Last night I was too tired to even lift my fingers to the keyboard. I have been toiling frantically for two days solid. I have sore tummy muscles from all the digging (although strangely all the chubby-too-much-cake stuff is still there – I should have a decent 6 pack for all the aching going on!) My nails are chipped and the dirt has worked its way back into my hands, I am a little sunburnt in places, and I am just very weary.
All I could manage last night was a foot spa bath as I was too tired to scrub my feet and then I wasn’t long out of bed. The thing is I have to put myself through it all over again today!
My tomatoes are in. I planted 20 on Tuesday and another 5 yesterday so that is 25 all up. The capsicums and chillies are in – all 17. I have a good mix of mild peppers that should hopefully last us all year in the freezer and enough burning hot chillies to make a year’s supply of hot chilli sauce as Tim the Helper has now decided he likes the hot stuff too, so it’s not all for Hubby the Un-Gardener any more. Seems the kid is growing up!
I dug out the broccoli that wasn’t eaten while we were away and gave it to the goats, who were so grateful! I planted more seedlings for broccoli, purple sprouting broccoli, cabbage – green and red and gave the bed a good weed and a feed before I moved to the next bed.
I ever so gently set about removing all greenery from the carrot row that didn’t look like carrot. I really hate the early stages of growing carrots as you are never sure if it is weed or carrot and so they all have to stay there until you are completely certain, and until then it just looks like a weedy mess!
The lettuce is doing really well, and I need to congratulate myself on my succession planting, – so far it is a huge success. We are eating yummy lettuce and there is more that I have just planted that should be ready for when we get through the first lot. Having said that – a succession of two isn’t exactly a succession, so maybe I need to sow more seed.
Then I moved over to the odds and sods bed, which has the overflow of plants that don’t fit in their designated spot and then all the fun stuff. I’m a bit of a visual / doer kind of a person and despite looking up the planting distances for all these different plants, I just couldn’t make it work. Maybe I was just too tired. So I went over to the bed and used stones, plant pots, actual plants in pots and bamboo poles to represent where to plant seeds, where to put rows and where to plant seedlings and plants. After a bit of a shuffle about I got there in the end and was able to go about planting the 5 extra tomato, 1 extra pepper, 5 okra (never grown it before), a row of chickpeas (just to see what they are like), a couple of rows of peanuts (because I saw them in the supermarket and thought why not) and the leeks (who I just couldn’t find a home for – maybe I need another bed? Don’t tell Hubby the Un-Gardener, he thinks the garden had finished growing!) Oh and some popcorn.
By now the sun was low in the sky, the kids were home from school and I was beginning to lose the will to garden – well not quite. My mind was willing but my body as weak – very weak… So I sorted the bed for the sweetcorn with all sort of yummy for plant goodies: sheep poo and fertiliser and all that good stuff, and made it all fluffy so the seeds would have a nice place to grow from.
I told myself I had to stop now as my body was screaming at me “no more!” but as it wasn’t technically digging, weeding or planting, I played around with a hose and an irrigation riser and nozzle to see if it would water the entire corn bed with one nozzle in the centre. It seems like it would – when it’s not windy so it looks like it will do. I have found it is really hard to water well in the middle of the corn when it is really big. Well not this year – I have it sussed!
Then I looked at the broad beans. They have had it and need to come out. I have a bit of confession – I don’t actually like the taste all that much. I just grow them because it is something to grow in the winter…. Shhh don’t tell anyone. So I picked a large bowl full from a couple of the plants. I was going to shell in front of the telly last night but there was nothing on and I fell asleep…
Now I have go back out there today and sow corn, carrots, plant zukes and cukes, build trellis and toil in the soil for yet another day. I can’t wait until the gardening just involves, pulling a weed here, watering there, plucking this and picking that. This hard yakker is killing me!
Come again soon – I shall celebrate wholeheartedly when all the plants are in the ground!
Sarah the Gardener : o )
Wow, that is very impressive – good work. I wish I could grow chillies and peppers, but I think I’m pushing my luck with just tomatoes. I’m in Wellington, you see, and becoming an expert in making Meditteranean microclimates.
Hi Kimberley. Thank you so much. This year they are promising a hot dry summer, which is fantastic news after last year! So I’d bung in a pepper plant in your garden, as you never know – you might just get something – and if you don’t – well it’s a pretty looking plant!
