Carrots!

Just got my second harvest of carrots today and pulled up plenty! Can't wait to sow some more carrot seeds and this time have a far bigger area to grow them, and then store them to eat over a few months. I will update this post in the next couple days so check back for other information about the garden.







So far the easiest things to grow have been the cherry tomato plants and the carrots, hardly any real work needs to be done for them to grow other than watering, the strawberries are also now growing well but this year I don't expect a big harvest. I might let them spread in the garden box a bit. I expect I'll get around 30 strawbwerry plants next year which should be enough for me.

Although some things went good, somethings never really went that well, like the broccoli. The green caterpillars loved them and the plants just looked terrible recently so I pulled all but one of them. It's ok, I won't be doing so much broccoli next year because other plants you can get bigger harvests from in less time.


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Whats going on the garden

Just a small garden update.

Broccoli plants - I had to pull two of the plants, the rest have held up well and the broccoli are growing well, albiet a small issue in one of the boxes which might be a boron deficiency. Though still perfectly edible broccoli. Here is the one I just harvested about 10 minutes ago. It came to around 450g but on here the scale must of went off.



Spinach - Well it all bolted and I pulled it up, I will put spinach back in after the fall and also MANY more carrots that I'm just about to sow tomorrow. Next time I defienitely need to start protecting my spianch better.

Cherry Tomatoes - I have totally lost count how many are growing, there are just so many flowers everywhere on the plants, all which will turn into lush small cherry tomatoes. I'm waiting for quite a lot to ripen at the moment but the plants are doing really well and producing a hell of a lot. Can't wait to harvest them, I'm gonna net them in the week too so I can stop them being eaten as they riepn. I must have hundreds growing at the moment. One mistake, I haven't really pruned the plants, I think I'm going to start that now. There is only one tomato plant that is not doing much, and that was the one which I put in the pot. I have now transplanted it into the big garden box.


Carrots - I pulled up a few carrots the other day and they were still a bit smaller than I expected, so I'll be leaving them for another 3 weeks. Though I ate what I harvetsed and they were nice. I just used them in a small salad I had.

Garden Pictures

GARDEN PICTURES

I thought I'd give anyone that is interested some more pictures of my first ever try and growing my own food. So far I've done well, at least for my first try. I have come across many different problems and tried to deal with them. Not always have I been able to but my plants seem to be surviving well and producing food to eat. I've harvested the spinach a few times now and got quite a lot from it. Unortunately it looks like its going to seed (bolting) because it's growing taller and just looks different. Can anyone confirm this is what's happening?


The broccoli are starting to flower, so I can see the broccoli head forming from the centre of the plant (yay!), Carrots are ready to harvest so I'll pull those before end of week, and I'm just about to go and transplant some strawberry plants after this post. Some i'll keep in pots though.

My Cherry tomato plants. These are the ones I look after the most. Out of everything the most important plants for me are the strawberry an tomato plants. So these get extra attention to make sure they produce a lot of fruit.

Why not try a garden youself? If you're on a healthy CRON diet then its probably one of the best things you can possibly do to improve the shopping bills by just a little, and also get the benefits of home grown healthy organic foods. Even if it's like a few plants in pots, still worth it :)

In the garden

Another Garden update. I have transplated almost all the plants in their best places (after observing the sun and shadows during different times). Everything seem fine, no transplant shock or any signs of the plant not taking well. The tomatoes are now at the side of my house, 3 of them planted near the trellis to the left and 1 on the right side near the green house and I believe these are getting 11 hours sun at the moment, and one in the garden box because it was the only spot that receieved 7+ hours of sun, the rest of the time its shaded by the palm trees we have. The cherry tomato plants below look smaller than they were but I was told to plant them further down for best results, even if it coveres some of the leaves. Strawberry plants to the left, still small... I wish I had started this one earlier but next year I'll make sure I do. I have to get containers for some other strawberry plants. I have 7 of them this year, maybe more next year from the runners.



The broccoli is doing well now, but I might have a problem with crowding. I don't think the roots are that deep with these plants so I might try moving one of them so they're spaced out a bit. I think that wont hur the plant, or will it?



My 2nd garden box is coming along now, the spinach this time hasn't really been touched because we put a netting over the top with has very small holes in, slugs proably wont fit through the holes. We also have beer trap and found quite a few dead slugs by the tomato trees (in the plastic cups) and by the mint. The cover can't go over the whole box because of the tomato plant, but it it covers most of it at least, and its only a short term solution. I'm looking at getting some sort of copper tape or something. Apparently that works by shocking the slugs.


