Hello everyone in Hive Garden Community ^^
This is my first time joining GardenJournal Challenge. Thank you 
April has come as the time for seasonal transition in my country (Viet Nam). For me, this period of time is the appropriate time to plan again my garden with some vegetable and fruit trees. I have learned from my experiences and my failure last year when I decided to grow Passion fruit.
I call it is my first failure in gardening because the size of the crop after 6 months of planting does not get reach my estimated firgure. 😣 But the good side I have got is about the truly experiments, the more I do, the more I understand the natural operations in my garden 😄.
On June 2021, I and my friend got an idea of planting Passion fruit in the area of pepper trees in order to make polyculture and take advantage of the rest of soil. We did not use any chemical pesticide, herbicide, or growth stimulation to help the fruit grow quickly. As my accounting, over 6 months we can harvest the first generation with a lot of fruits.
In order to grow Passion tree, first of all, we ordered and bought 100 seedlings from my my friend’s relative. After that, we watched the weather forecast in order to take the right time to dig the hole and grow seedlings (The rainy days are the best time to grow Passion tree according my experiences). And the most thing we have to finish is about creating frame for them to vine and grow up.
Before putting down the seedling into the hole, a number of cow dung has been added and mixed with the soil, and of course the cow dung is composted with chaffs and probiotics to decompose cow dung.
After 1 months, we saw the growth of trees was irregular. While some trees developed leave, cirrus and main trunk so quickly, some were still on the ground. I suddenly understood that with the same fertilize, water, weather and caring, the growth between trees depends on itself and unpredicted external factors. Passion is a kind of trees that needs a larger number of water and nutrients to be born and bred. That is why we need to supply the water for them in each 2 – 3 times a week.
On September, 2021. An big enermy became visible in my garden and started attacking my Passion trees. Can you guess what it is? The bugs? The Ants? The worms? No, they are not! The creature I am mentioning is the army of termites. With a high explosive of them, they gnawed into the trunk until it breaks immediately. I was speechless for some days when looking at what happening with Passion trees. I understood that the raining season is the production of them, they lived in humidity area. I started searching for their nest and found the way to cast them out of the Passion trees, but it did not work out.
We were not about to admit freat in front of them. We made a snap decision of buying again more than 20 seedlings to prick in some holes that were damaged by termites, take care of it carefully with the hope that they will grow up quickly.
Over next 2 months since September, the Passion trees started blooming and gave the baby fruits. I was living in joy in the moment of watching its flowers. However, there were approximately 70 trees still alive while the rest of it were died because of worm-eaten and the changing of weather.
Until now, the Passion trees has brought me fruits to eat but the quantitative production is so low that I could not have enough to gift others (this quantity is only enough for my family using).
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I consider growing Passion trees is my first failure from the day I start gardening. However, from that I have got a deeper inside into more knowledges as well as memorable lesson in experimental stage. To become a green finger, there are a lot of things that one must be gone through and learned from one’s mistakes.
I cannot wait for the rainy season on June this year to start again with growing Passion fruit and green bean. Let’s see what I can do from my interesting failure 😌 Thank you for standing for me in such a time reading my story ^^. Have a nice day, Hivers.😚