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Seeing the prompt for this weekend engagement, I couldn't skip it because one of the topics - weekend gardening, resonates with me.
My love for gardening is second to none, this started from childhood days.
Then we had gardens including plots of lands where we cultivated so you can say that I grew up as a gardener or a farmer.
Having known the usefulness of owning a garden, I still continued with it. In my compound, I have a small space where I usually plant crops like vegetables like ugu (pumpkin), bitter leaf, water leaf, okra, spinach, scent leaf, corn and the rest and I usually do this on weekends, Saturdays to be precise, when I have time off from work.
So on this particular Saturdays, the focus was transplanting tomatoes and staking the ugu (pumpkin vegetables)
I noticed that some of the sticks I used in staking the vegetables before were have become weak making them to bend, hence the need to re-stake.
The tomatoes actually germinated by chance. I had bought some dry tomatoes and after washing them I poured the water in my garden. Days after I noticed that the seeds had germinated. I was happy because I wasn't expecting them to. When they grew to the level of being transplanted I mapped out one Saturday to do so.
- In transplanting the tomatoes, first I dug holes in the soil, then using a farm knife I dug up the tomatoes from the roots one after the other and moved them carefully to the holes.
- Finally I covered them very well with the soil.
- After transplanting the tomatoes, I applied ntụ (ash gotten from firewood) round them. Adding ash to the soil helps increase it's pH level and fertility. It also serves as repellent to pests.
Staking the vegetables
The bent vegetables
- In staking the vegetables, I had to cut some new sticks from a nearby bush.
- Then I removed all the old sticks from the vegetables. I marked some points in the soil, dug holes holes there and fixed the sticks covering the well with the soil.
- Next, I raised the vegetables, arranging them carefully on the sticks as seen in the image below.
Staking vegetables are important because:
It helps them grow and blossom well in order to produce healthy fruits. Vegetables that grow on stakes yield more than those that are not staked.
It also allows penetration of sunlight into the crops
Finally it helps one in utilizing the limited space for cultivation.
Some of vegetables have started producing fruits
See how healthy the fruits are growing
Thank you for reading.
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