Hello, everyone in the Hive :)
I learned about the Hive Garden Challenge 2022 thanks to for tagging me. And because I am open to challenges, I decided to participate and I'm tagging
and
.
I never really had a vegetable garden when we had our first home built at my parent's compound. I did have a mini garden of different flowers and ornamental plants which I always enjoyed spending some time with each day. I felt great and happy seeing how beautiful they were growing and blooming and I wouldn't let a day pass by without giving them some tender love and care. I was thankful to my sister who had given me most of the plants I started with and I had since multiplied them and given some away too.
Back then, I loved to recycle plastic containers or even plastic bags and any other things then plant flowers, or strawberries on them. I loved picking pebbles and tiny stones then decorating some of my pots. Oh yes, I seem to have a lot of free time those days :)
I also used plastic cups and ice cream mini-pints for some succulents. Some broken coffee mugs and unused shot glasses or mini-mugs for tiny cacti which I kept indoors and they are still there to this very day.
When we moved here to our new place at the end of 2019, we have some vacant space at the upper hill at the back of the house and we did some experiments planting cherry tomatoes and also Chinese Cabbages on the same plots. It was the husband's idea which I think was great because the spaces were maximized.
The harvest was plenty especially the tomatoes which we have given away, mostly to our neighbors, passersby and to relatives downtown and in the city.
Also at that time, we received tomato seeds of different varieties (black currant and plum) and some lettuce seeds from the UK and had a few of each of them grown on recycled plastics or sacks in the front yard. The lettuce were very bitter so we didn't really enjoy them. I couldn't find photos of the lettuce on my archives though.
At some point around the summer of 2020, we had to cover the fruits with some net because insects loved to make holes on them. We tried concocting baking soda plus drops of dish washing liquid and water and sprayed on the tomato leaves to avoid aphids and other insects but we were not sure if it was really effective :)
Last year (2021), we had another variety of the cherry tomatoes which I liked the most. It lasted until the end of the year and we were able to serve some of its fruits during mom-in-law's wake. We also had 2 plots of pole beans planted in June but the was destroyed during the rainy season (August-September).
At the end of November, the husband cleaned them and planted some romaine to most of the plots while I planted pole beans to a single plot (the same plot where I had grown them in June so you can see some dried stalks on the stick poles).
And while his romaines are growing beautifully, my beans on the other hand are, oh well, not bad too, lol!
We were away much of December due to mom-in-law's passing and no one was around to water them so not all of them survived.
And yes, I admit my plot of beans along with a few cherry tomatoes badly needed some cleaning. The nasty grass and weeds are happily growing and I couldn't see the base stems of my plants, lol!
The good thing is that tomatoes and pole beans seem to be getting along very well. I am not sure though when the tomatoes start to grow more branches. They might choke the beans, unless I re-route them on separate poles. But I'll definitely get to them next week.
And what else?
Oh yes, we still have the chili pepper and eggplants that we planted over two years ago a little farther down the yard. The farmboy removed the other chili stems which we don't really need and planted a few cabbages on the little plots around them.
I took these photos yesterday and some of their fruits are turning yellow. I think they lack some nutrients. I noticed the same thing last year around the summertime. But their leaves turned green and became robust when the rainy days came. They actually produced healthier and longer fruits for some months.
And the outlook of my flowers and succulents are quite okay, although some of them really needed attention. Hopefully, I'd be able to give them time very soon. It's good that it rained yesterday and they were flushed clean :)
I think that's all for now and I might be sharing more of my wee gardens some other time. I wonder if I could also place this as an entry to ' GrowVid 2022 Challenge :)
Thank you for reading me and I hope you are having a great weekend!