Weekly reports – Grounded gardens

Growing in March and filming

The other day I planted all the seeds I had planned for March. What went into the ground were two kinds of tomatoes, leaf parsley, goose parsley, basil, lavender, giant verbena, snow love flowers and carrot. I have planted everything except the carrot indoors, the carrot ended up in the greenhouse. Carrots cannot be pre-cultivated. When it gets going, it sends a long root thread down into the ground and when it doesn’t go any further, it starts to grow on the width instead. This means that if you sow carrots in a tray indoors, they will only grow as long as the tray is deep.

I am so happy that there will be a lot of flowers this year. We haven’t invested much in it before, all the focus has been on edible crops. But the more I learn about biodiversity and the needs of the insects, my interest in flowers has also increased. There happened to be a lot of purple flowers. Nothing I thought of when I ordered, but it’s probably the color I like most in flowers.

I made an attempt to film when I was sowing but inexperienced as I am filming, it turned out to be a weird angle where my arm obscured a part of the seeds… How difficult can it be, one wonders, quite difficult it seems. Haha! There will be new attempts! The video of the sowing of the carrot turned out quite well, so possibly it will be up on youtube soon. I posted my first video in the form of a “short” on YouTube the other day. It’s a movie where I peel a black, dried, half-rotten cabbage and find a beautiful little head under all the bad leaves. If you haven’t seen it, check it out here: https://youtube.com/shorts/k3hsXv7yxd4?feature=share

Perhaps you have found similar treasures among your stored vegetables?

Weekly report v. 5

After two weeks of more active blogging, I have realized that I will not be able to keep the time schedule that I thought. Instead of a promise, it will therefore from now on be a goal to get the posts out on the right days, at least as long as I work at my second job.

In the garden, the fence has been torn down, the first buds have started to emerge from the ground and trees have been felled outside our plot.

Yes, the fence, which was mostly chicken wire attached to a few sticks, has been torn down. It was super easy and, as is so often the case, the biggest step was to start. The plot feels more open and welcoming and now we are ready to put a nice fence where we want it. It will make the plot feel more open and interwoven instead of divided as it has been until now. There is one more fence that needs to be removed before the lot is completely open, but it is also a fence that increases security for our child because she cannot access piles of boards and storage. We’ll see how that fence turns out. What is so nice about this house is that there is no stress to finish, because it will never be finished. We will change and fix and arrange various things as long as we live here.

The first buds that we see here belong to the beautiful and cautious but incredibly brave snowdrop. White, green, sweet and a lovely reminder that spring is coming!

The neighbor has cut down a lot of trees that have been standing right on the border of our property. Some have also hung over the plot and the only thing that has supported them is our old pear tree. Fortunately, the neighbor managed to cut down the trees without harming the nice little pear tree. Such talented tree fellers! Now we get more sun into the plot and the conditions for creating a small berry bush oasis have become much better. At the same time, it is always a bit sad when large trees are felled and you know that there will be major consequences for the animals and fungi that lived in, on and near the trees.

Thanks for this week!

//Amanda

Weekly report week 4

Another week has passed and it is still quite quiet in the garden. It will probably be so for a while longer, so now the focus is on planning and dreams. I currently find inspiration indoors with gardening programs on TV, seed bags and photos from last summer. Most of the gardening is done in my head right now. I dream of raised beds and flower beds, a berry bush oasis and a pond full of life!

This spring and summer there will be a little extra focus on flowers. In the past I have felt that it is unnecessary to spend time, energy and money on things that cannot be eaten, but this autumn and winter I have felt a growing desire to have lots of flowers in the garden. And if we’re being honest, there’s nothing in the garden that’s unnecessary. Every flower, bush and tree contributes to the biological diversity that is absolutely necessary for our and all other animals’ survival.

In the house where I grew up, my mother had amazing flower beds. The people who bought the house when my parents moved removed everything and planted grass. I wish I had taken cuttings and whole plants from that garden. Unfortunately, I didn’t, so now I get to remember and be inspired by the diversity and create a new and unique version. It’s also absolutely fantastic to be able to do that!

I’m sow quite a few flowers from seed this year, something I haven’t succeeded very well with the few times I’ve tried before. But you mustn’t give up, you just have to try again! Then I will go to the flower shop every now and then and buy what’s in bloom, is beautiful and seems to attract a lot of insects. Going to the flower shop regularly is a good way to get variety and diversity in the garden. What is sold is what is blooming now. So if you go in the spring, summer and autumn, you will get a flower bed that blooms for a long time with many different flowers! And if you don’t want to buy the flowers in the flower shop, which can be quite expensive, it’s great to write down the name of the plant and buy seeds or ask around among friends if anyone has a plant that you can share or take cuttings from. It’s also great to go around to local public gardens to find nice flowers that thrive in your own climate.

