Edible Gardening Red Hill Spring Garden Festival - Grow for Life Spring 2012 8 September 10 4pm Red Hill Show Grounds Home gardeners will be bursting to enhance their patch after visiting the Spring Garden Festival.
Specialist nurseries from the Mornington Peninsula and country Victoria will be there at one place for one day.
Orders made on-line or by catalogue can be bought direct from businesses keen to make their first visit to our area.
Experts will be available to offer advice in landscaping, growing food, pruning, water use, and organic methods.
Come and seek out gardening gift goodies to tuck away.
If it s pepping up a corner with a unique focal point, then look for sculptured pieces or explore a redesign.
Local gardeners will be showing off their beauties at the Spring Flower Show.
Vegies, flowers potted specimens may be viewed awarded prizes donated by local visiting businesses.
Any gardener can enter.
The Red Hill Consolidated School has their own exclusive section this year with artistic and informative categories.
Garden experts will be sharing their knowledge during the day in a chain of presentations on a range of practical topics.
Be in the audience to ask your questions and win some of the donated wares.
Other features are booked in.
We can t list them all.
Food is available.
You ll just have to come along and sample this new event on the Mornington Peninsula.
Bring the family.
With the free kids activities you might trigger a habit that could see them Grow for Life.
www.rhgs.com.au Well, after a wet and cool winter most of us will be looking forward to some warmer temperatures at the start of this long awaited spring.
Winter crops did pretty well this year where they received adequate direct sunlight, though without enough sun some crops did suffer under the cold, wet conditions.
But that is behind us now.
Planning your warm season plantings should be well underway, with seeds beginning to germinate in punnets and fruit trees kicking on with their new seasons growth.
If you are yet to sow seeds for your annual vegetable crops for the season, it d be a good idea to get started shortly.
If you are new to growing your own food, there is a bit of planning to be done before planting any crops for the season.
Apart from choosing the optimum site on your property in terms of sunlight, wind protection, access to water and proximity to your kitchen, the most important thing you will need to consider is the condition of your soil.
There is little point in planting your crops in poor or impoverished soils.
Prior to planting you will need to do the following determine the nature or quality of your soils both in terms of structure and pH acidity and alkalinity levels , take steps to correct any issues you may have with your soil, and finally feed and mulch your soils in readiness for your warm season plantings.
The physical structure of your soil is important because it is going to determine how water behaves below the surface and thus how much water and nutrient is going to be available to your plants.
Sandy soils drain very readily and thus require more irrigation than clay soils, which hold water very well.
Neither is ideal for growing your annual vegetables, but both may be improved.
You may already have a fair idea what end of the spectrum your soils lay, but to check you can use the simple ribbon or squeeze test.
Google it.
And while you are there have a read about pH in soils.
It s a big topic but worth having a basic understanding of.
Whether your soils are typically sandy or clayey, both can be improved with the addition of organic matter.
Well-composted animal or plant manures are a very effective way to add organic matter to your soil while also adding valuable nutrients for your future crops.
Additions of organic matter will also help to correct undesirable pH levels, albeit slowly.
Correcting conditioning your soils may be something you have to work at over a number of years to achieve the optimum loamy environment for your edible garden.
With additions of well-composted manures perhaps a green manure crop every couple of seasons you will be well on the road.
There is still plenty of time to begin improving your soils for the coming seasons plantings, though in future it would be worth getting your soil preparations done during autumn or winter so that you can be ready for early spring plantings.
This will be particularly important over the next few years as we move into a predicted dryer climatic cycle.
If you are ready to plant now, you can start with the leafy green crops such as lettuces, silverbeet, spinach, etc along with root crops such as carrots, beetroot, radish and turnip.
Get your spuds in now too.
As the soil warms, probably during the latter part of September and early October your classic summer crops can start to go in beans, corn, tomatoes, capsicum, chilli, eggplant, and all of the cucurbits pumpkin, cucumber, squash, watermelon, rockmelon and zucchini.
- Let s hope the season is a cracker.
Happy gardening - Drew Cooper ediblegardens.com.au RED HILL SPRING GARDEN FESTIVAL Saturday, 8 Sept 2012 10am 4pm Red Hill Recreation Reserve Arthurs Seat Road Mel Ref 190 J4 Everything under cover...
Stalls to enhance your garden Expert information sessions Gardening for kids Spring Flower Show Exhibitors welcome GROW FOR LIFE www.rhgs.com.au 90 GoodLife - Spring 2012...
august, september, october.