23/08/2012

1st Years Gardening Part II

This was our vegetable patch at one point along the way. Kids can dig up all the weeds and roots while playing. Perfect!

I was very excited about my garden. I had BIG dreams about being very self sufficient, providing my family with tons of vegetables. I had BIG ideas! With everything going on at home, being big, heavy and pregnant, and having a hard enough time keeping up the basics at home, maybe gardening could've waited another calendar year. However, I am no quitter! Even if I did not give my 100% and did what should've been required, I still got - and am getting - something out of my garden experiment!
My broccoli plants grew really big but they produced small florets that I just couldn't see my family having to fight over during dinner time. Eventually, we dug them out, fed them our pet Guinea Pigs and made room for other plants, which I had sown into decomposable pots ready to plant.

The broccoli is on the left. They are still small in this picture. I never did take a picture of how big they grew. Lets put it this way, I could not see the soil around them. They stretched beyond the two planks along side them.


My lettuce was a hit. However, it may have been too much of a hassle outside and I could've easily had the plants inside. The lettuce grew fast and provided me the greens I needed for my famous smoothies. It was just the damn slugs that got to me. Endless slugs! Not a big fan of slimy slugs. I googled how to get rid of slugs without using overly harsh chemicals and how to make home-made, non-toxic pestacide. I will blog those recipes.




My spinach prematurely bolted, since June was a bit too cold. I planted new plants in July and we got a good freezer bag full of leaves. I gave the rest to the Guinea Pigs and removed the roots from my patch. I have big plans for my gardens empty space, oh yah! Just wait and see!

My spring onions did fine, grew well and were delish!! Yum YUM! I planted more!



I had planted my chard and dill right under our dryers 'fume pipe' which put me off. Our Guinea Pigs seem to benefit most from our garden.

1st years Gardening Part I

This is what was I was facing with all my little seedlings needing to be planted a.s.a.p! I had my work cut out for me and I was heavily pregnant too. Thank God for a loving, caring and strong husband. It took several days to clear this vegetable patch out. Several new gardening tools too, which we were luckily able to borrow.

I really like this picture above. It reminds me of the verse in Genesis!
 Genesis 3:16-19
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
    with painful labour you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
    and he will rule over you. ”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”
I got them planted all in a rows. I placed planks in between the rows for easy access to the plants and also so I didn't have to stand on the soil.

I planted peas, broccoli, spinach, spring onions, tomatoes, dill and Swiss chard. Little did I know that half of these weren't going to work out as I had planned, for one reason or another. I will explain more in part II and III.
 My aunt had brought me herb pots for my yard.

The little beginnings of our pumpkins, squash, zucchini.