Progress Report

It's been 50 days since we started our gardening venture. With everything in its place, here is a sneak-peek into how far our plants have come. Please feel free to refer back to earlier posts for comparison of progress.

 

Top left - the mixed veggie patch. Top right - the cucumber patch. Above - the butternut patch.

The three beds with Mimilu watering.

Our tomato plants.

The first baby tomato.

The watermelon patch.

One of many baby watermelons.

Myself - busy harvesting our bok choy and spinach.

Our first harvest!

All the bottom beds.

A Heart-Shaped Bed

Whether you see it as a kind-of-homage to Kurt Cobain's Heart Shaped Box, or an attempt to bring more love into our garden, or simply the most suitable shape to fill a space, a heart-shaped bed was our next addition. We needed to plant six more beetroot- and six more tomato starts - this would be their home. It took a good while to dig the bed out. Between breaking up super-hard clay and cutting away old hard roots, it seemed never-ending - but, after a good while of manual labour, we could start preparing the soil.


Once our usual compost and Gold Dust had been mixed with the clay-rich-soil, the new occupants moved in. We would have to put up some bamboo to support the tomatoes at some point - but that can wait for now. We framed the bed with some white stones we got from the nursery in order to make it stand out. Tree bark and some of our stones were used to join the bed into rest of the garden.

Although the sun had already left us, the finished
product still stood out very well.

The Nutty Butts

On our last trip to the nursery we brought along some watermelon and butternut squash starts that were looking for a new home, along with more compost and bark. We decided to create a bed below the first two beds, where the butternuts are sure to get good sun. We wanted to make this bed different so we decided to make a circle shaped bed to create some visual differentiation.

Mimilu and myself began to clear the  ground after it was picked of stones and unnecessary roots (per usual), however  this time round the roots took  exeptionally long because we discovered thick, tough roots that poised a fight of note. But alas, after tugging, pulling, cutting and chopping we eventually managed to complete and  prepare the ground.

This area of the garden has a slight slope and there where the butternut bed is, the slope sightly steepens, therefore when we mixed the ground together with our compost and levelled out the bed to

prevent any unnecessary run-off. Yay, our butternut patch is ready! We
placed the starts in the circle formation and surrounded the bed with pieces of cut bamboo. We then began to finish off that area by making it a united patch. We completed the stone formation by linking it to the other two beds and placed the other bark pieces onto the path.

Tomatie Party

So the time had come to plant our little tomato starts that have been waiting so patiently to be planted. We once again began to pick away at the oh-so-barren clay ground that we are faced with. But after some vicious picking, we managed to mix in our bags of compost and introduced the tomatoes to their new home. 

Before planting the starts, Yakattack first cut some bamboo poles which we rooted into the ground to act as support posts for when the starts get to the right height. On completion of the bamboo supports and settling the starts we surrounded the new bed with stones and spread some bark as a garnish. As tomatoes grow upward, we decided to put a butternut squash and cucumber in the same bed as they grow along the ground thus making the

tomatie party so much more fun...