Seed Savers meeting 20 October 2024

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Artichokes – Cynara cardunculus var. scolymus- are in their first flowering phase – they will often flower again in the late autumn.
It’s time to get all your Onions growing now. The onion family seeds don’t usually last well more than a year so it’s important to plant out all your stored seed now!
Mint, Peas, broadbeans, Rocket, Rhubarb, onions… all these plants start to grow back in late winter.
A useful trick with broad beans and other large seeds planted in cooler wet weather is to place then on the top of the soil to germinate to help avoid damping and rotting. They will tend to stay drier and less likely to get damaged. However you will likely need to cover them with mesh to stop the rats and marsupials from attacking them.
Claytonia perfoliata, commonly known as miner’s lettuce will be forming seed capsules now and it’s useful to get ready to bag them as soon as you seed the capsules form and start to dry out. Otherwise they are very hard to collect.
Garlic grows ok in containers and in our Mountains area we still have a month or so left before we can harvest them. Some varieties wont be ready here till January. The bulbs swell to twice their size in the last 2-3 weeks. Harvest when they have only 4.5 green leaves left.
Mentha australis – the native River Mint is now in full growth and its time to take cuttings and start more new plants to hand on to other people.
All the mints like this Spearmint – Mentha spicata – bounce back into growth now as the weather warms up and there is plenty of rain.
Beets that have been growing all winter will now start to look a bit overgrown and will start to send huge flower spikes up. Let them sprawl a bit or tie them into bundles as they are wind pollinated and need to have others nearby to set seed.
Potatoes in Large grow bags. Congo a classic Australian purple variety & Russian Banana which is a yellow flesh small ‘fingerling’ variety. Growing them together is easier if they are obviously different colours.
Potatoes in small grow bags. Just remember they need lots of fertiliser and water for the entire growing season if not in the ground.
Get growing! Just dont forget to plant the seeds so they have time to grow!

This 20 October meeting will be one of our usual meetings taking about the current seasonal planting and harvesting, and swapping seeds/seedlings/cuttings between members. There is a lot to discuss as it’s peak time for planting out all the seeds you want to grow and get a harvest from this summer. The 2024/25 summer in the Blue Mountains so far looks promising for many crops as it’s currently forecast to be on the hot and sunny side with plenty of rain. And the spring so far has been very friendly. This means you can probably focus on all the plants that you want to build up seed reserves for that have not faired so well in the previous two summers that have been very wet and had very low sunlight hours. Right now it’s time to get the first crop of potatoes going and to make sure you have plenty of the other solanum crops like tomatoes, chilies, tomatillos, ground cherries and eggplants coming up. It’s a good time to plan your succession planting so that you have plants flowering, fruiting and seeding progressively so that they don’t cross and stay true to their variety because they are flowering at different times. Many of the winter crops will be flowering now and setting seed – however this also means that the harvesting will be coming to an end and the plants will be getting very large and taking up a lot more growing space due to the flower stalks. There is so much happening now it’s time to get out there and enjoy your garden.

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 20 October 2024 from 10 am till Midday

Help celebrate the Blue Mountains SPRING!

This meeting will be one of our usual meetings taking about the current seasonal planting and harvesting and swapping/packing seeds and swapping seedlings and cuttings between members.

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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