I've been asked lately by a few friends here on Hive, how's the garden doing, as they know we have a garden and I used to post delicious looking fruits and veggies. Today I am able to give them an answer and show them how the garden is doing, even though it's not the image I wanted to show here.
To cut the long story short, the garden this year fall into God's and the wonderful neighbors' care as we could do very little so far. First it was my dad's illness, the came the covid-19 lockdown, then my dad got sick again, so the garden kind of came last.
Today we've been there to do what we can and I'd like to show you a few photos, also for the Hive Community Garden Journal Challenge hosted by @simplymike.
We were prepared to the worst and when we got there, the scene that was awaiting for us, kind of matched out expectations. The first thing that popped in my mind was to take some photos, but I couldn't. I said better not, I'd rather take some after.
Welcome To The Jungle
This is a corner, a part of the garden that looked like a jungle. If you have no gardening knowledge, you most likely can't distinguish between weeds and vegetables.
So we took the tools we needed and got to work. Due to that work now I'm half dead, my arms and hands hurt like hell and tomorrow will be even worse. I do most work in the garden but cleaning the weeds with a hoe is new to me, have never done it before and probably never will. I'm not prepared to this, it's too hard.
That nice green part in the back is not weeds, that is alfalfa, not growing wildly, but cultivated for the cows. That land is also ours but it's given to a neighbor as it's too much for us, we don't need it. So not to be confused with weeds :D
Around the onions it's a jungle, but the onions look good as the neighbor lady took care of the big weeds as she could. I need to mention that there were some pretty persisting rains the last month or so, the lands were so wet no one could do anything. Now that the rain has stopped, you can see the result. Weeds everywhere.
Anyway, let's see what we have in the garden. Due to my dad's health problems, we had to reduce the types of veggies and concentrate our effort (if I can say that) on what's the most important for us. Here's dill, which is growing wildly. Dill is important when making pickles and in cooking too.
Onions. You know the saying, nice from far but far from nice? This fits the description perfectly. If you look at them, you say, how nice, and are nice indeed. But look at this.
Most of the onions are already cracked and starting to rot. This is due to too much water (rain). No way we're going to have onions for the winter. These need to be eaten asap.
After cleaning the path full of weeds, the garden starting to look better. These are the tomatoes that needed to be tied up.
There's still a lot of work with them, they need to be trimmed, the branches that don't bare fruits need to go. No need to keep them as they are taking away good nutrients from the fruits. There's a special technique for that.
Here's one for example. The branch in the middle marked with the red arrow had to go as that's not going to bare any fruits. But this is just one technique. There are branches at the bottom that are not needed either.
Do you recognize this? I used to post quiz photos and let people guess what it is but I'm not going to do that now. It's beetroot. I can make pickles with it. I said I;m going to try out the beetroot soup and never did. Maybe this year as there are a few beetroots in the garden.
Do you recognize anything from here? It's hard, I know but there are beans here, but it looks more like a jungle, I agree.
Here's a better angle, the beans are more visible on this photo.
Good & Bad
I've mentioned earlier, we've reduced the number of veggies this year, so we don't have potatoes, this is the neighbors.
I sneaked in his garden to take a photo of this potato flower.
Here's the enemy. This ugly creature is eating the potato leaves and damaging the plant till there's nothing left. Do you see those holes? That's his work!
After cleaning the paths, here's a better view of the garden. Onions, next there is gladiolus, which still needs a couple of month to flower, then tomatoes and in the middle there's pepper.
This part looks nicer, beans and cabbage.
Turning Weeds Into Something Good
This is a big pile of weeds that we've cleaned out from the garden, but this is just part of it.
This is the compost bin, full, full, full of weeds. It's the best way to make the most of it, get rid of weeds and turn it into something good. Next year if everything goes to plan, this compost will be used for planting seedlings, enriching the soil with it, giving them nutrients.
We're trying to diversify it, so everything that is green and biodegradable goes into the bin. Grape branches, weeds, vegetable peals, everything. Why use chemicals when you can have your own, homemade, healthy fertilizer for free?
This is just the vegetable part but this post is already too long, so I'm going to stop here and post the rest, the fruits another day.
So this is my entry to Hive Community Garden Journal Challenge - June hosted by @simplymike. Hurry up, you can still join in the fun. Post about you gardening, let's see what you've been up to :)