Now I will return to my dreams of flowers full of buzzing insects and a pond full of frogs!

Thanks for this week!

//Amanda

Weekly report v. 3

It rarely goes as planned and as some of you probably noticed, there was no weekly report on Sunday or newsletter yesterday. We have been at home with stomachflu so there has been neither time nor energy to write. But now we’re back on track!

Last week not much happened in the garden, but I sowed the first of the year’s seeds! It’s always a great feeling! It was chili, celeriac and leek. You can find more about chili in this week’s cultivation guide.

We continue to harvest leeks from the greenhouse and “shop” in the freezer and cellar. There will be a lot of beans, potatoes and carrots. I also got a nice head of cabbage out from under a lot of bad leaves. Often the core of the head of cabbage remains fine, even if the outermost leaves look terrible. I wish I had taken pictures or video, but that will have to be next time.

This year I have decided that we will not have a lot of home-grown food left in the freezer when the new season of harvest starts. It actually takes some time to adjust and primarily “shop” at home instead of in the store. There will be more seasonal food and less of the same all year round. This means that you have to think outside the ordinary, find new recipes and inspiration. Fun, but sometimes a bit difficult.

See you again in week 4!

Happy week!

//Amanda

Seed order

This week I ordered the seeds for the year! I’m always so excited when it’s time to order! So many hopes and expectations, dreams and memories!

New seeds

There’s a lot of seeds to order every year. As you can read below I’m planning on getting better at growing my own seed, but so far I’m dependent on buying. To get all the seeds I need I have a spreadsheet in google drive where I have written down everything that we want grow. It started with a list of things we often eat and then it has been filled in when we come across interesting crops or crops that is easy to grow in our climate but we don’t eat so much yet.

I started the seed order process by going through what seeds we still have from last year and made a mark in the list. Then I went to my favorite seed store online and ordered the rest. A few new things got into the list. Mostly flowers but also turnip and marrowfat pea.

Part of my spreadsheet. The colors has do to with how I plant the seeds. More on that another time 🙂

Seeds from last year

We have a lot of seeds left from last year. Some are probably even from the year before. Since we are not a big, industrial farm some seed bags last a long time and as long as you keep your seeds in a dark, cool and dry space there’s often no problem. What can happen is that the germination goes down but that’s not a big issue for us. We can always buy new seeds or plant some more if we notice that too few seeds have grown. Worst case, we miss that kind of crop one year and either we don’t eat it or we buy it.

Growing seeds

One of my goals for this years gardening is to grow some seeds. I haven’t done that before except from taking seeds from paprika, chili and tomatoes. I believe that’s some of the easiest seeds to collect. I don’t know how it is with chili and paprika but tomatoes can cross pollinate which means that if you have different kinds of tomatoes in your garden and take seeds from them you don’t know what you will get. Well, it will of course be a tomato! 🙂 I think, even if you take seeds from a store bought tomato you don’t know exactly what you will get. It has to do with the way they cross different kinds of tomatoes to get certain characteristics. It’s a whole science and I’m just starting to learn more about it. Anyway I’m gonna try to take seeds from my beans, carrots (you take seeds the second year so I will replant some carrots we grew last year), peas and squash.

Beans! So beautiful! This year I will save some to plant next year!

WeekNews #4 – A stressful garden and how I handle it

Every year in the spring I get stressed out because there are always too many plants that need attention at the same time. This week we haven’t done anything in the garden. I went on a little trip to Malmö to see some friends and celebrate an awesome graduate! It was really nice to get away for a moment and leave the stress of the garden behind. It’s not just all the plants that need attending we also had some trouble to get the soil we wanted. On top of that, the cats still likes to go into the garden and mess things up.

I have a few different ways of handling the stress and keep the motivation up:

Lists. I make lists. Lots of them! I make lists of what to do and rank the tasks to know how to priorities. I make lists of what to buy to get everything done. And occasionally I make lists of what lists I need to make.
Focus on the harvest. I also try to think about the harvest. This upcoming week we are really starting to finish up the last of last years harvest. We even made a challenge not to buy any vegetables this week and instead empty the freezer and pantry. It’s really exciting to see how much we actually have left and that gives me energy to continue.
Go to the store. Another motivator for me is to go to the store and look at prices. Most of the time Affe is the one to do the grocery shopping because it’s most convenient due to our jobs. But once in awhile we go the hole family or I go alone. Looking at those prices knowing that I can produce a better product in terms of impact on the environment and without chemicals, that just makes me wanna grow more!

Okej, I hope this was somewhat useful for you. I guess this time of year is always stressful for gardeners. Just remember to take a moment and enjoy the world around you and appreciate what you have accomplished. Smell the flowers and follow the bees and butterflies. It’s only a short period of time when all of nature brings it all to amaze us!

