Last week I shared my annual harvest chart with you. It shows the peaks and famines that my vegetable patch produces. You might have found it interesting in its own right, but if you want to try to replicate it in your own garden you’ll need today’s post. This one is about planting times, not harvest times.

In my first year or two of gardening here in Kyneton, I had to learn to change my Melbourne planting timings by up to a month to account for Kyneton’s colder climate. These days I tweak my planting plan here or there by a week. I’ve smoothed massive swings between gluts and famines to mere bumps and blips. In preparing to share this information with you, I’ve gone back and pored through six years’ worth of planting and harvest data. Now I’m confident it’s an accurate representation of when I plant what to achieve the harvest chart that I shared with you last week.

It’s important to note that this chart details when I do plant various crops. Not when I could. For example, I could plant carrots anytime from September to December. But to ensure year-round carrot supply I need to sow them in September so that they are ready by Christmas when the stored crop comes to an end. If you want information about when you can plant the various crops, you’ll need to head to each vegetable’s How to Grow guide (find them all here). You may notice slight discrepancies between the planting times I’ve listed in individual guides versus what I’ve included in this overarching planting guide. That’s because I’m always tweaking and refining things. For example, I used to plant my first brassica crop in the first week of January. I now plant it in the last week of December. I’ll keep the planting plan in this post updated to reflect my current practices as I refine them. It’s a living, working document that is the cornerstone of my gardening calendar. Feel free to use and adapt it however you see fit.

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In my May planting guide, I shared this image of me holding two pumpkins. The orange pumpkin, an Australian Butter, is delicious. It has an amazing texture, and the vines are particularly productive. However, it doesn’t store that well. And that’s where the brown Jarrahdale pumpkin comes in. Jarrahdale pumpkins are great keepers. They’re also tasty, and the vines are productive. Jarrahdale pumpkins are typically huge, but each plant produces fewer of them in total than, say, a Queensland Blue.

My first pumpkin crop in Kyneton was a disaster. I harvested the pumpkins back in April 2020 and stashed them in the potting shed. By my eye, it was the perfect space. It had good ventilation; the pumpkins were mostly in the dark and they were out of the way.

But the cold humidity of Kyneton in June had them growing fluffy white mould and turning to mush in no time. Over the past five years I have explored different locations for pumpkin storage and have finally aced it (more on storing pumpkins here).

The Jarrahdale pumpkin in this picture was picked 12 months before the Australian Butter pumpkin. We’ve been eating pumpkin all year.

I’ve managed a similar feat with storing carrots. Except during one particularly wet spring that led to several bins of squishy, slimy carrots, we have been completely self-sufficient in carrots for years now. Every spring I sow enough seed to grow a year’s worth of carrots. They won’t last in the ground all year, but I lift and store them for long term use. Packed carefully into bins of sand, they last just until the next crop is ready the following Christmas. More on how I store carrots long term here.

What does my seasonal eating look like?

Autumn is the peak of abundance in my garden, but by planting a range of crops I produce a decent supply of vegetables over the rest of the year too. This year’s successful pumpkin storage got me thinking. “If I map it out, what does my harvest look like across the year?”

So I pored through my data, extracting first and last harvest dates from my garden observations spreadsheet for all the different crops that I grow. And I made this.

The chart isn’t comprehensive. For example, I didn’t include stuff that I grow only sometimes. Parsnips are a perfect example. Some years I grow them, but we don’t use them that much, so other years I give them a miss. The chart is also very specific to my own garden. It maps out when I harvest and eat certain vegetables. The chart’s data is actual, not theoretical – it shows when I do harvest my crops, not when I could harvest my crops. If you are in a cold temperate climate similar to mine then you could probably achieve these harvest times (I’ll also share my planting plan to help you with this). If you’re based somewhere warmer, like Melbourne, then your harvest chart will look different. You’ll probably be able to spread your harvest around more than I can.

Feasts and (almost) famines

I love how this harvest chart shows seasonal eating. February and March are always abundant. But April stands out as the peak of vegetable diversity. It’s a time of year when the summer crops are still producing but the first of the winter crops, such as broccoli and cauliflower, are ready too.

September is a relatively poor time in the garden. The winter crops are getting boring by this stage, but the summer crops are still a few months away. Thank goodness for asparagus (and to a lesser extent broad beans) for providing some respite from brassicas.

