget some of the basic things that help us understand what is going on in our soil.  Testing the pH of your soil is one such activity. Checking pH can be done through a very simple ‘in the garden’ test.  pH test kits are easy to use and all gardeners should have one. You can also purchase digital meters that will read soil pH, however I do like using the testing kit.  The collection of the samples, mixing in the liquid, applying the powder and watching the col […]

It was February when I last posted and the focus was on preparing for the early season garlic crop. It’s now May and we  have been planting our mid season garlic. This year we are growing a range of mid season and late season garlic primarily to build up our seed stock for the 2020 planting season.  We have planted 3 varieties from the Silverskin group – Wilde Sally, Lokalen and Polvora. Silverskins are a soft neck garlic, that can store well for 12 months or more. The outer lay […]

Garlic is a cool season plant and in the Southern Tablelands region, early season garlic is planted in Autumn generally during March & April.  This means you need to be getting ready to plant. However before we look at soil preparation, you will note that I have referred to early season garlic.Like many types of plants garlic comes in many different cultivars. There are 1,000s of cultivars grown worldwide. In Australia we distinguish different garlics first of all by the group it belon […]

The brief cooler weather interlude, provided a great opportunity to work in the garden.  Planting of course was a priority. We were fortunate to have a week of evening or night rain.  While it was not a lot, a few mm’s every night makes a huge difference, and of course this meant that I did not have to water.Clearing beds and garden clean up was also on the cooler weather agenda.  Weeding is always a regular activity and with the rain and warm weather the weeds are flourish […]

The last few weeks have been exceedingly hot and dry and it would appear that the Bureau of Meteorology Seasonal forecasting is proving correct – warmer than average day time and night time temperatures through to the end of March. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/outlooks/#/overview/videoLet’s hope that the predictions for at least “average” summer rainfall also proves correct.Braidwood generally gets most of its rainfall during spring and summer.  We had very good spring ra […]