It’s crazy to think that we’re already a month into Autumn here in the subtropics of Australia. We’ve just finished off one of our wettest months of the year and we can finally feel the weather starting to cool down.
If you’re new here, I am Nicki and I try to grow as much food as I can on our regular suburban block here in South East Queensland Australia. Our climate is challenging over summer but we can grow veggies all year round. To avoid the feast or famine I plant out one small bed each month with a variety of plants for our staple crops.
The bed we planted out direct with seeds last month did get a bit knocked around with the crazy amount of rain we had but it has finally kicked into gear. My old radish seed were done, none of those sprouted. We’ve already done our first thinning of carrots, which was cutting out excess seedlings so they are spaced around 2cm apart. We will be able to start harvesting the rocket pretty soon and the peas are growing really well.
The corn that we were growing from January that was flowering when Cyclone Alfred hit had to be pulled out. I thought I had a few ears before all the pollen was blown off the flowers, someone suggested picking it as baby corn but on closer inspection they hadn’t even got to that point with only two plants having ears formed. I cut my losses and I am now using this bed for my April staple bed.
During the cyclone I bought all my seedling trays inside for a few days, unfortunately lack of sun made them a little bit leggy, then when I put them back out some of them rotted with the excess rain. Whilst some survived I did have to replant my cabbage, kale, swiss chard and cauliflower so planting those out will be delayed. I resowed seeds right away so they should be good to go in the ground next month. Fortunately I like to overplant on the seedling front and I had plenty of broccoli, spring onions and lettuce that could go straight in.
The bed I am planting is a bit bigger than last month, 1.3m long by .9m, this is a birdies raised garden bed, we filled it with a spent banana tree in the bottom stalks in the base and have topped it up with compost and some of our native soil. We did a cover crop on it over summer and we’ve just topped it off with some compost. In spring we found that this bed has root knot nematodes. They are hard to get rid of, mostly I avoid planting their favourite food for a few seasons - they particularly like anything in the beet family and also carrots so I am avoiding those this month.
I have a trellis on my Southern side and I am going to plant sugar snap peas - this variety is cascadia a variety that does well here as it’s powdery mildew resistant - it doesn’t mean they wont get it, particularly later in the season, it just tends to be a bit more resilient to it than other pea varieties. They don’t need a huge trellis like the giant yakuma snow peas i planted last month around 1.2m is usually enough. I already had the larger trellis in so I am leaving it in.
In this size bed I am going to fit in 6 broccoli plants in a 30cm grid. If you had a 1metre bed you would only fit around 4. I bury these down right to the fist leaves. You can swap broccoli out for cabbage, kale or cauliflower as they take around the same amount of space. They will get quite huge so don’t be fooled by their small size now.
On the western side which is the side that will get the most sun for us, I am going in with cos lettuce broken up with some spring onions in between, if you’re getting more sun from the eastern or even northern side you might want to swap sides. The lettuce should be mostly finished by the time the broccoli decides to take over. If you didn’t want lettuce you could easily swap out with baby spinach, coriander, dill, rocket or even asian greens here.
So that’s our staples bed all sorted for April. This time of year I do seem to have issues with cut worms and native cockroaches taking things out which unfortunately they did get me, I’ve had to replace 4 broccolis and a lettuce in a matter of days. I’ve now resorted to using some Diatomaceous earth around all my seedlings and so far we haven’t had any further losses. DE isn’t toxic, it’s fossilised remains of aquatic organisms, when dry it’s helpful against bugs such as mites, aphids, ants, beetles, earwigs, Leafhoppers, mealybugs, scale, and slaters. Usually things with exoskeletons, so just be mindful that it will also affect your good guys to like ladybugs. It’s packed full of minerals such as silica, calcium, and magnesium so even adding it as an amendment to your soil is beneficial. If you’re after some garden grade DE you can grab it from my website.
I also planted my autumn tomatoes, normally I wait for them to get a bit bigger but I was happy with how fast these grew in the winstrip air pruning pots. These San Marzanos were ones that also did become a bit leggy, but I thinned these down a lot and it helped them get stronger. In this 2metre bed I’ve planted 6, around 50cm apart and buried them right down to the fist leaf. I haven’t organised any trellis for these yet, but I am thinking I will do a florida weave for support as this variety doesn’t get extremely tall.
If you missed my last video I also did plant out my garlic, leeks and onions, plus some old potatoes I found. You can plant garlic right up until the end of the month.
The space fillers such as spinach, lettuce and extra spring onions I raised in trays last month I have placed around the garden wherever space has become available. I like having a supply of things that I can just plonk in when space has freed up.
Next up in the green house I’ll plant out my standard Spring onions, more cos lettuce, pak choi and I am also going in with Kohlrabi. Kohlrabi may not have been something you’ve grown before but I love it as it is such a versatile vegetable that doesn’t take up a lot of space. I think of it like a solid cabbage. It can be grated raw and used in salads like a coleslaw, it can be sauteed - i love it with butter and a bit of brown sugar or you can even roast it, slow cook it like a turnip. This one is a purple vienna and the purple skin has a bit of bite to it. If you’re after milder varieties you can get the standard green one too.
I am also going to plant some Dill & Coriander that I'll be using as space fillers around the garden.
If you’re looking to plant along with me you can grab my seed bundle for everything I’ll be planting for the next three months. I’ll pop a link in the description for that.
If you want some more ideas on what to plant you can also check out our PDF download here and anything we planted back in March will also work now too.
Anyway that’s it for what we’re planting this month in our subtropical vegetable garden. Thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you guys next time.
