Apps to help your garden grow | In Your Patch

I was chatting to someone recently in the school garden and she commented on the abundance of produce currently growing in what is traditionally considered a slow or quiet season in the garden.

I mentioned to her that it’s taken me many years, but I now think ahead and plant late in the current season, for the following.

For example, I’m prepping beds for spring planting right now and will start to plant my spring crops in August, even though spring doesn’t start on the calendar until the following month.

This is not a hard and fast rule – obviously we can get very wet winters and very dry summers, so that also needs to be considered.

But on the whole, I’ve discovered over the years that we need to be planting well ahead of the coming season, rather than finding ourselves in it, and then planting.

Bearing that in mind, what to plant right now? In all honesty I’m not planting much.

All my beds are rather full of veg at various stages of their growing cycles.

We’ve harvested cauliflower, I have some large red cabbage planted mid May that will need another six weeks.

Our kale planted at the same time is ready now, Chinese Cabbage also planted mid May have about three weeks to go, and my Cos lettuce went to rot but the Baby Butterhead have survived these last few wet weeks and will be ready in about a month.

My broccoli are pretty small (perhaps planted a little too late really), but there you go.

My silver beet grew very large with a feed of dynamic lifter so now I’ve got far too much (that’s on it’s way to the Community Pantry), and we’ve been harvesting celery planted at the end of 2022 for the last month. My winter English Spinach could be harvested right now, but we like to grow them quite large as this variety stays very tender and has a mild, slightly sweet flavour regardless of plant size, unlike some of the other varieties that go bitter if left in the ground for too long.

Essential to knowing when to plant and when you did plant, is a good gardening app. I use Gardenate, the free version.

Without a record of when and what I planted, I wouldn’t remember and wouldn’t be able to tell you now.

Do a bit of research and find an app you like. They make a huge difference to getting your timing right, and therefore more successful planning, growing, and harvests.

And remember – make sure you spray your stone fruit for leaf curl in the next few weeks. By the time my next column comes around it may be too late.

Happy gardening everyone.

Terri Sharpe is Coordinator and Garden Specialist of the Margaret River Primary School Kitchen Garden Program.