One of my favourite parts about gardening in Melbourne is that because we don't get winter frosts, we get two vegetable growing seasons. Summer is for tomatoes, pumpkin and melons, but it's when you have to fight the heat with shadecloth and lots of extra water. Winter is the easy growing season as the rains are much more steady. So it's a joy to sit down around February and plan for my winter veggies.
On my list this year are:
- Broccoletti - I grew broccoli last winter but I want to try this small, thin type grown for its thin tender stems and slightly milder flavour
- Broad beans - probably not worth the really long growing season but I'll grow one plant
- Kale - cavallo nero is a Tuscan black kale that's just magic in a winter minestrone
- Chinese broccoli - aka Chinese kale aka gai lan aka kai lan, it's so tasty with oyster sauce
- Snow peas - I have a helluva time getting good harvests of these but I'll give them one more shot this year; rather than going for pretty heirloom climbers I'm going for a standard Oregon bush-type
3 comments:
Your autumn winter veggie growing plan sounds interesting - try putting a bit of lime on the bed where the peas are to go. mine worked really well last year when i did this.
reminds me I have to start the autumn planting soon too! I have melting mammoth snow peas which had good yields, but they were grown in pots and grew to over 2 metres tall. They also were favourites of spider mites so not sure if they were good in the end or not!!! The snow peas were definitely tasty. Good luck with the autumn plants
Last year my snow peas in pots never thrived, I really don't know what I'm doing wrong. I think maybe I plant too many per pot (I try to cram in 2 or 3) so this year only one plant per pot, and I'm hoping the bush-type will like the pot better than the climbing types. It's my last try before I give up on them!
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