I woke up today feeling energised to start my #grovid20 "gardening duties." I now make it a point to check on my plants, how they're doing and if they need watering for the day. I don't want to drown them. I've been told too much watering can kill the plants. Maybe depending on the weather, like if it's winter, I know that I don't need to water them every day, but of course, if the weather is warm and dry, they need to be watered on a daily basis.
Well, it's not winter yet. Today, the temperature got up to 29°C, so I'm sure my plants would be very thirsty. First, I checked my corn plant, if it was going okay since I replanted it into the ground. I noticed that the tip of its leaves was becoming dry and brown. This made me worry. I don't want it to die. I hope it won't. The main stalk of the corn plant still looks all right; it's green and looks moist, so I do hope it survives.
After the corn plant, the next thing I checked was the strawberry plant bed. I was so thrilled to see that there were two ripe strawberries ready to be picked. But I decided I will pick them tomorrow.
What I did instead was cut all the dried leaves and stems off so that it will look healthy. Below is the picture of what my strawberry plant bed looked like:
Now, after removing all the dried leaves and stems, here's what it looks like now:
Doesn't it look so much nicer and healthier? (Plus points for me, yay!!!) I had to show my husband what I did to my strawberry plant because I'm really proud of what I had accomplished. I know, minor detail!!! But with what I've done, I can easily spot if there are flowers budding, which means there will be strawberries once the flowers are gone.
I used to pluck the flowers before because I thought that by plucking them, the fruit would come out. No wonder, it didn't give me any strawberry at all. I thought it just takes time for them to bear fruits. But I learnt that I should leave the flowers alone and since then, the plant has given me a few strawberries every now and then. Not a lot, but still, when I ate some strawberries from my own garden, it gave me great satisfaction, like they're the sweetest and most delicious strawberries I have ever tasted in my life.
Then, after my painstaking labour with my strawberry plant bed, I decided to rake the seed pods and dried flowers that had fallen off from the palm trees. (I have only just found out that the two tall trees on either side of the papaya tree are palm trees. I never bothered asking my husband what they were until today.) Those seed pods were driving me nuts because they were making that section look messy. There was also this large compost bin behind the papaya tree that was occupying a big space.
So I grabbed a rake and began gathering all the dried seeds and flowers around the papaya tree.
Then, I gathered enough courage to move that black compost bin and just placed it behind the water tank so that it's out of the way and away from the ground. Boy, was I too scared to do that! There were lots of spiders inside that bin and by the time I was cleaning up this area, my husband had already left and so I had no choice but to do it myself.
I continued with my raking, followed by weeding and, lastly, digging a circle around the papaya tree so that water is easily absorbed by the rootlets of the tree not just the roots closest to its trunk. And I thought what I did to the strawberry plant was "painstaking", well, this was even more laborious. I had to grab a footstool so I could sit comfortably while I was weeding and digging the dirt. With my condition, it's hard to bend and squat. I also buried my food scraps and compost under the dirt patch around the papaya tree. @mariannewest said I could do that. I don't know anything about composting, but what I can do is to bury the compost in the dirt close to the plants so that they can absorb the nutrients.
Below is the picture of what I've done and what it looks like now. There are still some palm tree seeds and some weeds left on the ground but I was already feeling tired and I wanted to water all my plants before it got too hot. Oh, by the way, you can also see in the picture below that there is a pumpkin plant, but I don't know if it will grow. It looks like it's dying already. But I'm hoping that with what I've done in the area, it will help the pumpkin plant thrive.
After I watered all my plants, I went back inside the house, took a shower, relaxed for a bit, and ate my lunch. I spent a good two-hour in the garden today but I was quite pleased with the outcome of my hard work. It was, without a doubt, an absolutely rewarding experience!!!
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