In the Garden with Nell Carr

Photo by Tanya King

Turnips grown in the raised boxes at the Deloraine Community Garden.

In the vegie garden

Turnips and swedes can be sown, according to the notes on the seed packets, throughout the year, although the Garden Guide excludes the months of April, May, June, November and December in the colder districts.

Turnips can go into well manured soil, the shallow drills lined with a layer of seed raising mix. Those pictured by Tanya King, were grown in one of the raised boxes at Deloraine Community Garden.

To make room for growth, they were thinned out and the smaller, golf ball sized ones were used raw for salads. The fully grown turnips are delicious, peeled, sliced up and boiled briefly, served with butter and scattered with finely chopped chives.

If dry enough soil can be located, broad beans are able to be sown in September, as are cabbages, spring onions, silver beet (add a little boron), and peas.

In the landscape – Acacias

It would hard to miss the most prolific of these in the landscape just now.

The Black Wattle (Acacia dealbata), springs up wherever a patch of native forest has been cleared, and in September becomes a golden fringe along the forest borders.

The flowers of Blackwoods (A. melanoxylon) are paler and not so conspicuous, but their dense foliage and spreading branches make them attractive and useful shade trees.

Tasmania has seven species of Acacias. The smallest of them A. verticillata, (Prickly Mimosa), commonly known as Prickly Moses, is a shrub with gracefully arching branches and large pale yellow flowers.