Gardening – Page 6 – Domestic Felicity

Garden update

As we’re just starting out (with baby steps) on our gardening journey, we aren’t expecting an outstanding harvest from the garden this season. So far, it’s more of a learning experience for us – we want to find out what grows well in our area, what works, what doesn’t, how to deal with pests, how often and how much to water, etc. And of course, we’re having a lot of fun – and learning loads – along the way.

We have very heavy, dense clay soil, so we splurged and bought some bags of garden soil which is lovely, but expensive. In the meantime, I have started a compost pile using kitchen scraps, garden clippings and manure from the chicken coop. It’s small, but I’m adding to it constantly and hope that in a few months, it will provide us with some valuable fertilizer. I know I should probably water and turn it more often, but hey, it’s organic material. It will break down, right?

We also have tons of rocks, so clearing even a bit of space for planting involves lots of rock-picking. I’ve utilized some of the larger, prettier ones for garden beds, as you can see below.

tomatobed

My little cherry tomato and pepper seedlings are now outside, and growing like weeds with plenty of water and sunshine. I do provide shade for them during the hottest hours of the day, from about midday till 3 PM. I do it simply by pulling an old sheet over their wire cages (I put the cages in to discourage cats and chickens from digging around the plants) and holding it down with rocks. I expect the need for that will be over once the plants mature a bit and put in deeper roots.

Our pepper plants (thriving and putting out flowers!), cherry tomato seedlings, and sage.

We’ve also planted more herbs: sage, rosemary and spearmint. I love the smell of mint when I water it at the end of a long, hot day. And I have some coriander started in pots. We use a lot of coriander in cooking and it loses its freshness very quickly, so it’s really something that pays off to grow ourselves.

Gardening is more enjoyable than I ever thought it would be!

Chicks, seedlings and useful reading

Here is one of our newest chicks, hatched this week. Our current resident rooster is a Black Brahma, so we get a lot of black chicks with cute-looking feathered legs. Unfortunately, we don’t have a Black Brahma hen (I’d love to get one, so we can have pure-bred chicks), but in the meantime I’m hoping to get good birds from crossing the Black Brahma with our best hen, a mixed New Hampshire (I think). She’s a nice big brown hen and gives us plenty of big brown eggs. So hopefully I can get some pullets who will be beautiful, good-sized, and good layers.

brahmacross

Black Brahma cross chick held by Shira (7 years old)

seedlings

Above you can see a mixed tray of cherry tomato, pepper and melon seedlings. I realize it’s rather late in the season to have seedlings indoors, but I’m counting on the long, warm days we usually have well into October and even November. Either way, I have nothing to lose, right? The tomatoes, peppers and herbs we already have planted outside seem to be doing nicely. We’ll see how they fare and whether we get any produce by the end of the season. I can hardly wait.

In my spare time (ha ha) I’m catching up on a bit of useful reading. My current read is The Backyard Homestead, and I must say I’m greatly enjoying it. It has everything outlined in such a clear, straightforward way – gardening, raising small livestock, useful landscaping – and it really showed me that, rather than wish we had more land (which of course would be nice), we should instead work towards making the best of what we do have – and I know that, being creative, we can do much, much more.

Getting into gardening

A combination of several factors has prevented us from doing any serious gardening until now. There’s the fact that in our eight years of marriage, my husband and I moved four times (and gardening does go better with permanent residence in one place); then there was always something, such as being pregnant, or having a new baby, or keeping garden-destructive livestock such as chickens and goats, or it being the Sabbatical year (which, for Jews living in Israel, means you can’t plant in soil – only in containers).

Of course some of it, let’s face it, was just plain lack of motivation. More determined people would have invested in sturdy fences and large containers they can take with them when they move. However, in the past months we really felt ready and willing to finally start gardening seriously and diligently, and there was only one thing that stopped us.

To put it simply, our neighbors had goats. Now, we have kept goats in the past, and we know these animals are clever, nimble and extremely difficult to contain. However, we also believe it is the responsibility of the owner to prevent his livestock from becoming a nuisance to his neighbors. So we talked, we explained, and we pleaded… and all we got in return were some pretty lame excuses. To top it all off, at night I would hear our neighbor sneak off and let his goats out. He wanted the benefit of pasture for his animals without the responsibility of controlling them.

Luckily for us, we weren’t the only people annoyed by having their fruit trees repeatedly eaten down to the ground. After several neighbors lobbied together, the goat owner gave in and the offending goats were sold. I felt as though I could dance.

So we recently started a small garden, which we plan to expand in time, once we get a little more practice. We’re hopeful and really happy to watch our plants grow without being eaten. Here you can see a climbing tomato plant, a patch of mint that is really thriving, some flowers and some lemon balm.