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A rough start to the gardening season
May. 20th, 2021 08:31 pmThe nights have been uncharacteristically cold, the weeds are growing fastidiously and I can't keep up with all the work in the garden. Of course.
Gardeneighbour Trix claims we're "running a whole month behind!" and I tend to agree, although being unfamiliar with the soil, the space and the massive amount of plans I can probably never hope to finish, it's hard to decide why it's not going as well as I'd like. I have a creeping notion that the soil is really poor and needs more nutrients, so I've started tossing cow manure pellets on the beds that are going, hoping that will help.
A few things are growing well. After the weeds and the grass popping up everywhere, the potatoes and the onions I planted from smaller versions of themselves are the only things going well after the initial rush of the spinach and radishes I sowed popping up. The rest...isn't doing so well. I've tried to keep to the sowing schedule for our zone as well as I can, and I'm very scared of actually putting any kind of warmth loving plant outdoors for a while, but the results aren't very promising yet.
The onions and leeks I sowed (April 9th) have yet to show themselves, but so far the weeds are taking over the tilled bed and I think it's time to give up on them. If they haven't germinated in six weeks, they're not going to. I sowed some new ones in trays in the greenhouse, but I forgot which of the two trays I put the leeks in, so I might have sown the onions in the same tray and left the other with just empty soil...
The lettuce and carrots (March 21st) have shown nothing but a single head popping up, and their beds have already been re-sown with other stuff (beets), but it's not going well and the beetroot are also refusing to come up.
Chard (snijbiet), sowed April 8th has come up around May first, but they are not growing as fast as I'd like. Pretty much nothing is going as well as I'd like. Even the Bok Choy I sowed in our windowsill is struggling, because aphids keep coming in to eat them and I saw signs of a slug -- no clue how that got indoors or where it may be hiding. I am sad.
Next to the struggles of seedlings, the brassica's I'd planted were immediately eaten by....something and I was forced to get some netting in place in the hopes the plants will recover. While the neighbouring gardens all have spiffy netting tents of the likes I can only dream about...
...my make-shift netting tent looks like a drunken tipi at the end of a long larp.
The brassica's seem to be struggling a bit, but coping, and in the photo above I was sheltering the final few endive seedlings my neighbour had gifted me. Something already stole half of what I'd planted, because silly me just assumed it would be safe. I was never taught how endive walks away from where you plant it, or that rats and pigeons and mice may get to the crops even before the slugs and aphids do. But I guess I'm learning.
Meanwhile, the greenhouse still needs work. After the first stormy winds tore windows from the sides and roof, I decided to get some mounting kit and set them back so they would stick. It's hell on my hands to get the kit from the container despite using a kit pistol, and the surface of metal that actually touches the plastic windowpanes is quite narrow. I've still got the roof and the front next to the door to do, but I can only do the front if I remove the whole door.
One of the rainbarrels has a leak at its tap, so we need to wait for a sunny day and do the rest of the kit, as well as emptying the tiny rainbarrel in the big one, drying it properly and using the silicon-based mounting kit around the tap to make sure it stops dripping. At least I did the gutters around the greenhouse before the big rains came!
There are plans for raised beds, I've just put two more 40 liter bags of bark in the garden to make more paths with, there's a wide swathe of seed-bearing grass that needs to be exterminated and we've got plans to remove the hedera (english ivy) from a tall post next to my garden. I also still need to put in a small area of pavers to park my bike on and my bike needs a new parking stand, but at least I'm getting a sense of where this has to go now.
I could also sieve last year's compost with the compost sieve Eisirt made from an old pallet, but who has the time, really?
Gardeneighbour Trix claims we're "running a whole month behind!" and I tend to agree, although being unfamiliar with the soil, the space and the massive amount of plans I can probably never hope to finish, it's hard to decide why it's not going as well as I'd like. I have a creeping notion that the soil is really poor and needs more nutrients, so I've started tossing cow manure pellets on the beds that are going, hoping that will help.
A few things are growing well. After the weeds and the grass popping up everywhere, the potatoes and the onions I planted from smaller versions of themselves are the only things going well after the initial rush of the spinach and radishes I sowed popping up. The rest...isn't doing so well. I've tried to keep to the sowing schedule for our zone as well as I can, and I'm very scared of actually putting any kind of warmth loving plant outdoors for a while, but the results aren't very promising yet.
The onions and leeks I sowed (April 9th) have yet to show themselves, but so far the weeds are taking over the tilled bed and I think it's time to give up on them. If they haven't germinated in six weeks, they're not going to. I sowed some new ones in trays in the greenhouse, but I forgot which of the two trays I put the leeks in, so I might have sown the onions in the same tray and left the other with just empty soil...
The lettuce and carrots (March 21st) have shown nothing but a single head popping up, and their beds have already been re-sown with other stuff (beets), but it's not going well and the beetroot are also refusing to come up.
Chard (snijbiet), sowed April 8th has come up around May first, but they are not growing as fast as I'd like. Pretty much nothing is going as well as I'd like. Even the Bok Choy I sowed in our windowsill is struggling, because aphids keep coming in to eat them and I saw signs of a slug -- no clue how that got indoors or where it may be hiding. I am sad.
Next to the struggles of seedlings, the brassica's I'd planted were immediately eaten by....something and I was forced to get some netting in place in the hopes the plants will recover. While the neighbouring gardens all have spiffy netting tents of the likes I can only dream about...
...my make-shift netting tent looks like a drunken tipi at the end of a long larp.
The brassica's seem to be struggling a bit, but coping, and in the photo above I was sheltering the final few endive seedlings my neighbour had gifted me. Something already stole half of what I'd planted, because silly me just assumed it would be safe. I was never taught how endive walks away from where you plant it, or that rats and pigeons and mice may get to the crops even before the slugs and aphids do. But I guess I'm learning.
Meanwhile, the greenhouse still needs work. After the first stormy winds tore windows from the sides and roof, I decided to get some mounting kit and set them back so they would stick. It's hell on my hands to get the kit from the container despite using a kit pistol, and the surface of metal that actually touches the plastic windowpanes is quite narrow. I've still got the roof and the front next to the door to do, but I can only do the front if I remove the whole door.
One of the rainbarrels has a leak at its tap, so we need to wait for a sunny day and do the rest of the kit, as well as emptying the tiny rainbarrel in the big one, drying it properly and using the silicon-based mounting kit around the tap to make sure it stops dripping. At least I did the gutters around the greenhouse before the big rains came!
There are plans for raised beds, I've just put two more 40 liter bags of bark in the garden to make more paths with, there's a wide swathe of seed-bearing grass that needs to be exterminated and we've got plans to remove the hedera (english ivy) from a tall post next to my garden. I also still need to put in a small area of pavers to park my bike on and my bike needs a new parking stand, but at least I'm getting a sense of where this has to go now.
I could also sieve last year's compost with the compost sieve Eisirt made from an old pallet, but who has the time, really?