I don’t bother to freeze much in the way of summer vegetables for use in lean periods, because except in September, there isn’t much scarcity. My family are happy to eat seasonally (I wrote about our Pooh Bear moments here). We make passata because we use a lot of it in cooking. We make cucumber and dill pickles because they taste so good. We make basil pesto and stash it in the freezer because it’s way better than store bought. But that’s about it. We hardly preserve a thing, because we don’t need to. Why go to the effort of grating zucchini and storing it in the freezer for winter soups? Just grab a pumpkin from the deck instead. It doesn’t require the physical effort of grating it, or electricity to keep it frozen all year.

My garden’s fruit production has a similar annual feast and famine pattern and it tends to mirror that of the vegetable production. I haven’t (yet) mapped out a fruit harvest chart specifically for my garden, but you can see a general one here.

If you’re interested in trying to replicate my year-long spread of vegetables in your own garden, you’ll need next week’s post. I know that many of my readers have been waiting eagerly for me to finalise my vegetable planting plan and make it available. It’s still not perfect, even after I’ve crunched six years of data. It will always need tweaking. But I’m finally confident it is reliable enough to share with you. Read it here.

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As the growing season draws towards a close, it’s a great time to reflect on the past growing season and plan for the future. It’s also important to think about the health of your soil.

Will you be planting something into each bed to replace your summer crops straight away? Or will the beds be left fallow until planting conditions improve?

Bare soil is te…

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I don’t actually pickle much, and I don’t do much preserving at all. I prefer to eat fresh produce in season. Going without at different times of the year makes me look forward to the abundance when it arrives. Life’s pretty boring when you eat all types of produce right throughout the year. Eating with the seasons leads to anticipation. In my household…

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I grow a lot of tomatoes. We eat them fresh in salads, but the kids prefer to eat them right there in the patch.

Most of our tomato plants are the San Marzano variety. These have a low juice and seed content. They’re “meaty” and a great cooking tomato. One of the best ways to use such cooking tomatoes is to make passata. By strict definition this means cooked tomatoes that have had the seeds and skin strained out, with no herbs or other flavours added. The tomato pulp is then preserved in jars for later use in pasta dishes, soups and other tomato-based dishes.

You can buy saucing tomatoes, but I like to grow them myself. Each year I aim to grow 60 San Marzano plants. This equates to many kilos of tomatoes harvested. I could grow fewer tomatoes, but I grow that many so our team of volunteer interns can take plenty home to preserve for themselves. A bigger crop enables one team member to take home a large harvest each week. Around peak harvest time, I keep the harvest from one week to make one huge batch of passata.

If I grew fewer tomato plants, then I might need to do several smaller batches, as the produce ripened. That’s several times of washing up all the equipment… and I hate washing up. A single batch of passata is enough to keep our family well stocked for 12 months. Making passata once a year means more efficiency and less washing up. That’s a big win in my book.

Why do I mention the efficiency and washing up? Because making passata is fun, but it’s also a lot of work.

Make sure you have a few helpers to keep the day fun. In my experience, tackling large volumes of tomatoes alone is a soul-destroying activity that’ll leave you exhausted at the end of the day.

Bottles, bottles bottles!

You’re going to need a lot of glass bottles or jars to store your passata. Don’t wait until your tomatoes are ripening to start scrounging for these. Collect them throughout the year.

I like to reuse jars from store bought passata. We’re self-sufficient in passata but our family and friends are pretty good at saving their jars for me to use. You can also use Fowlers Vacola jars or any other glass containers that can be water bathed (more on that towards the end).

The jars need to be clean. Washing lots of jars takes time. If your work force is going to be limited, then get a head start on this and do it a few days in advance. Passata day can be a long day. Getting a head start can help to keep it manageable.

Super ripe tomatoes make for super delicious passata

During tomato season I get the interns to pick once per week. They pick every tomato with some colour development. This is because if the fruit are left to ripen on the vine then mice and other pests normally wreak too much havoc.

The crates of tomatoes are brought inside and the fruit are laid out on trestle tables for sorting.

All the deep-red tomatoes are collected for immediate processing. The rest are spread out to further ripen.

Another great tip is to avoid storing ripe fruit in cardboard boxes. The fruit tends to sweat or get squished. All that juice makes the cardboard soggy and increases the rate of deterioration. The high humidity will lead to mould and other fungi. When you finally go to move it, the cardboard box tend to burst apart. In short, the whole thing becomes a wasteful mess.

Chop chop!

There are lots of ways to get yourself organised to do this. I typically like to have one person grading fruit (the “sorter”) and one or two “choppers”.