Cheers Sarah : o )
What an enormous post! You are starting to approximate my enourmous posts but yours are more predominate and educational! I wish I had your energy (and all those gardenbeds) but we are in the process of building ours and implementing as many above ground raised beds as we can. We are thinking of building some vertical herb spirals using gabion techniques as we are so full of rocks here that we need to find something to do with them aside from tossing them about at each other when we are bored. I SO envy you your discipline with succession planting! I am a total newbie with food growing. Give me some grafting, some layering, some theory any day because that’s where I am a Viking…this food growing stuff is scary because it’s actually exposing how very little practical stuff I have learned over the last 4 years studying horticulture with a diploma under my belt and another one soon to add. Forget paper kudos…I want practical kudos with the resulting food so I am trawling the net looking for all sorts of wonderful gardeners like you to show me how…now I am twitching at my lack of activity and your sore bits…I think I am going to have to get out into the garden and make myself sore in sympathy :). Cheers for a mamoth post when you were at your tiredest…you deserve to put your feet up and have a cuppa but you had best get that garden sorted first (so that we have something to read about next post 😉 )
Hi. It was a long post as I have done so much. This time of year for a veggie gardener is the most exciting, most anticipated and most hard work part. And each year the garden seems to grow bigger and so you have to do more and before you know it you ache in places you didn’t know you had!
I still have loads to do, but have be called away from the garden for a couple of days. I think things will wait for me in their little pots…. I hope!
Good luck with your veggie patch, its actually quite easy when you get the hang of it… much easier than grafting!
Cheers Sarah : o )
Now I envy you the planting. We are moving into the wait for winter to hit season. We need to pull all the stubble off the garden, but my husband has decided we will leave it to catch the snow, which means I will not get into the garden until it dries enough to pull the junk out. Makes no sense, but that is life here. I look forward to watching our garden grow as I wrap up in my blankets and pull canned goods out of the pantry trying to remember the taste of fresh verses canned or dried or frozen.
Hi Lucindaline. I hope I can give you a glimpse of the summer warmth though my blog, as all the northern hemisphere gardens kept me going through our long cold wet winter. I hope winter doesn’t get to harsh for you this year.
Cheers Sarah : o )
Actually here in North Dakota some of us are sort of waiting for a “real” winter to remove some of the “extras” that have come in with the oil boom. Ha!
I cannot wait to start my own big veggie patch. Thanks for the inspiration.
Hi Cassandra. Sometimes I ask myself, oh why is my garden so big, as it can be hard work, but when the fruits of my labour come in… well the rewards are amazing and delicious! Good luck with your patch.
Cheers Sarah : o )
Thanks Sarah, I will get there one day with my patch. I have a small one at the moment with tomatoes, spinach, peppers and lettuce. But cannot wait to have a bigger one. Always worth the effort. Good luck.
I love planting time, but I hear you; it’s as exhausting as it is satisfying. Carrots are a nuisance in the beginning, aren’t they? I probably let mine get too big before I do the first weeding/thinning so it’s a little easier to tell what’s what. Ah well, they usually rally just fine, even though I’m disturbing them when I weed out their neighbors. Anyway, looks like you’ve got tons of goodies set out. -Have a great season!
Hi there. Thanks for your encouraging words. The garden is now very close to being planted out – just a few more bits and pieces to go in… But the weeds are starting to sneak back in… gardening a never ending business – there is always something to do. But I love it.
Cheers Sarah : o )
It sounds like you have been having a very productive time! Great to see your plot in Spring, all that hard work will definietly pay off!
And what is it about Broad Beans, I know a few people like you – pass them over here 🙂
Thanks Claire. I have almost finished getting everything in – finally! I have harvested a mountain of broad beans and now I need to shell them… the more I think about it the more I decide I don’t like them. The funny thing is – I’ve been making the kids eat them! I don’t think they like them either! Maybe I’ll just give them away… I wonder how well broad beans would travel to your neck of the woods? How do you eat them?
Cheers Sarah : o )
That is a lot of planting! I’ve got in 15 tomatoes and was questioning my sanity… Clearly I need a few more!
Hi Janette. You can never have too many tomatoes!
Cheers Sarah : o )
That is so true about carrots – when mine first sprouted I wasn’t sure if they were actually the carrots or the first sneaky weeds so I made myself wait until they got a bit more fluffy, which was hard, my fingers itched, but now I can identify them! 😉
Hi There.
I sow several rows every season and I still have trouble figuring it out! Carrots drive me nuts! I love tidy rows, but carrots come up in disguise! Why can’t they just look like carrots for the get go?!
Cheers Sarah : o )
Looks good! Soon enough all that hard work will be SO worth it!
Hi there. Thank you so much for you kind words. Despite all the hard work it is so rewarding!
Cheers Sarah : o )
Yes, I agree!