Here they are! Lovely peas growing right in a row. They are winning the growing race right now for sure. The plants are tall- they look healthy and green and strong.
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| Peas! |
There are some other sprouts coming up- but I'm not 100% sure it's all things I WANT to have sprouting. I had to do some weeding today, pulling out new grass shoots. Those puppies have LONG roots!
So anyway... one thing I didn't pull up were these....but I have no idea if I should have or not. Anyone in the know able to tell me if these are baby tomatoes or not??? (The sprout I'm talking about is right in the MIDDLE of the photo- two longish thin leaves)
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| Tomato? Or weed? |
The bok choy seems to be coming up easily, though the leaves are already discolouring. I think maybe they need more water. I haven't actually watered in a lot of days, because it's been raining/storming heavily pretty much every day. But, maybe they need even MORE water than that? All my seed packets are in Thai you see, so I don't really know! I guess I should do some more research. I know I have way too many little plants all together right here, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that- will they kill each other off? Goodness, am I the most uninformed gardener there ever was? I will be so excited if these actually grow into real life bok choy though, cause I love that stuff. Bought two big bunches at the market again today!
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| Bok choy! |
All in all, I'm very happy with the growing so far! Tonight I planted cilantro, lettuce (Grand Rapids lettuce!) and basil in the second bed. I hope they grow fast too. :)
Beni was amused for like 2 minutes when I let her splash in the watering can, and then she was like, "I'm outta here" and went to the front of the house totally unsupervised (ok, someone followed her...).
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| Mamma's little non-helper |
Even though our soil seems incredibly rich, we have these bags of soil that we bought, so we have been turning a couple bags into the beds. Joel is hard at work here...
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| Willing to do the back-breaking work for me. Thanks, Joel! |
Hopefully I'll have another good update soon! Oh, good news- I have bought spinach twice in the last week, so, it obviously can grow here....but, where to get seeds?????
Also... we have ANTS. Lots of ants. They are all over the beds. Some are small and black. Some are smallish and red. Some are LARGE and red, and they scare me the most. I've been spreading my coffee grounds on the beds, because supposedly, ants don't like coffee. But, the ants are still there. I read about making tobacco tea and pouring it over the beds... as ants also don't like tobacco... but, is this safe/good for for my plants? The most common suggestion I have read about getting rid of ants is to use the borax/sugar mix, but, I can't find borax here. Also, I still don't really get if that is safe to use directly on the bed/around the plants. Apparently ants also don't like mint. I'm sure you can get mint here... but again... I need seeds. Don't know where to look for them! So... yeah... that's the good news and the bad news I guess!
5 comments:
Yay for little peas! Sprinkle ground cinnamon on your veggie beds. For some reason, ants avoid cinnamon like the plague. The only problem is that since it rains a lot, you'll have to keep on applying the cinnamon. And, along the same vein, if you can find pure mint extract, you can put a bit in some water and spray your garden with it, but it will probably also have to be reapplied after a couple of rain showers.
word verification: ableto. I hope you're ableto get rid of your ants.
We had ants in SC, never could get rid of them. They mostly left the tomatoes and other stuff alone, just had to be timely about picking ripe stuff. Supposedly marigolds help, but I haven't seen those here, so you might not find them either. (And the seedling sure looks like a tomato to me!)
Ah, definitely have marigolds here, they are popular for offerings at the temples. But, I'm going to try these other things before I plant something I don't really want. Glad you think they look like tomatoes though! Yay!
Can you get cream of wheat? The theory is that the ants eat it dry and then it blows up in their stomach and kills them. I've not tried it - we use the chemicals if we have a big hill. Not sure how it would work with all the rain you get if it gets wet first you may just be feeding them.
If you're getting tons of shoots grouped together you'll definately want to thin otherwise your plants won't grow to full size.
Looks like you've got a great start.
Bummer about the ants. They are a pain. I don't know if you can find someone local who speaks English and can maybe ask the locals where to get mint to help you get rid of the ants. Not sure if any family can ship to you some Borax.
Good luck on the growing. I didn't plant a garden this year with all the moving but I can't wait for next spring so I can. I love fresh veggies from the garden.
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