The Gardener’s Diary: August

With Stephanie Hall

It's hard to believe it's August already and these beautiful sunny days have me even more confused.

While enjoying the sun in late July, I had to keep reminding myself not to get too excited about planting the spring veggies yet. 'It's still winter' has almost become a mantra that I keep repeating to myself while I plod around the garden.

Now, there's good reason for all this conservatism. As many locals know, we can experience frost right through to November. In fact, I saw a light frost in our garden on the 9 December last year that almost took out all 40 of my tomato plants!

With predictions of a warmer-than-average August and September, I don’t envisage such a late frost this year, but I'm still proceeding as if our frosts are going to stick around.

August is typically the month that gardeners in NSW and Victoria start some spring crops outdoors and summer crops indoors.

Here, my plan is to start my hottest heatloving crops early in the month including my chillies and capsicums (Peppers, colloquially). By starting these plants, from seed, nice and early in the month I can ensure that I have nice big plants ready for late spring.

Peppers require a constant temperature of between 15 and 24 degrees to germinate which is why they must be started indoors. In my first few years of gardening I managed to get pepper seeds to germinate in a northfacing windowsill; but, they were a little leggy and had to be moved outdoors, during the day, soon after.

Now, I use a heat mat (a preloved brewing mat in truth) which sits underneath my trays of seedlings until they germinate. As soon as the little seedlings emerge the trays are removed from the mat and placed under artificial lighting. This lighting is left on the plants for six hours a day until they are ready to be hardened off outside.

Peppers have been notoriously difficult for me to grow in the past; so, I am planning to start many varieties this year with the hope that I will find one or two that really like our climate.

Around the middle of the month I will move onto planting my pea seeds directly into the garden. Peas will germinate in temperatures as low as four degrees and are frosthardy plants. The flowers are frost sensitive though, so you won’t get any peas to pick until the frosts have passed.

Online you can find some great snow pea seeds including the beautiful 'Golden Podded Pea' but I