The sorter’s job is to keep the tomatoes supplied to the choppers. They ferry crates of tomatoes, remove stalks (leaving stalks in place until the last minute reduces spoilage) and sort fruit into piles of “perfect” and “damaged”. The latter may need a bit more attention to remove bad bits.

The chopper’s job is to do just that, chop the tomatoes up. Generally, I just slice the fruit in half. Larger fruit may need to be quartered.

Boiling it down

Once you have a decent quantity of tomatoes chopped, it’s time to get them boiling. I don’t usually add any water. Pay close attention initially and continue to stir the pot. Otherwise, the bottom layer of tomatoes will burn. Speaking from experience, you can pick the burnt pieces out, but the “smokey” flavour will infuse right through the batch. Far better to focus on stirring for 30 minutes or so than to eat a year’s worth of smoky passata.

To strain or not to strain?

Once boiled down, the tomato pulp is traditionally strained to remove fragments of skin and seeds. This makes for a nice, smooth product, and when you finally get to eat it your teeth will be free of bits.

To strain your passata you have a few options. The quickest is a dedicated, motorised machine that processes the pulp and strains out the seeds and skin. It makes the process easy, but creates even more mess to clean up.

A cheaper option is to use a mouli. This is a sieve with a blade that pushes the passata through. It’s an upmarket version of using a wooden spoon to push it through a sieve. Both these manual options take time and are extremely laborious. I’d only go down this path if you’ve got someone else to delegate this task to… wink wink! Be warned, though, they probably won’t show up again next year.

Another option is to not strain at all. I’m all for efficiency, so this is my preferred option. To help improve the consistency I use a stick blender to chop all the skins up into smaller pieces.

Bottling your passata

Once your passata is prepared, you’ll need to bottle it. To do this, pour the mixture into your pre-cleaned jars. Fill them almost all the way to the top. Using a funnel can help. This is another messy job. Pretty much every aspect of making passata is a messy job, but this one is very messy. Pay attention and don’t be distracted by the kids squabbling over whose turn it is to wear the llama apron.

Modern tomatoes are not as acidic as older varieties. It’s recommended that you increase the acidity to ensure that the tomatoes remain safe to eat through long storage. A lack of acidity can allow pathogens to proliferate in your passata. You can increase the acidity by adding to each bottle a tablespoon of:

• vinegar, or

• lemon juice, or

• half a teaspoon of citric acid.

This is also an opportunity to add some herbs such as oregano or basil for flavour. I add a crushed garlic clove at this point too. We typically add herbs to half of our jars and leave the other half plain to give us different culinary options.

Once you’ve filled your jars it’s time to put the lids on and water bath them.

Time for a long leisurely soak

This is for the passata, not you, you’ve still got work to do.

I use a Fowlers Vacola steriliser to do this. It has a false bottom in it to keep the jars away from direct heat. A large pot will do the trick too; just place a cake cooling rack or an old tea towel in the bottom.

Once the jars are all in place you should fill the pot with water to three-quarters of the height of the jars.

Bring to the boil and let them simmer for around 60 minutes. (Start the timer once the water starts to simmer.)

Time to chill out for a bit

Carefully remove the jars from the water bath. Make sure the lids are tight and allow the jars to cool. After 12 hours, check that the seals are intact.

For Vacola jars, check the lids are firmly sealed on.

That’s it

Except for the washing up. So much washing up!

Store your passata in a cool, dark place.

A final word

I never do things by halves. My approach to life, including passata making, is to go to the extreme. Passata making doesn’t have to be an epic affair. You can easily process a few kilos of fruit into a small batch, all on your own. It needn’t turn into the sequel to Looking for Alibrandi.

If you’re thinking big, then careful planning and lots of helping hands is the key.

Tell me more. What’s your experience with making passata? Share with me your top tips, disaster stories and fond memories of family passata sessions. I can’t wait to read them.

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This post is one of many in my gardening series The Vegetable Patch from Scratch. See the series index for a list of the other topics in the series.

Read the next post in the Vegetable Patch from Scratch series:

PART 38: Preserving excess produce: pickling

One of the easiest ways to preserve excess produce is through drying, also known as dehydrating. Pathogens such as fungi and bacteria require moisture to thrive. By reducing the moisture content of your produce, you reduce (but don’t eliminate) the likelihood of the microorganisms spoiling it.

