Whaleshares Logo

My Garden - A Race Against The Clock

simplymikePosted for Everyone to comment on, 5 years ago5 min read

Our 'official' last frost-date passes about a week ago. However, I'm still light-years away from planting out all my crops.

Chaos

The picture above shows you just a small piece of the garden and how it looked like yesterday.

Since it has been unusually cold these last couple of weeks, I've only just started to let the seedlings get used to being outside.

Every morning, I take all the crops that will be planted in the open air outside, and every evening I take them back inside. Depending on how they can manage low temperatures or not, I either move them into the greenhouse or inside the house. It's a pretty time-consuming task, and I'm definitely behind on schedule...on everything.

Spider Mites

Last year, the end of the gardening season was a disaster: not only did an unidentified pest spread all around the garden and infected all my crops, but I also had to deal with spider mites.

Just to be sure, I ordered some predatory mites that are supposed to eat all the spider mites. The package arrived sooner than I had expected, but I wasn't ready to use them like you are supposed to.

You see, you need to hang the small packages in your veggies and your fruit plants, but nothing has been planted yet. I tested my soil yesterday, and I need to fertilize every single bed and every single container before I can get to planting.

Since I had read that these predatory mites survived on eating spider mite and pollen, I paid a quick visit to the gardening center to buy some flowers, so I would at least have something to hang the paper envelopes with the mites in.

spider mite flowers2.jpg
Click to enlarge

Race Against The Clock

Since everything still needs to be fertilized before I can plant anything in its final spot, it is a race against the clock. Some of the seedlings I bought in the garden center are close to dying, simply because they are still stuck in their original, tiny plastic pots. Their roots have grown too big for the small containers, and/or they've used up all nutrients.

Yesterday, I ran around all day long, trying to save what I could, which - of course - took up all my time. As a result, I could only start fertilizing the raised beds and containers today, but at the moment, I'm only halfway through.

Why on earth did I decide to get so many raised beds and containers??

Until I'm done fertilizing, the plants can't go anywhere, and they are stuck inside. The picture below shows only a very small part of my indoor growing room.

indoors2.jpg
Click to enlarge

Frustration

It frustrates me that I'm once again so limited in what I can do in a day. Last week I received the bad news that the bulged disk in my back is back. After going through 2 surgeries last year, there's a big chance I will have to undergo another one pretty soon.

I'm fairly sure I made the problem worse during the last two days, but I simply had no choice. If I want a garden this season, I need to push through.

All I can do is hope that the damage isn't as bad as it feels at the moment. There is still such a truckload of work that needs to be done.

I realize that I should be setting boundaries and rest more often, but I find it hard to do so once I'm 'in the flow'.

I often wonder if prepping the garden is actually worth the effort. I have an appointment with my surgeon next week. If she decides that a new surgery is inevitable, I will be out again for at least 6 months. If that's the case, I won't be able to maintain my garden.
So there is a big chance I'm working my ass off for nothing...

But then I look at all my beautiful garden experiments, watching them grow a little bigger every day, and I forget all my worries.

Left top: edible Daylily - right top: Chinese Yam or Cinnamon-Vine
Left bottom: Chayote - right bottom: Black Sapote

unusual veggies1.jpg
Click to enlarge

And even my everyday-veggies are doing great. For the first time ever, my peas an beans are actually a success story.

peasandbeans.jpg
Click to enlarge

Watching my crops grow up helps me to get through the day. It's one of the few things that brings me truly, uncomplicated happiness.

I'm amazed by the beauty of nature every day again...


I'm heading back into the garden now, hoping I will be able to give you a full update soon, with all the beds fertilized and all the crops planted.


signature2.gif

Signature created with The Logo Creator


More Posts You Might Like:

SteemIt

Twitter

Instagram

Pinterest

Sign Up to join this conversation, or to start a topic of your own.
Your opinion is celebrated and welcomed, not banned or censored!