The week began with what felt like two days of continuous rain. According to the rain gauge (which I think was empty on Sunday) we had 90mm over that time. It was a good opportunity to watch where water flows and pools on the property. Unfortunately, one of those places is a little too close to the house. Things went better up at the paddock. The grass is muddy underneath with plenty of puddles. But the woodchip paths drained fairly well, with only small puddles and these had cleared by Wednesday. The squelching underfoot lasted a little longer. The garden beds held together and the raised part drained. It was only upon digging deeper, below the 12-15cm of compost we’ve laid, that the water could be seen. So shallow-rooted plants will be fine and we’ll see how the carrots fare. But overall drainage should improve as the soil improves and we’re happy that the system worked more or less as hoped.

Needless to say, the rain was conducive to indoor work. Planning next season progressed slowly. That could be related to my expectation that answers to all my questions exist somewhere on the internet and I just need to find them. This leads to discoveries like the “Proceedings of Carrot Conference Australia“, which was a treasure trove of information but sadly did not contain a list of varieties and what part of the growing season they preferred. That information is also missing from the Tasmanian Department of Agriculture’s garden vegetables guides that a neighbour kindly lent us. But the guides are useful, even 40 years later, labelling a variety of cauliflower that we’ve struggled with “not very reliable”. There are also signs of how much has changed in four decades with kale and spinach listed under “lesser-grown” vegetables. In the course of planning I also learned that the purple-sprouting broccoli that I’d almost given up on should sprout after winter. But the garden had the best surprise of all: beautiful flower buds have formed on the few romanesco plants that successfully germinated and grew. So they’ve earned a (flexible) place on the 2020/21 harvest plan!

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After the rain cleared Alex returned to making garden beds. We planted more broad beans, cabbage and spinach seedlings as part of our learning-by-doing. (The alternative is to leave them in their trays but I don’t think they’ll like that.) That work was made more pleasant by the sound of our “seasonal rivulet” flowing in the background. I harvested the remaining beetroot from a batch planted at the end of December to make space for endive in the tunnel. The beetroot had stored surprisingly well in the ground. Of course this all led to a search for new ways to preserve beetroot. Ultimately 4kg (without leaves) of beetroot became 3.5 litres of pickled beetroot, 700ml of beetroot relish, fudgy vegan beetroot cupcakes and a couple of lunches. I saved some leaves for eating since some friends swear by them. My verdict: not great in salad but I’ll definitely sauté them again. And even Alex agreed the vegan cakes were delicious. A friend has suggested that we should make wine since we have so much beetroot but I’m not sure this is a great idea.

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