garden

Being in a cooler climate, I have had to accept that there are things I just can’t grow. Or if I can grow it, it will be very slowly. I grow tomatoes but they will 4 or more months from planting to fruiting. I’ve never really had any luck with eggplants or capsicums. But I can grow leafy greens like a champion.

Here are some of my favourites:

Silverbeet

Everyone always bangs on about silverbeet being one of the easiest crops to grow, so I was super disheartened when my early attempts were total failures.

*Rainbow chard is a joyful addition to the garden*

It turns out silverbeet is easy to grow, you just need decent soil to do it in. In the early days, my place was pure sand and it took a couple of years to improve it enough to grow crops like silverbeet (or anything really!).

(Keep an eye out for my upcoming post about improving your soil).

Now it is one of my staples. I prefer rainbow chard purely because it is colourful and that makes me happy. I grow it from seed, either in pots or straight into site but it also plants out well from store bought seedlings. Make sure you prepare the soil with compost and other organic matter and follow on with a liquid fertilizer every couple of weeks after they germinate. I always mulch after as well. You will need to protect from slugs and snails while establishing but once they harden off they will be pretty right.

Leafy greens are “hungry feeders” meaning they need good quality soil to grow well, and will pull a lot of nutrient from your soil as they grow. They also need water if it’s dry. They will tolerate a bit of shade too which is great and you can sow all year round except Winter.

Perpetual spinach

A genius plant that just keeps on giving. I have had some last for years (i.e. perpetual!). It’s pretty much the same routine as for silverbeet above. Feed the soil before planting and don’t let it dry out too much. It will give you yearlong greens that you can use in salads, stir fries, pasta dishes, honestly anywhere you want something green in your meal.

Again it will tolerate or even enjoy a fair bit of shade. Its great to grow in pots in shadier parts of the garden, freeing up space in your vegie beds for more sun-loving crops.

Kale

It took me a while to become a fan of Kale. It wasn’t until I learned how to cook it properly that it became a garden staple. Its a hardy long-lived perennial that will just keep on going.

I grow from seedlings purchased from the garden centre, although I have just had a whole bed of red russian kale pop up from a plant that self-seeded (yay!). Cabbage Moth Butterfly caterpillars are a problem for me until the plants get established. After that, they still get nibbled but handle it without too much loss. You can net or cloche if the caterpillars are a real problem until established.

Remove lower leaves for your dinner allowing the tips to continue to grow (forming kale “trees”).

Sorrel

Another great garden staple, sorrel has a tart lemony taste. I grow red-stemmed sorrel (again for the colourful joy). It dies down in Winter but will pop back up again in Spring and last through to early Winter again.

Again, it is fine with shade and is very hardy. I use in salads or as a filler in pesto.

Other greens to consider

Cut and come again lettuce. Can grow all year round and will tolerate shade. Keep up the water or can become bitter and shoot to seed.
Garlic Chives. Doesn’t die down in winter like onion chives. Is hardy and adds a lovely mild garlic flavour to stir fries, salads and pesto.
Celery. I grow from seedlings. Lasts forever, you can just take a stem or two and it will keep on growing.
Parsley. A brilliant herb. Easy to grow, can chuck it in anything. It is biennial meaning it will last a couple of years before going to seed and needing to be replaced.
Borage. This self-seeds in my garden. It is most often grown for its edible flowers but you can also eat the leaves. The leaves are coarse so I use sparingly and chop it up very finely.

I have had a lot of success controlling slugs with beer traps. A beer trap is a dish of beer left in your garden overnight. The idea is the slugs are attracted to the sweet smell of the beer, get drunk and end up drowning in the dish. I have killed dozens of slugs a night with a few traps like this scattered around the garden, and trust me I have had some doozeys!

*Terrifying giant slug in my kitchen – ew!!*

I use a shallow dish which I bury so the rim is level with the soil. I get the cheapest beer I can find and fill almost to the brim. I have also used watered down wine just as successfully.

Interestingly, I have had this work even with non-alcoholic beer (left by someone at my house!) and non-alcoholic wine (bought by me by mistake!) which undermines the whole ‘getting drunk’ idea.

A dish will usually last two nights before it needs to be refreshed.

If you have a lot of slugs then you will need to keep the traps out for quite a few nights. I have had a heap of rain this Summer and a tonne of slugs. I have had to put out multiple traps over consecutive nights to really make a dint in the population. Over a few days you will find that you are catching fewer and fewer slugs which means the process is working.

It’s also worth remembering that rain will water down the beer and make the traps less effective.

I have only ever caught slugs withe beer traps, never snails. Thankfully snails are less of a problem for me.

The only down side is that beer is not very cheap. It would be cheaper to buy snail and slug pellets however the active ingredient in most of these products is also harmful to a range of other animals including pets.

Attracting birds like magpies or making a safe haven for snail and slug eating lizards like blue-tongues can also help with controlling these annoying pests.