On Gardening

Gardening was something that was in my life since my childhood. For the first five years of my life, I was living with my grandparents who has a small farm where they grew different kinds of vegetables. I grew up used to being able to pick up fresh from the garden tomatoes, cucumbers, cherries, apples, dill, pears, raspberries, black currant and so many other things! I feel like there was not a thing my grandparents did not grow. I also feel like this experience got deeply rooted in my since I was a kid,

Last year, we have bought a house with a tiny land – it is really not big to do anything grand but there was just enough place for a small garden which was great enough for me. In April, I got my cucumber, tomatoes and mini bell peppers started and eventually moved them outside in the middle of May.

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Before we moved the seedlings into the ground outside though, Nicolas also managed to add a bag of fertilizer to the ground – and unknowingly, burned some plants that we transferred over. Oh well, we are the first time gardeners, right??

Most of the plants I have grown from the seeds like yellow pear-shaped tomatoes, red pepper, mini bell peppers and Early Russian and English cucumbers. We have also stopped by the greenhouse and picked up some chocolate mint, rosemary, sage, one zucchini plant, one eggplant, jalapenos peppers plant, Greek peperoncini peppers and red cane peppers. I have also planted some dill and a few rows of radishes. I know this sounds like a lot but it is mostly one plant of everything except tomatoes and cucumbers and tomatoes and I feel like it has been enough for us to eat and cook for every day. My favourite thing in the morning is going to the garden and picking up some fresh mint to make my morning team – and the fresh mint from the garden tastes like nothing else!

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As of now, we have already had some radishes, zucchinis, jalapenos, yellow peppers and cucumbers. In fact, this week we had 2-3 cucumbers every day so we are behind on eating them. I can’t complain though as I love growing and eating the fresh vegetables right outside of your garden.

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I can’t say that it all went smooth to make all the vegetables strive – I had issues with zucchinis for some time as they were not getting pollinated and were not growing past small specimens. I had to learn how to differentiate the male and the female flowers and how to pollinate them manually – the same issue was happening with cucumbers, Then, my tomatoes started fattening to I had to be giving them trims to make sure that they direct their energy to not growing up (although they already for 1.5m high) and towards growing the actual tomatoes. I also learned how to figure out that the radish is ready and when to pick it up and how to make sure it grows bigger by plucking out the radish that grows too close.

You see, so many gardening details! But I am not going to lie, I loved doing it – although, it is a lot of work, it did not feel like that at all. I was doing it out of interest and curiosity and it felt like pleasure. Nicolas even started joking that I am turning into a crazy gardening lady. Well, maybe I really am? I like it.