The long days at home forced on many us by the COVID-19 pandemic offer the perfect excuse to get into the garden, and perhaps revive an unloved veggie patch.

That's the advice of Gardening Australia's Tino Carnevale, who says gardening is not only a way to secure food, but find peace as well. "It's not just the produce you're going to get, it's the calming effect," he told Leon Compton on ABC Radio Hobart. "It's a great way to spend a day." He described gardening as a "meditative pursuit". "It has the ability to make everything feel better," he said. "If you're worried about food, putting in a lot of seedlings now will get you a solid start."

Getting started

If your vegetable patch looks a bit abandoned and sad, the first step is pulling the weeds out.
"Dig over your soil," Carnevale said. While the soil could be left as-is, he said lime could be added, or compost and blood and bone.
"You don't need any other inputs other than that except your seeds or seedlings," he said.
"The most important thing is water."

It's Time for Leafy Greens

Carnevale said March was a good time to plant leafy greens and brassicas.

"There's lots of leafy greens you can put in, spinach is perfect timing for that," he said.
"That will be feeding within a couple of weeks if you keep it well-watered."

Get all your seedlings in

There's a lot that can go in now, like beetroot, spinach and lettuce." He said leafy lettuce rather than hearted lettuce at this time of the year would give a quick turnover. Broccoli, cauliflower and Asian greens could be harvested as seedlings, and turnips were a good short-term and long-term crop.

"Sow the seeds haphazardly, and thin out the plants as they come up, leave the stronger ones in and you've got a long-term feed," he said.
He also said it was a great time for the onion family. "Garlic can go in very soon. Shallots, spring onions, chives," he said.

00:26 How to create Tino's topsoil mix

- Top dress an average 1.5m x 1.5m bed with the following high-nitrogen mix:
- Shovel half a wheelbarrow of compost evenly across the bed
- Then scatter a bucket of well-rotted, mixed animal manure on top
- Scatter two handfuls of powdered blood and bone over that
- Then scatter four handfuls of pelletised chicken manure
- Finish it off by dusting a handful of sulphate of potash of the top
- Rake over to combine - and you're ready to plant your greens

FEATURE PLANTS
SILVERBEET 'RUBY RED CHARD' - Beta vulgaris cv.
LETTUCE 'BLACK SEEDED SIMPSON' - Lactuca sativa cv.
LETTUCE 'FLASHY TROUT BACK' - Lactuca sativa cv.
02:41 CHICORY 'RED RIB' - Cichorium intybus
03:03 EDIBLE CHRYSANTHEMUM 'SHUNGIKU' - Glebionis coronaria cv.

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