Summer has arrived in the Huon Valley, with four consecutive days above 20 degrees in both of the last two weeks! And tomorrow is forecast to hit 36 degrees. Tomatoes are turning red in the tunnel and the previously sad-looking zucchini, pumpkin and cucumber plants are stretching out. The heat is also helping to dry the garlic hanging and draped throughout one of the sheds (I’ll have to work out what to do with them soon!). Tuesday will be a good day for collecting broad beans for drying – our newest storage experiment. The chamomile that was planted at the edge of  a few beds and along part of the fence is almost overwhelming, with white flowers appearing faster than I can pick them for drying. (I don’t believe that it deters cabbage moth anymore though!) There are quite a few beds of peas now – sugar snap, snow peas and shelling – which are proving popular in the shop and also becoming challenging to keep up with. But we do need to work on understanding our customers – we’re finally growing good-sized, juicy radish but they’re not selling well.

We’ve been implementing our soil action plan, with a mix of blood and bone and (non-GMO) canola meal on beds with struggling seedlings and gypsum almost everywhere else. After several discussions about what to do with under-performing seedlings in trays and whether wasting our time was worse than wasting seeds and the growing time, we embarked on a transplanting blitz last weekend. Hopefully access to decent soil will help them kick off at some point, even if there’s yet-another blow-out in the spreadsheet with target weekly harvests.

As strange as it seems we’ve already begun the plantings for autumn and winter. Our aim will be to feed ourselves with surplus to swap for things like eggs and to stock small amounts in the shop. Thanks to Instagram I got hold of a planting guide used by a market gardener slightly south of us (on Bruny Island), which is great given that all the other guides (even for Tasmania) seem too optimistic for our latitude. Everything will sown by mid February, which is fast closing in but fits with our experience from last season. Even with our scaled-back plans we still need to figure out where it will all go – the tunnel is prime real estate to be maximised! In amongst all of that, Alex is planning the greenhouse that will give us a head-start on spring seedlings. And the compost that will warm it. The compost obsession continues into 2021!