Year 1 – started in July 2023
The year my son Remus is born.
It was a nice year with plenty of sun and during some vacation “boredom” I was in search of a hobby that could keep me occupied for a long while, was easy-going and could help sustain my growing family.
In my family, we always had a green thumb. The idea of having my own garden to grow things in has been playing in my mind ever since we bought our house in 2020 (and before that). Now was the best time to start!
I had some old pavement stones lying on the side from an old path I had broken up earlier (in 2022.. or that same year.. I can’t remember) and decided to put them to good use. The first iteration of the growing beds was being created by laying these stones as pictured below and asking a good friend of mine (Jimmy) if he could help me out till the soil (he had an electric cultivator and the soil was too hard to do so with a spade). With help of Jimmy and his cultivator, we loosened up the first 10 cm of the top soil.
When the soil was tilted, I needed to do some prepping.
I removed the loose roots and weeds from the growing beds in order to optimize growth.
As you can see was the most left bed not tilled. This was purposely done as:
- The cable didn’t reach far enough to do it
- I asked to leave it as such and have it act as a “wild” garden to attract bees and other pollinators
As I was kinda late in the year to start planting vegetables, it became a rushjob and had to do some quick research on plants which could still be planted in summer.
In 2023, I settled on planting the following vegetables:
Carrots – Zucchini – Onions – Rucola – Lamb’s lettuce
In the above picture, you can see I kept the seed packaging and put them near the rows where I had sown the seeds (while trying to respect optimal distances in the somewhat small patches). More clear images:
Year 1 – August 2023 – you get some, you lose some
Growing had some mixed successes.
The lamb’s lettuce I was trying to grow sprouted and all seemed fine… up until the moment it got eaten by snails after a few days of rain.
Good thing, I had some potatoes growing near the compost heaps.
A result of rotten potatoes I had thrown away earlier that year and during the building of the vegetable garden had pushed in some loose fertile ground near the patches. It was a coin toss as to what would happen but I was in luck.
By the end of August, I had a small batch I harvested cleaned and stored for prep.
As August and September promised to be quite warm and sunny, I also tried my hand at cultivating ginger.
Year 1 – September-October 2023 – harvesting seasons
September was quite uneventful.
Everything was slowly growing. Most of the time a matter of maintaining the beds and keeping them weeds-free. Watering the plants to prevent them from withering.
By the end of September and up until mid October did I do a few harvests.
The Rucola was a success as well as the onions (though were these rather small).
Zucchini’s were still growing and it looked promising in the sense I would have about 3 good ones ready for harvest.
Sadly enough was one eaten by snails, at first I presumed it were mice as my cats were bringing in plenty of dead mice during that time. The ginger was looking promising and I had some hopes of it succeeding… though I would be proven wrong a few weeks later as the shoots withered and died due to the changing of the seasons.
As my green thumb was developing and took real pride and enjoyment in growing things, I read up on plants which needed cold and freeze. I learned that Garlic is typically planted mid-October and needs cold winters in order to have some nice bulbs. So I bought some garlic from the local shop (ALDI) and planted them in a designated tray I built.
The Sunflower I had been given by my mother-in-law was blooming as well.
(Sunflowers are my favorite flower BTW). The flowers themselves were rather small, the plant itself was about my length (about 1m80 in height). I decided that the sunflowers would be a returning plant for the following years. They’re great at attracting pollinators and are just lovely to look at.
Year 1 – November-December 2023 – Preparations 2024 and late harvests
The year came to an end. My son was born on December 1st 2023. Due to my wife being in the late stages of her pregnancy, all I could do was prep the garden for the winter to come and do the last late-year harvests.
Carrots were harvested. Ginger sprouts remained (but would wither and die in early 2024 due to a mild winter). Garlic would continue growing throughout winter and during spring 2024.
I started “project butternut” which was nothing more than seeds from a butternut we had bought and I had mixed into the soil of a dedicated growing bed (thinking they would survive and give me an early start the next year).
Next year, I would do improvements and do some more planning and prepping to increase the yield.
I planned and thought about which vegetables to grow and researched some more in order to fully optimize growing. My first lessons were drawn:
- Arrange and setup a planting schedule
- Start growing plants in-house before planting most of them into the soil
- Treat the growing beds
- Cultivate the growing beds outside during winter as this:
– helps destroy the roots of weeds (making them more manageable)
– kill harmful insects in the soil
– helps enrich the soil as the weeds rot in the soil and make it more fertile for planting
And thus ended 2023.
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