Herbs

Many of the herbs that I planted came up to small seedlings and just died or didnt come up at all and no matter what I did this happened. The lavender, chamomile, lemon basil, sage. I googled it and the answer seemed to be that the seeds were old or not stored well. So I was sold dud seeds. I know that its a risk of buying seeds over the internet but its very annoying! So I will try with new seeds from another place next year.

Even though my herbs have been growing a while they are still small because they got off to a rough start so they were a bit stunted. The reason was because truthfully I had no idea what I was doing and I believed everything from pinterest. While there are a lot of good ideas, theres also a lot of information that is just wrong and I learnt the hard way. The best soil is not the fake soil or potting mix but a mixture of 1:2 potting mix and top soil and Plastic pots work just as well as clay. Plating your seedlings in cardboard egg boxes then in the garden doesnt work because the cardboard doesnt devolve away and the roots get root rot. So research a lot and expect some of your plants to die.Well there are a bunch of photos of some of my herbs that are doing the best. I had a glutton of garlic chives so those I shopped up and froze in water in ice trays. It tastes amazing. Once you taste fresh you never go back to dry.

Thyme

Garlic chives- growing up again

wild strawberrys (For the hamster)

Chives

Cinnamon basil

Basil

Star anise

Paprika

French beans

Outside plants

 Green beans, I love these because they produce a lot and quickly, I planted this green bean 2 weeks ago and these are the first beans already, the plants have a short life span though. So I planted 2 every 2 weeks 4 times. The beans are so sweet and tender!

 These green peppers come from bushes planted 6 years ago! I hate green peppers and much to my disappointment they just dont seem to die.

 Potatoes! I am trying potatoes to this year and they grow so fast I'm amazed!

 Tomatoes are still growing steadily

these are carrots planted about 16 days ago.Some already have tiny carrots on the ends.

End of the road for the carrots

Well this is the last for my very first carrots. And they were just amazingly delicious! This dish had carrots, onions and green beans all that came from the garden and it was so good. And I also tried my hand at a Focaccia Bread and that came out very well too.

I was going to use the onions from the garden but apparently my mother bought somethings called pearl onions which are the ones used to pickle with so they were tiny and I just put them into the stew.

Cucumbers and Tomatoes

 After such a mission to get my Cucumbers to grow, we have some cucumbers that are about gherkin sized. The plant still isn't as big as it would have been by now. But its producing fruit and I'm very excited that its still alive even. They are demanding a lot of water and fertilizer now.

 The tomatoes are making tomatoes but the bushes arent doing very well. I think that there might be a lot of chlorine in the water that I used to water because everything isnt doing all that well. And maybe a combination of heat as well. But we've been getting a lot of rain and they are looking better.

I have giant red heirloom tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes and then black cherry tomatoes growing but so far only the giant red tomatoes have made tomatoes.

They other two bushes seem to be doing better than the red ones but we'll see how they go. I wanted to make canned tomatoes but maybe not this year. I really wanted a variety of tomatoes so that I can make salads more interesting. Cant wait.

Carrots update

So I just wanted to give a quick update on my carrots and after being washed and having taken off the stems (Stems is that what you call it? Their leaves?) I have enough carrots for only one meal. 6 months for just one meal! So now that I know this I know that you have to plant a lot, much more than what I planted so I have planted more. Hopefully these new ones will get bigger and then there will be a lot more to be eaten. But as I said before my carrots were purely for the joy of growing it.

Carrots!

Hooray for carrots. Even though their R6 a kg it's not a vegetable that is going to save you money for growing, but it's worth the experience. They do taste 100% better than the bought ones but these took a long long time to grow. We started them in winter, 6 months later and halfway through summer still waiting for some to grow. But I decided to pull them up today and planted some more carrot seeds. These didnt get off to a good start. First frost, then white fly and bad weather.  If I was depending on these I would have starved to death long ago. I found that carrots are quiet easy to grow, they dont need much care but they need fertilizer when they start growing. The soil can be needs to be a bit loose but nothing like potting soil. Anything to hard and they become deformed. Hopefully the new batch wont take so long :)

It's been so long

I haven't posted in such a long time. But things take a long time to grow and I was also struggling a lot with my garden and I was quiet disheartened. But things are looking up. As a first time gardener I can't expect it to be smooth sailing. So I have a few additions to my garden and many subtractions. But I'll post a full update on all of that tomorrow. For now I want to show you that my cucumber I the pot despite all the trouble I had with it and it coming back for the dead twice it's finally made two small cucumbers! This is like a beacon of hope for me. Since my main goal is to see if it's possible for me to grow all of this in winter inside a spare room in the house. 

This poor cucumber has survived all the abuse and it's still producing fruit. Took a while but it did so cucumbers for beginners are A++!