Methods of drying produce

There are quite a few electric appli…

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I’ve covered off what vegetables to save seeds from, and how to go about selecting and saving seeds. Today’s post is all about how to test and store them. Correct storage is essential for ensuring that your seeds remain viable for as long as possible. It can also help avoid frustrating mix-ups.

First up, labelling!

Seeds should always be clearly labelled …

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Last week I discussed what types of vegetables you can easily and reliably to save seed from. That post also included a list of vegetables which need a lot more attention to ensure that saved seed produces plants that are true to type. This week I get down to the nitty gritty of how to go about saving seeds.

Choosing your candidates

When selecting a veget…

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Seed saving is a great way to preserve lines of heirloom seed and can save you money. Saving seed and growing it for many generations of crops in your own garden can help the variety to adapt to your particular microclimate. Saved seeds can be gifted to family and friends, shared in seed libraries, and used to help preserve heirloom varieties. There are…

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Last week’s post explored the best way to harvest various vegetables. Most home grown produce is best picked and eaten straight away. However, this is not always possible. Perhaps you grew too much of something and it needs harvesting right now? Maybe your plans changed? Maybe you like to be organised? Whatever your reason for wanting to store your prod…

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Today’s post is all about what many consider to be the fun part of growing food: harvesting! For me, it’s only the fun part for a little while, to be honest. After a few weeks of picking tomatoes, it can become a bit tedious. Picking tomatoes, beans or other plentiful crops can be hard work and take a great deal of time, especially if, like me, you’re t…

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The last few posts have looked at common pests of the vegetable patch, common diseases and, last week, common nutrient deficiencies. This week let’s look at a few other common problems you might observe in your vegetable patch.

Poor pollination of cucurbits

Early on in the growing season, you might notice young zucchini and pumpkins start to turn yellow, …

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Humans require a balanced diet that provides all the minerals their body needs to be healthy. Plants are the same. They absorb minerals from the soil and integrate them into their tissues to form strong, healthy, nutrient-dense plants. Your edible plants cannot assimilate minerals into their tissues if those minerals are deficient in the soil.

See this p…

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When I sat down to write this post, I had grand notions of covering a wide range of diseases you might find in your vegetable. The problem was, most of them I’ve never actually encountered myself. So instead, I’m going to focus on a few key principles of disease prevention and management. I’ll also be sharing with you my discoveries of the most disease resistant varieties of vegetables. Growing these helps to prevent diseases from occurring in the first place.

The simplest way to prevent disease in the vegetable patch

Much of your gardening success comes down to the genetics of the plants you are growing. This is very important when considering disease susceptibility. For any given plant disease, some vegetable varieties will be very susceptible and others more resilient. If you are having recurring problems with diseases in your vegetable patch then please consider trialling a few new varieties to see if that helps to overcome this issue. I’ve listed a few you can try at the end of this post.

Fungal diseases

Many vegetable diseases are caused by fungi. This includes powdery mildew and various blight diseases.

Fungi tend to thrive in moist and mild conditions. Increased humidity and cool temperatures (as experienced in autumn, winter and early spring) can lead to optimal conditions for fungi to thrive. Understanding this can help to reduce the impact of fungal diseases in your garden.

Fungal diseases all present differently but the common characteristic is brown or white patches on leaves, fruit or stems of plants.

Black spots appearing on basil are an indication that it is time to harvest most of the leaves off the plant before the disease spreads. These leaves can then be made into basil pesto.

Powdery mildew

This is the vegetable disease that I am asked about the most. Many vegetable plants are prone to powdery mildew. It is quite common for cucumbers, pumpkins and other cucurbits to show white leaves in autumn. These can soon be followed by the fungus-eating ladybird (Illeis glabula), easily identified by its yellow spots, which eats the fungi.

It’s not surprising that the fungi begin to dominate in autumn. Cooler night-time temperatures combined with increased humidity causes powdery mildew to proliferate. Often gardeners look to short-term remedies. I see the disease as an inevitable consequence of the transition from one season to the next. To me it is simply a sign to remove the spent plants and begin planting winter vegetables.

Preventing fungal diseases

Gardeners in humid regions need to pay particular attention to the design of their gardens. Doing so allows them to focus on increasing airflow. Airflow helps to dry out plant foliage and reduce the humidity that fungal diseases thrive in, to reduce the impact of fungal diseases.

In central Victoria, the drier summer weather and presumably increased airflow keep humidity down in autumn. In this region, powdery mildew tends to occur six to eight weeks later than in Melbourne. Our main fungal issues occur in winter, when humidity remains very high for months on end.