There did look there were more spinach in the box, it really grew a lot within a short space of time. So I harvested some spinach for a smoothie and threw away the really damaged leaves as I didn't really feel like eating them. They were quite destroyed and had some slug slime over them or something lol. With the slug issue sorted (I think), hopefully my next harvest of the plants I took leaves from will be good. The carrots are doing well, I seem to have managed to get away with sowing the seeds in March is I recall correctly, they did survive, and the leaves above the carrots are growing taller all thet time. Within 2 weeks I might see if I can feel around in the earth to see if I have some decent size carrots to eat. Something made me laugh last night when I read a post on "when you know you should harvest carrots", and one of the first answers was "when your local rabbits pays your garden a visit" lol. What was funny about that was there was a rabbit that we been trying to catch in my garden for the last couple days, it's a small black rabbit from next door which must have escaped and gone under the fence. Anyway, rabbit problem sorted :)

Some new plants below such as african blue basil near the frence, the pot on the left of that is a strawberry plant, and to the right of the basil is my mint plant which is now recovering very well and looking healthier. To the rightof that near the palm trees there is a plant which I don't know what it is, I just thought i'd save it from my aunte who doesn't want the thing.



All together not so bad for my first attempt, still more things to do that I didn't get around to. I didn't manage to get the apple trees because of lack of work recently, but thats okay. I thought I best stick to a small variety this year and then next year I'll think about growing much more variety of foods. I know I'll be far more prepared early next year.

Anyway thats all for now. Maybe this year, but definitely next year I hope to get a good video camera so I can talk on video and can show the garden, answer any questions, give me opinions of things etc etc... should be fun.

Another Garden Update

Two mint plants here. Last week my nephew decided to run and stamp on it when he kicked a footbal around the area. It looked like it was dying but today looked a bit healthier. Anyway I bought another mint plant to the right which seems to be doing fine. I want it to grow quite a lot still so that I can start eating more mint. I've only just been using a few leaves with some lindt chocolate at the moment, and mint tea too. My nephew and niece both love the mint though, I have to stop them from eating it all lol



Slug attacK! Last night I went outside about 11pm and found quite a few slugs attached to my spinach leaves. It seems they not gonig for my broccoli plants, just the spinach. So over the next few days I really have to find a solution for this, many of the leaves now have holes in them lol. I should have really sorted this out sooner but will find something to keep them away! When the spinach is ready to harvest can I eat the spinach leaves that only have small hole in? If I wash them properly of course?

The broccoli plants clearly need spacing more, I think i'm going to just about be able to fit 5 into that box but a lot more in the other one.



Carrots, well not much to say about these really. Starting to take on a different appearance now than that of just grass.



And my best plants are the cherry tomato plants. Soon to find their home in the garden at the end of May, i'm leaving them out until the evening at the moment for them to get used to slightly colder temperatures. They look very healthy.



The strawberry plants are finally starting to grow a bit faster. They took a very long time to get started, slowest plant I've ever seen grow! Pics of them next week :)

I have some miracle grow that I picked up from the supermarket the other day. I have yet to use it. Does anyone else use this and how have they found it? A big difference in plant growth?

Anyway I'm off right now to start picking out some of the weeds that have grown in the boxes!

Some success, some failure

Its been a few weeks now since beginning this gardening and growing my own plants which will hopefully produce nice food. I've had 6 of the 10 strawberry plants grow, the others there was this hairy fungus or something growing inside the pot. It must have been the humidity created by the bag over the countainers to keep warm air in here. Probably not good enough air ciculation? Anyway thats ok, 6 strawberry plants is fine and I'm happy. Now I just got to get them to a full plant without losing anymore! THey're still really tiny but I read that soon they should start to pick up and grow much faster.



I have two types of spinach out the garden and one of them is doing FINE, everything is growing as you can see above. However the other box only a few have come up and in total I was expecting around 50 spinach plants. Maybe its the seeds I used in the other box are not too good or maybe they just take longer (i'll have to re read the packet). If nothing happens in the next week I'll sort that out again because its not too late for spinach :) The broccoli is also doing fine, I think its also starting to pick up a bit now.



Now my tomato plants, I gave 2 of them away to a friend and have 5 in a big pot, and a couple downstairs that I think are only just starting to come up. The other plant I hit the pot over by accident lol. whoops! But even if I only end up with 5 tomato plants that great! (also note my Mint plant to the right here, gottta find a home out the garden for this because apparently it literally takes over. So this will go in a small box on its own I think! In the middle there is a strawberry plant, just one in that pot but I might have put 2-3 seeds in there. The others are downstairs.



As for the Basil, well its holding up, I realize that cold weather not so good. Sometimes its showing signs of dying, then it springs back to life agian. Might have been at least a month too early to put it into the garden but I'll learn from this if it dies and just buy another one. Cheap anyway!

Soon the made up green house I made out the garden will be done, I will then place some of the plants in there shortly.

Oh yes and I almost forgot, I sowed two rows of carrots and there seems to be these grass-like things coming up. I guess its not grass so I'll leave it alone lol.

thats all for now :)

Garden Update

These plants you can see in the picture are tomato plants, the top right two big pots are from apple seeds that my niece and nephew planted. They look after these because I want to learn them to take care of the plants and stuff. I'm not using these of course, I'm buying apple trees because I actually want fruit either this year or next year! The little green pot I have no idea what it actually is, I never did that... maybe it was the kids again. The plant right at the bottom of this picture is an Aloe Vera plant that was given to me by my aunte. Soon when these grow a little more I will plant the tomato plants outside in the green house that we're building. Okay so it's not the best looking thing in the world, but I'm making something out of materials that we just had around the garden to save money. At least it will get the job done! Maybe at a later point I can buy a nice glass green house but maybe next year.


