There is nothing quite like the joy of growing and harvesting your own food. It tastes so much better, and it's reassuring to know exactly how it's been grown.
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In the Central West, Melbourne Cup Day is often seen as the signal for planting out frost-sensitive summer vegetable seedlings, as the chance of overnight frosts becomes remote.
These veggies include capsicums, chilli, green beans, cucumbers, pumpkins, tomatoes, sweet corn, eggplant, zucchini and squash. Other summer veggies that can be planted pretty much all year round are rocket and lettuce.
Herbs like basil, oregano, marjoram, sage and parsley can be planted in empty patches of soil all around the garden, but make sure you confine mint to a pot, otherwise it will take over in no time.
When planting tomato seedlings it's a good idea to dig a hole deep enough to allow you to sink the seedling into the earth up to the first leaves, which are called cotyledons. Cotyledons are the first pair of leaves plants grow from seed, and are recognisable because they often don't resemble the mature plant's leaf shape. When you bury a tomato seedling up to the cotyledons all the little hairs along the stalk of the seedling turn into roots and this ensures that you have a strong and healthy tomato plant.
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The zucchini is a very versatile vegetable. It can be fried or baked when small, or stuffed and baked if it is left to grow into a marrow, and there are many excellent chocolate cake and muffin recipes that use grated zucchini as a base.
Zucchini can take up a lot of space in the garden, and it can be susceptible to mildew. One way to overcome these problems is to grow the zucchini up a strong stake and remove the lower leaves as it grows.
This creates more room in the garden and ensures there is enough air circulation to lower the risk of mildew. A quick search on YouTube will provide all the information you need to grow your zucchini vertically, rather than horizontally.
If you would like to learn more about sustainability in the garden you could join the sustainable gardening group hosted by Greening Bathurst. Just email Greening Bathurst at greeningbathurst@gmail.com and mention that you would like to know more about the gardening group, and someone will be in touch.
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