It's early winter and temperatures are dropping, but there's still plenty to do in the garden. In warm climates gardeners can enjoy the milder weather to plant a huge selection of vegetables, herbs and flowers. In cool areas, the colder temperature is adding crunch to brassicas and sweetness to root vegetables. If planting seedlings out now, provide some protection from cold nights - cloches, thick mulch or even bottomless plastic bottles or milk cartons placed around plants will do the trick.
Read on below or click the following links to browse a range of seeds to sow now in your climate:
▩ Cold Climate: Tasmania, Melbourne, Mt Gambier, Canberra, etc.
▩ Moderate Climate: Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, etc.
▩ Warm Climate: Brisbane, Bundaberg, Carnarvon, etc.
▩ Tropical Climate: Broome, Darwin, Cairns, Townsville, etc.
Not sure which climate? Click here.
Vegetables
In warm and tropical climates it's peak planting season and most 'summer' crops of vegetables and herbs can be planted including tomato, chilli, capsicum, egglant and beans. In cool and moderate climates, the focus shifts from fast-growing vegetables to salad greens and alliums as well as crowns and tubers planted now for spring growth.
- Brassicas: Chinese cabbage, chicory (radiccio), kale, broccoli and cabbage (warm climates).
- Leafy greens: lettuce, cress, endive, mustard, mizuna, silverbeet, spinach, sorrel.
- Legumes: shelling peas, sugarsnap peas, snow peas, broad beans (temperate climates).
- Roots and Stalks: radish, carot, kohlrabi, beetroot and celery (warm climates).
- Alliums: bunching onion, shallot, late garlic, onion, potato onion, walking onion.
- Crowns and Tubers: asparagus crowns, Jerusalem artichokes, seed potatoes.
Flowers
Planting slows down in winter in cool climate flower gardens, with just a few seeds to sow through this month. In warm and tropical gardens it's time to plant flowers that would suffer in the heat of summer such as petunia, phlox and snapdragons. June is also the last chance to plant spring flowering bulbs.
- Cool climates: cornflower, candytuft, Rottnest Island daisy.
- Warm climates: alyssum, brachyscome, Canterbury bells, impatiens, petunia, phlox, nasturtium, snapdragon.
Sprouts and Microgreens
Offering an excellent combination of health and taste, growing sprouts and microgreens indoors is a quick and easy way to put homegrown produce on your plate during winter. Microgreens harvested soon after germination are tender and packed with colour and flavour, while a jar of sprouts can be grown in less than a week.