WeekNews #3 – Muscovy ducks, weeds and soil

Muscovy ducks moves in!

I’m so happy to announce that we now have 4 beautiful muscovy ducks. We bought them from this lovely lady who really loved her ducks and made sure they would have a nice home at our place. It was a bit of an adventure to get them since there was this motorbike-event on the island where she lives. Part of the road was closed and the traffic was standing still due to a police control. But finally, 30 minutes late we got to her farm and could pack the ducks in the car. On our way back we saw more motorbikes than I have ever seen in my life!

Well back home we put the ducks into their new house. They were a bit scared of us but after two days they started seem more comfortable. For now they only have a small outdoor cage but on wednesday we will let them out in the bigger area where the new pond is. Hopefully they will like it there and not fly away. It’s a bit nervous but exciting!

All this weed…

There are sooooo much weed right now. We’ve had perfect weather with hot, sunny days and rainy nights. Great for potatoes and great for weeds… 🙂 I have not had time to take care of it all week but finally yesterday I got it all done. Even though the past week was perfect for growing plants, the weekend was very hot and dry, prefect for weeding. When we rake of the weed we really want it to die for good and the best one for the job is the sun. The roots of any plant, and especially new and small plants are very sensitive to dry out so putting them in the sun on top of the beds are perfect. It dies there and then it will become green manure and also it helps to cover the soil.

Will we get any soil?

This weeks big question has been “will we get the soil?”. We have a lot of plants; pumpkin, chili, beans, watermelon and many more that needs either new soil or to get planted out in the garden. Everything is longing for that final place to grow and set fruits. We were planning on reusing the soil from the pond but it was full of stones and a bit sour. Our neighbor was going to help us to fix it but he hasn’t had time this past week. Instead we got some soil mixed with horse and cow manure. Since we got it yesterday and we need a top layer of pure soil we still haven’t planted anything yet. I’m a bit stressed out about it but there’s nothing to do. Today was Sweden’s national day so the place that sell soil was closed. But hopefully we will be able to get soil during this week and plant everything this weekend. If you are interested in how we made our beds from scratch there will be a post about that soon. Sign up on the front page to get a notification every time we post something new!

WeekNews #2 Feels like summer, almost

It’s starting to get really warm now and it feels amazing and a little stressful, lots to do! The lilac is blooming and the cuckoo has started to gala. That’s signs of early summer here!

The grass has really started to grow which is great since I’m using it to cover the open soil in the garden. I hope to cover most of the rows to save on water and keep weeds out. But I won’t use grass on all of them, we don’t have enough and also it’s not necessary. In some rows I will plant pumpkin that will cover the soil and for example with potatoes I don’t want to add anymore manure. Anyhow I started to cover my garlic and onion. I was so excited for my garlic this year. Last winter I planted a lot of it and hoped that we would be self sufficient from this fall on. Unfortunately a lot of it has rotten because of the very wet winter we had. Better luck next year I guess…

Gardening isn’t always beautiful. We continued with our pond and hopefully the ducks will arrive this week. Our super nice neighbour came to help us with the digging. It went great except for a little mishap with our raspberry. A long branch snapped, luckily we were able to take some cuttings from it so hopefully we will get a lot more raspberries in the future. It’s my second time taking cuttings from raspberry and what I do is I cut the green sprout just under a pair of leafs clean the stem from almost all the leafs and put it in moist soil. Then all you need to do is keep the soil moist and wait. I hope to build this pond without using a rubber mat and just use some sort of clay instead. I’m looking into how that works and will make a post about it if we decide to go that way.

WeekNews#1 – A weekend in the garden

This weekend has been all about the garden. We have a lot of plants that need new pots before going out in the garden in about 1-2 weeks.

I replanted my beans (broad beans, green beans and one called blauhilde), squash, pumpkin and watermelon. I also got some tomato plants from a friend of my family which I planted in our greenhouse. We have all our tomatoes in the greenhouse to reduce the risk of potato leaf mold. Apparently you’re not supposed to grow potatoes and tomatoes within like 500 meters from each other. Unfortunately we don’t have that opportunity. So if it becomes a problem we probably won’t grow potatoes anymore since we can buy locally produced from Öland.

I also got the carrot seeds in the ground. We grow two kinds, one for summer and one that is good to store for a longer time. It’s our first year growing carrots so it’s really exciting!

And last but not least I planted a row of sugar peas. It’s definitely one of my favorites. So sweet and crunchy!

No fence but the carrots are in the ground

While I was doing a lot of planting Affe had a friend over and they started to make a fence around the garden. Mostly it’s to keep our dog and cats away from the new planting. Although i doubt it will keep the cats away since they can climb over it very easily. I just hope it will be easier for them to do their business somewhere else and that they will choose that instead!