When it all starts coming together

It has been a while since I posted and there has been a lot happening in terms of the garden and life in general. My garden is finally getting to my favourite stage (funnily enough – it isn’t the fruit-bearing stage) which is where all the plants start to get big enough for me to sit back and think, “hey, this actually might work”.

The wood ash seemed to do the trick and kept the tomato worms off the tomato plants. Unfortunately I lost quite a few of these to insects, however I just kept and dried out the seeds so that I can replant them next year – not totally wasted! The other tomato species (I’ve actually forgotten what I planted BUT I think we’ve got: Roma, Yellow Pea and Grosse Lisse) are doing quite well and beginning to ripen. The fun part is that I can actually use them in the kitchen now.

The corn I planted is looking rather magnificent (aka: it’s pretty tall) and will hopefully start food production soon, I’ve staggered this so that we’ve got some corn plants that are about 4 weeks behind. I’ll admit that most of my gardening ideas/tricks have come from the internet – in this case it suggested this so that there would be more corn for longer. The internet definitely has some handy hints and has played quite a large role in the improvement of my ‘organic’ gardening skills.

I’ve dabbled with companion planting rather than using any chemicals on the garden and that seems to be working. The Marigold’s are keeping insects off the tomatoes and the beans and corn are doing … whatever it is that makes them companions.

There is definitely something satisfying about the arduous task of maintaining a garden. It opens my eyes to the effort required to produce crops on a large scale and indeed makes me more empathetic to the plight of farmers who are failing to sell their product at high enough prices. If this was my livelihood I don’t know whether I could sustain it. Luckily, it is not a money making venture for me.

 

An assortment of tomatoes collected from the garden,

Companion planting corn & beans

Rosemary grown with honey as the root agent

Lady-birds are helping to keep the insects at bay

Apricots used in marinade and jam

Garden

 

P.S: The sprinklers in the images are set to a timer, they’ll only run for 20min using ground-water. Summer isn’t being too kind to the plants but I believe they are beginning to adapt, I’ve been watering them less than most people I think.