Seed Savers meeting 18 August 2024

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Rocket flowering Eruca sativa
Lettuce and other salad greens can all be started now.
Asparagus – this is a pink variety from Northern Italy.
Mustards of all sorts everywhere all at once…
Alexanders aka Horse parsley or Black Lovage – Smyrnium olusatrum – inroduced all over europe with Alexander’s travelling armies.
Yes you can plant our your basil seed out now too if you have a warm spot to look after it.
If you are careful with protection you can start your early climbing beans now too.
Italian Flat beet variety Egitto migliorata from around 1850’s – meaning improved Egyptian as the flat beetrootss were developed in Egyptian food markets.
Time to get the Chamoimile seeds in early.
Corn Salad Valerianella locusta is a reliable all winter food crop.
Garlics grown densely in containers from the small leftover bulbs and bulbils to enable harvesting of ‘Green Garlic’ sprouts.
Mizuna or ‘Japanese Water Greens’ growing as an edible winter path cover.
Clustering Aggregatum group Spring onions coming into flower.
Florence long red Onions Germinating. A great cool weather variety to grow in the Blue Mountains.
Early Peas! You can eat the sprouts too.
Germinating peas on the soil surface under netting to avoid damping off and insect and animal pests.
Perennial Red Celery starting to regrow.
Spinach Matador – aka Viking and Atlanta – a very old German variety

So it’s winter still… it’s been cold – but a fairly congenial cold in the Mountains so far with some nice mild days and cool nights. We start with a photo of rocket (Eruca sativa) flowering – they are great for the bees and pretty tasty. There is a lot to talk about that is happening right now in the garden and it’s a busy process of harvesting new growth, splitting and moving clumps of bulbs and rhizomes, planting out new seedlings and tubers and selecting the seeds for the upcoming spring. You can plant out a lot of seeds at this time by putting them into protected areas in containers and get an early start. The obvious thing is to say there are so many cool weather vegetables that are producing at this time of the year. The whole brassica family is growing and sprouting like crazy – that includes kales, broccoli, cauliflower, mustards like mizuna. The same with lots of other salad and leafy greens like corn salads, spinach and beets. Then there is the onion family that are all starting to sprout again and also send up their productive and attractive spherical seed heads. The garlics will be forming soon after the exposure to the cool winter – they perform best with at least two weeks below 10c and so there is nothing holding them back now. Peas and broad beans are ideal for planting out here now and you can avoid some issues with damping off, insect pests and animals by germinating them on the surface of your soil in containers covered by some netting. They are cool growing plants and will germinate in the open exposed to temperatures right down to about 3c but will obviously germinate faster and more furiously if it’s warmer. And don’t forget to harvest and fertilise your asparagus for this once a year short harvest season.

It’s that time again!
This is just a quick reminder that the next scheduled meeting for the year 2024 of the Mid Blue Mountains SeedSavers is on at the Bullaburra Progress Hall this coming weekend.

Sunday 18 August 2024 from 10 am till Midday

Help celebrate the Blue Mountains WINTER!

This will be a continuation of our last few meetings working our way through the various plant family groups and examining in more detail how seed harvesting and processing works best for the various types of seeds we grow.

Come along and talk about growing things with like minded people.
Hope to see you there celebrating the current productive growing season!

The address for the Mid Blue Mountains Seedsavers website is:
https://midbluemountainsseedsavers.org/

We do now have a Facebook page as well:
https://www.facebook.com/Mid-Blue-Mountains-Seed-Savers-1629533990602860/

These regular notifications are sent out directly from the website if you subscribe to that email notification list.

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