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Introduction
I'm going to do things a bit differently for my second year of
gardening. I'll try to update month by month, not as an ongoing diary. The
previous year has given an idea of the process of learning to garden, but
I feel I now know my little patch better and what I can and cannot get
away with. Therefore, I'd rather garden than write.
August
A few hot days and a few cold days didn't do the summer crops a lot of
good. Pretty much everything died - the peas, the corn, the peppers. The
cucumber did not really set fruit, nor did the eggplant. I suspect there
wasn't enough nutrition in the containers, and I will have to try
something different next year. I have been pulling plants up all month,
digging chicken fertiliser into the squares to see if I can't revive the
earth a little. It's been an ending kind of a month; I am going to wait
until September to start my second year of gardening.
The biggest thing I've learnt is that crops are disappointing if you don't
give 'em enough space and can't plant enough plants. I got about five
beans out of a dozen plants! And I really liked them, but that wasn't
enough to justify the effort. I'd love to plant a whole big package of the
seeds, but I'm not going to bother next year. I'm going to plant fewer
crops and more of them.
September
On September 11th, re-affirming life, I planted a block and a half of
lettuce, raab, beets and spinach. Over the next several days I added a
block more or less of petits pois, and filled what was left with turnips.
It took about a week for things to start coming up. As it turns out, the
spinach isn't doing well, but the raab is sprouting merrily. The peas
too. Resilient little things they are, easy to grow.
October
This was a month of pulling up plants and giving up on plants, of clearing
and cleaning. Not many of my seeds have come up, it's a little
disappointing.
November
Wow! I learnt something new. After the heavy rainstorm we had this month,
everything sprang to life. Before I knew it, the broccoli raab was taking
over the universe, the peas were zooming up the poles and new peas,
lettuce and roots were sprouting. I obviously didn't water the seeds
anywhere near enough. Cool!
December
We've had ten days of really heavy rain. The garden seems to like it and
is growing merrily. The raab is starting to flower and I've harvested one
big radish and some lettuce. There's a lot of lettuce. Also, the
peas are podding and we'll soon have at least a couple of beets and
turnips.
The turnips suffered a lot with aphids, but the heavy rains have washed
many of them away. I had trouble with cabbage worms but think I killed
most of them (hand-picking). I have had to thin the broccoli leaves
several times as they are really overwhelming the other plants. I guess
that broccoli should be grown in a square of their own, or something.
Last year's sprouts are still growing, but nothing will ever come of
them. My compost bin has reduced volume by half and I should have some
nice stuff come spring. I have pulled up most of the remaining tomato
plants and pepper plants; they'll die now it's cold. I think we will have
some fresh baby spinach by the end of the year, though.
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This page created 10 Aug 2002
Last update 08 Nov 2003
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