WHAT TO DO IN THE GARDEN THIS WEEK

Forage for unusual ingredients for salads

All winter we wait for spring, but when it arrives, in the vege garden at least, there’s nothing much to eat

Although our fruit trees are clothed in spring blossom and the soil’s warming up for sowing, it’s still slim pickings on the harvest front. So if you’re tired of eating silverbeet and kale, get a little more inventive and go foraging for salad greens. Try these for starters: ·

Peppery greens for a bit of bite to dress up a plain lettuce salad, toss in a few baby nasturtium leaves. The young leaves are tender and peppery, whereas the old foliage is a tad too bitter for most palates. itto mustard greens and radicchio stick to the young leaves. ·

Weeds in your salads chickweed, sorrel – even onion weed – add piquancy chefs would say “depth of character to spring salads and smoothies. Just don’t overdo it as their flavours are quite strong. ·

Pea shoots sow any variety of pea seeds thickly in trays of seed-raising or potting mi , or even in trenches in the garden, and snip the juicy pea-flavoured seedlings as gourmet microgreens. ou can also harvest pea tendrils and edible pea flowers from standard climbing varieties in your garden. Just don’t pick so many that you jeopardise the crop of pods to come. ·

Broad bean tops nipping the tops off broad bean plants not only keeps them compact and less liable to topple over in high winds , it provides a good source of nutritious greens. Just snap off the top 5cm or so off the main stems and cook as you would spinach, either steaming or tossing into a stir-fry for a couple of minutes. Add a little butter and some saut ed garlic for an easy side dish. ·

Speedy from seed mesclun salad mi , microgreens and sprouts are quick and easy to grow and only take a matter of days in the case of sprouts or weeks for microgreens , so they’re ideal crisp crops to tide you over until the weather warms up a bit more.

Don’t scrimp on stakes

et supports ready before you transplant tomatoes, cucumbers and other climbers and scramblers into the vege patch. Shorter plants such as eggplants and capsicums that carry heavy fruit can also do with shorter but sturdy supports.

Put the support in place first as there’s a risk that the roots will be damaged if a stake is driven into the ground after the seedling has been in the ground for a while.

Tomatoes in particular need support. They have enough to contend with – from psyllids to blight – without being let down by flimsy stakes. lopping over damages the plant tissue, opening it up to infection as well as knocking off blossoms and fruit. A large, grafted tomato plant can grow to 2m or more in height and more than 1m wide so needs more than a flimsy bamboo cane.

Steel waratahs are a good choice for keeping your tomatoes upright. If they’re properly hammered in, they’ll never fall over, bend or snap. They’re far from cheap brand new but will last a lifetime. nlike wood and bamboo stakes, waratahs don’t harbour fungal spores from year to year and won’t rot quickly in damp soil. or a more stylish look, consider permanent frames for all sorts of climbing plants made from sheets of reinforcing mesh with wooden frames. The wide grid gives plenty of support and there’s room for your hands to reach through to pick crops from both sides. belisks and plant towers can be moved around the garden, which helps with crop rotation. etal ones are available from garden centres or build your own.

Grow your own kūmara slips

There are two ways to start a kūmara crop: buy a bundle of runners bare root plants known as slips from your local garden centre or harvest your own free plants by sprouting a store-bought tuber. Simply nestle a large kūmara into a pot or tray of moist sand. Within a couple of weeks it’ll produce shoots plantlets.

When these plantlets are about 15cm high, with their own roots and leaves, you can carefully remove them from the mothership and transplant them.

Wait until all risk of frosts has passed before planting kūmara, but don’t leave it too long as they must have a long, hot summer. Kūmara loathe clay and are one of the few vege crops that thrive in sandy soils. If your soil is a tad on the heavy side, mound up the soil. ig in a handful of general garden fertiliser at planting time and space the plants about cm apart.