To the right you can see part of the garden but theres still more space around the top corner to the left which is about the size of my house, and then behind the camera and to the right. I have to sort out the trellace that you can see in the picture because we haven't grown anything on it before. I have no idea why not... my dad just didn't bother in the end I guess. I'll post other pictures of the rest of my garden when it's actually all sorted out and the plants are in place. I might actually make a video instead and go around my garden showing what I'm growing and how everything is getting along. You can probably see a lonely little basil plant in the big garden box to the right. I have to get more herb plants this friday to put in that section.

So this year is mostly a big learning experience for me. Next year I'll probably start preparing in feburary or so rather than end of march to early april as I started this year. It's all fun though, I love watching everything come up. I get my cup of green tea and go into the garden to check every morning or evening :-)

The strawberry plants I haven't pictured yet because they've only just started germinating after 2 weeks. I have about 3 or 4 left to germinate but I ain't sure how many seeds I put in each pot... I'll see if I can transplant them later on.



The spinach and broccoli are really started to grow a bit faster now, the 'true leaves' on the spinach have just started coming up I think. I couldn't get a detailed enough picture but below is how they're doing now. Because the true leaves have just popped up I think the plants are really going to start growing faster soon.




Other stuff

The other day it was a nice day so me and some friends went to the park. As you all know I took something called CIPRO in 2007 that caused tendinosis all over my body, including both achilles tendons. Although it was relatively mild to what msot people who react to these drugs get, it was still was very long lasting and persistent even with the right measures employed to try and heal. Anyway, it's 18 months later and thye seem to have finally healed or mostly healed. I played football for over 1 hour and I had no problems with my tendons at all. This is definitely a good sign, because as you can see with my garden progress I've also been busy there and had no problems. So everything is going in a positive direciton right now, I hope it continues :-)

Thats all for today everyone, I'm off to make a green smoothie and relax.

Oh yes one other thing before I go, I'm a bit disappointed that so many CRON bloggers have stopped. It seems we go through waves of new bloggers then they all eventually give up. This is what I've seen over the last few years anyway. I hope some of you out there can continue to blog, even if it's once a month! It really doesn't take a lot of time. But I understand if you haven't got much to say them you can tend to start just repeat yourself over and over. I've also had a few people ask me about how successfully people are with CRON because all they can see is CR blog community just getting smaller and smaller and they assume that everyone just gives up on CR. It's my understanding that for most people this isn't true? The majority of CRers actually do not share their experiences, but you can find them at the Calorie Restriction Society email lists.

Seedlings

I never thought that I'd become so interested in gardening, as I said in my previous post I was going to do it for many years now but each time I never pushed myself to make any real effort in growing things. A couple weeks ago the sun was out, I stopped being lazy and started to prepare the garden and make the garden boxes. This was all fun, gave me plenty of exercise and time outside away from the computer or TV. I was surprised how much work had to be done though because it took quite a few days to get everything sorted. A lot of hard work from 11am to 8pm most days with only a few breaks. Because of the energy requirements I did actually lose a bit of weight because I never compensated but I'm sure that will come back again. On a side note, I had no issues at all with my tendons (from Cipro) so this is a good indicator that they have healed or are very close to normal now.

The best part though is watching the little seedlings germate and come through the soil. One night there might be nothing, and then suddenly they just appear the next morning! I think at least 90% of the seeds I put down seem to have germinated. Majority of my broccoli and spinach seedlings have germinated but one or two that didn't come up. Some of them I put 2 seeds in each hole just in case ad then will pull out one of them soon.

Because I'm growing several different things I hope I can keep ontop of it and not become too much for my first effort. I think I'll be alright though.

In a week or two I should have enough money to go and get the apple trees. I'm also thinking about getting a mini green house. Although our garden is definitely big enough to support a big one I don't think my parents would be happy taking such a huge space up :) If I had my way though the whole garden would be growing something lol.


Spinach Seedlings


So yeah, very excited to see the results and love watching the seedlings come up and grow :)

Why Grow your own vegetables? For me I'm hoping its going to save me money... See this news report.

Growing my food

After many years of saying that I would grow my own food I finally just got started on the garden and preparing it all. Because kids come over and for other reasons we made a couple garden boxes. Although there is no sheeting underneath it, it acts more as a barrier so that they don't get stamped on by people. So far in the first box that you can see has been done I have planted spinach and broccoli. I plan on having tomato plant, carrots, apple trees, herbs, I'll also have some sprouts growing by my window inside the house. I'm still looking at other things to grow of course but doing some research on it at the moment since I'm quite new to this. We have a fairly big garden so at least we are now putting the space to good use.

Here is the garden as of today;





I am planting in those two boxes, to the left of them where you can see the earth dug up. Also I have a little patch on the upper right too. We have more space behind where I was standing on the first picture, and we also have even more space to the right of where I was standing. At the moment I'm checking out how long each patch has in sunlight though first. I'm wanting at least 5-6 hours I think, preferably more.

I will keep you updated and add photos as I progress :)