Preventing fungal disease, like any disease, is better than cure:

• Avoid water splashing onto leaves when watering

• Maintain good airflow around plants

• Grow varieties that are resistant to fungal disease.

If you notice fungal disease on your plants, then removing affected foliage may help. In my experience the disease will spread to susceptible plants anyway. Resistant plants growing nearby will be fine. I don’t bother tidying up diseased plants.

The spores from different types of fungi can last a long time in the soil or on any affected plant matter than is left over from previous crops. Crop rotation can be a good way to deal with this issue. I tend to put most diseased plant matter through a hot compost to help kill off any fungal spores present.

Bacterial infections of vegetables

Bacterial wilt. Bacterial canker. Bacterial blight. Bacterial rot. Bacterial spot. Common scab.

Argghhh! There are so many different bacterial diseases that can infect your plants. The vegetables most commonly affected by bacterial diseases are the solanums, such as tomatoes, potatoes and capsicum. I don’t notice these diseases anywhere near as often as fungal diseases, though.

Again, prevention is better than cure. Good hygiene practices and building quality soil can help with this. Ensuring your plants have adequate soil drainage is essential. Many of these diseases are likely to take hold when soil becomes waterlogged. Warmer weather can exacerbate the symptoms of many of these bacterial diseases.

Plant viruses

Other vegetable diseases are spread by viruses. Mosaic and wilt viruses are the most common ones you’ll come across. Affected plants (again, usually solanums) can have:

• mottled, variegated or distorted leaves

• concentric rings, blotches or brown spots on fruit

• foliage dieback as the disease progresses, and even plant death.

  

Most plant viruses are spread by sap sucking insects such as aphids, whitefly and thrips. Alternatively, they can be transferred via sap on garden tools such as secateurs. This gives us a clue as to how to prevent them.

Practise good gardening hygiene and ensure your tools are kept clean. Consider sterilising your cutting tools regularly with a spray of 70% methylated spirits. Most importantly, ensure your plants have good airflow. Most of the sap sucking pests thrive around foliage that is experiencing high humidity.

Increased airflow = less humidity = fewer sap suckers = less disease spread.

There are two consistent messages in today’s post about preventing vegetable diseases. In case you missed them:

• Ensure good airflow

• Grow resistant varieties.

I never spray or treat my vegetable crops for disease. Following the above two principles has allowed me to grow relatively healthy and productive crops of vegetables for years.

Which varieties of vegetables have the best disease resistance?

I’ve noticed that some varieties of vegetables have better disease resistance than others. Here are some of my foolproof varieties for you to consider growing. However, as discussed in a previous post, what works well for me here in Central Victoria hasn’t necessarily worked well for me in Melbourne (the Jaune Flamme tomato is a perfect example of this).

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Last week I discussed many different creatures that may become pests in your vegetable patch. Prevention is better than cure, so I usually focus my pest control on strategies that prevent pest outbreaks in the first place. However, sometimes pest populations can get a bit out of balance and completely ruin certain crops. This week I explore some methods…

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There’s nothing worse than carefully tending your vegetable plants for months only to come out one day and find the plants have suffered a pest attack of some sort. It can be really deflating, especially if you’re new to gardening. Growing up in a rural environment, I found that my vegetable garden rarely suffered from pest issues. There might have been…

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In my most recent posts I’ve discussed how to sow various vegetable seeds. Many of those seeds need to be sown directly into the soil as they don’t cope well with root disturbance or other aspects of transplanting . However, many vegetables can be started early in pots and transplanted. You can see the lists of what can and shouldn’t be transplanted here

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Last week I described how to sow vegetable seeds directly into the ground. This is important for crops that don’t handle the transplanting process very well. This week I discuss what vegetables can be started in pots or punnets and transplanted into the soil when growing conditions become more favourable.

Vegetables that can be sown in pots or punnets

The…

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I think seeds are amazing. You can take such a tiny, seemingly insignificant speck and turn it into abundance. All you need is a bit of garden space, some water, sunlight and a good dose of patience and voila, food!

Many of my readers seem a little overwhelmed by the concept of sowing seeds. It’s not a difficult thing to successfully manage. After all, i…

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This is the most important article in the whole Vegetable Patch from Scratch series. If there is one single message I’d like you to take on board from this series, it’s this:

The genetics contained within your vegetable seeds will account for most of your success (or failure). Vegetabl…

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