Daily Gardening

Well, so far, I've proved that I can grow things. I've grown a watermelon, rockmelons, strawberries, potatoes, beans, peas, tomatoes, gooseberries, a few herbs, some lettuce, and probably some other things that I'm not remembering right now. But what I haven't managed is to actually grow enough to be anything more than a nice taste, a novelty. If I want to actually produce enough to make up any percentage of our food supplies, I need to do more.

So I've come up with a plan. Every day I'm going to plant something. It might only be a handful of pea seeds, or a single plant, but every day I plan to add to our food supplies somehow. Adding to this, since our soil is still pretty bare, I'm going to fertilise something. Again, this might be as simple as throwing some rooster booster around a tree, or giving a plant/tree a drink of seasol. But each bit will add to the fertility of the garden, and thus the amount of food we can produce.

So without further ado, here is the stuff I've planted since starting this challenge on Thursday.

Thursday, 12th of June

So far, I haven't had much luck with carrots. I've planted a couple of lots of them in the garden, and though they grow, they are quite bitter, and not sweet at all. They also don't do so well in the no-dig system, as they hit the paper and the root divides and gets broken up. So I figured I'd have a go in a pot. This pot is about 40-50cm across, and it's filled with a mixture of potting mix and store bought compost (I can't keep up with enough of my own at this point).

It's sitting near the house so that I can water it often, although I'm not sure that I won't have to move it to a more sunny location. As you may noticed, there is a little plastic crate under it that came with our moving trolley, so that I can move it easily. It would be far too heavy to lift myself, but with the trolley, I can put it anywhere I want.

Friday, 13th June

While I was up buying the compost for the carrots, I saw a 10 pack of marigolds. I don't have too many flowers in my garden yet, and we all know that you need flowers to attract the bees, so I grabbed these, and have planted them in various spots around the three garden beds. Keep an eye out for them in future posts!

This little chocolate mint also jumped into my trolley (along with a couple of strawberry plants that you'll see later). I'm not quite sure what I'll do with it, but it smells exactly like the mint slice biscuits my dad always loved, so I had to have it. Apparently you can make tea, and flavour drinks with it.

Saturday, 14th June

I did up the middle bed with some mushroom compost, peat moss, and some dry grass, and planted some more pea seeds. (You can never have too many peas, right?) I'm having a go at planting them closer together than my last lot, to see if I can fit more into a smaller space.

Sunday, 15th June

Sunday saw me planting some nasturtium seeds around the bottom of this mandarin tree. It's not too happy, so I'm babying it a bit. I also mulched it with the bedding from the chooks house, hoping that it will have a similar effect as the one on the orange in the chooks run. I was going to plant more nasturtiums, but it occurred to me that the chooks will just eat them all, so I'll see how these go first.

Monday, 16th June

I spent a lot of this afternoon turning over the compost, and finishing re-mulching the centre bed. It was getting pretty late by then, so I wasn't sure if I was going to get anything planet, then I found these strawberries I bought. DD picked out this one, and it's planted in her garden. it's called Strawberry Pink, and apparently has pink flowers, which I'm sure is what made DD pick it (I didn't realise it had pink flowers until I went to plant it today).

I planted this one, a Strawberry Tioga, in a hanging basket. Although we have a whole bed of strawberries already, I wanted to pick up a few different varieties to see if I could find one that fruited earlier in the season. The ones I have now are an old variety, from my grandma, and so far aren't even flowering (although my aunts, where they came from, have one or two, so maybe it's my conditions here). However, I don't want to put them near my current strawberries, as I don't want to transfer any possible diseases.

So that is what I've planted in the last few days! Much more than I would have done if I weren't challenging myself. I'll try to do a post about my plantings each week, but the regularity will depend on what else I have to post at the time. If anyone feels like joining me in the challenge, post a comment, and if I get a few takers, I might see about doing up an icon or something.