Good day to all my Hive friends and especially my Gardening friend on HiveGarden Community! I am so excited to show everyone what has been going on in my garden!
Despite Cape Town bringing us some KILLER winds, I managed to protect the tomato plants (seen above) and they all seem to be getting along quite well!
Below I shall endeavor to explain what is going on in my garden step by step.
Veggies and Seedlings
From another angle you can see that the mint and the spearmint are doing pretty good as well.
So far so good with the Bell Pepper sproutlings! Only one pot was decimated but this had some of the unrooted seedlings in and I am now more sure that they are basically done for.
Compost Heap
The mature compost heap is ready to harvest from. There are a lot of twigs and sticks in the mix so unless I am planning on burying them, I will need to sieve them out.
Clearing out a patch I use one of my empty seed trays next to the little pallet wall.
Using an old discarded braai grid, I basically just brace it into the sand and get to work. Pouring half shovel-fulls over the grid.
Plenty material get left behind which I can just throw back into the pile.
Once done a tray of it looks like this!
Distributing some Compost
My veggies' box looked a bit sandy, even though I mixed in a bag of compost in here. With many waterings as needed, you need to be careful not to flush all the goodness away.
Added in some of the compost and it is looking nice and earthy.
Possibly casualties of the wind, I pulled out the dead Marigolds. Besides the heavy wind the other failing that I have learned from is that the roots did not seem to branch out which means I did not break it up enough.
A Healthy Wormful Discovery
When moving 's little lemon tree, I made a wonderful discovery!
Earthworms! One big guy and a bunch of little ones! I collected them and brought them to my veggie patch. It had been watered a while ago so was not waterlogged, but nice and moist!
And they dug right in! I hope to see more of them in the future!
Future Stakes
Using some old welding rods I took from site(which had become water damaged and the welder said to me that they are practically useless now), I staked out a regtangular patch opposite my existing veggie patch. I left a nice pathway so I could walk up and down once everything was established and had things growing in them.
A bit more staking and I found that I actually had four nice large areas that I can plant stuff into. My plan is to make the ones closes to the wall raised and therfore create a lower part in the center. Hopefully this will do something to the wind in this area.
Here is the same area but from another angle. I watered the staked out parts to make them easy to see while the dray areas are going to be the pathways in between.
Here is , who as usual, joins me when she sees that I am busy in the garden. She is showing in this photo more or less the scale, since she is nearly my height!
Digging Discovery
Trying to dig out the first block and turn the soil, preparing to mix it with compost, I found a concrete block and what must be a sewer cover. This will stop me from digging down in this area.
Thus I covered this section and staked out a new block here. A raised garden box or planter box will occupy this space.
Ground Breaking
For the rest of that rectangle, I broke open the earth and I turned the soil. I kept it at least a little moist as I worked.
Into this I added a bag of compost and started mixing!
I came straight from work in my overalls so I got stuck right in to the work stuff at home before winding down for the day!
Aime helped take a lot of photos while I was working.
After turning all this compost in, it was starting to get sandy again. I needed to add some more organic materials!
I am going to add another full try of my own compost to this soil.
Adding this compost evenly over the area.
Added all the dry homemade compost. Now it is time to wet and turn this again.
The final look at the end of the day.
The End
And there we have it! Some massive changes and upgrades to my garden! I am just super stoked that I get to do this in my own home space!
Until next time!