Tasted the strawberry..

So i picked my first strawberry and ate it .... meh, it didnt taste that good..... i hope that as the plant grows they get better in size and flavour. There are other strawberries growing so cross fingers.


And i have put crushed up egg shells around a couple of my plants, like the bean plant and one of the spinach and rocket pots, apparently it keeps the slugs and snails off coz walking on egg shells is like walking on glass. So hopefully it keeps them off, coz they ate every single thing on the bean plant. No leaves or anything left. My son was so mad at them. Haha .. Poor thing .. He feels like its taking forever for it to grow coz the slugs and snails keep eating it so hopefully the egg shells help.


Oh i have also made a compost bin out of one of those rolly bins ... i just tipped it upside down and cut a hole in the bottom ... then i drilled large holes in it and put horse manure and scraps and chicken manure and whatever else i could in it. Hopefully that goes good. Havent got a clue what im doing but i have read a few things and seen a few vids so hopefully it workd well .. lol. Once again, cross fingers. 

Water in the morning

Ok, so i have been given some advice from my brother who is a really good gardener. He has done many courses and stuff so he knows what he is on about. So he came and looked at my plants and told me that instead of watering them in the evening, water them in the morning. The plants need the water throughout the day while the sun is shining on them. So i have started watering them in the morning today, so lets cross fingers and hope that they grow alot better than what they have been. My plants havent been growing as well as they should be, so i hope this works. 

Interesting....

I read something the other day that i found very interesting and helpful when planning and organising my garden.


If you grow a plant for the fruit or root, it needs full sun. If you grow it for the leaves, stem or buds, a little shade will be just fine.

I have seen that advice on a few web sites but i put up a link to only one.

It has advice as to what veggies are good for shady areas in your garden. It pretty much says the same stuff other web sites say about the same subject. 

It only gives a small amount of advice but its all helpful i think.

In the beginning...

I tried to have a garden a long while ago, but it didn't work out the way i wanted. 
Things came up and i couldn't look after it the way it needed to be and i really neglected it and it all just died. 

Tomato Plant

I didn't have very much in my old garden. I was just trying to learn how to grow things in little pots. I think it was a herb or 2 and i think a tomato plant. All died because they were young and i had to leave the house for 2 weeks and i had no one to look after them for me. I didn't even think about the fact that i could've taken them with me. I just left them to look after themselves. LOL. Yes i know, wrong wrong wrong. But i am back to it now and have started again. 

My sons Beans

Last year i bought some seeds from Bunnings and tried to sow everything from seed. I like the thought of growing things from seed, but it didn't quite work for me. I had tomatoes and some herbs and strawberries and a few other things, and some of them started to grow. I was so happy. I had them in little containers and cut coke bottles in half and put the top part of the coke bottle over the top of the seeds, sort of like a green house. Its worked for me before and it did work for me this time too, with some of the seeds. My strawberries and rosemary and something else didn't grow, but everything else was ok. I was so excited. 
Then when they got a bit bigger i took the coke bottles off them and they were still growing ok. I was so happy i hadn't killed them. 

Left,Spinach .. Right,Rocket 

Spinach on the ends and rocket in the middle

Then i thought i would move this small standing green house that wasn't being used that i had in the front yard into the back and put my little plants in it and they would grow to be beautiful big plants, but i was so wrong. I should have just left them where they were. They all started going funny and started to die. I thought i could save them by taking them out of the green house but they just ended up dieing. I think it might have been that they were used to being out in the open, and so when i put them into the green house it was just too much of a change and too hot or something. Some of the tomatoes were ok though. I was happy about that, but then one day we had some really strong winds and my green house got blown over and everything just got thrown to the ground. 

Rosemary

Once again i decided to give it another go. 

Basil

So on my Birthday in January i got some money as a gift and decided to use that money to go buy myself something nice. So my husband took me for a drive to Daylesford and we went to a plant nursery. I bought some basil, rosemary, spinach, rocket, strawberries, and some Japanese Maples. All were very young plants. I think you call them seedlings?? and they were very cheap and looked very healthy.

Rocket

Spinach and Rocket in the background

I went to Safeway and bought some potting mix, $3.50 for a big bag, (wonderful), and then we went home and i started my little pot garden. I kept everything out in full sun and watered them everyday when the sun was going down, so at about 7pm. I did this so the plants wouldn't get sun burn because if the leaves have water on them when the sun is out it can burn the leaves or something. If i ever watered the plants in the afternoon while the sun was up i would put the end of my watering can under the plants leaves and water the dirt so no water would get on the leaves. But i never did this very often. I also had a tomato in my fridge that looked really nice and so i thought i would chop it up and plant it in a pot and hope it would grow to make tomatoes that look as good as it does. And to my great surprise, it grew! And it is still growing. It has made about 6 seedlings. and that was out in the full sun with the rest of the plants getting watered everyday. (I tried to do the same with strawberries but they just turned to rot in the dirt. Yuck!)


They are all still growing wonderfully!! 


I have moved them since to a part sun part shady place. and they were still growing great. But i thought the strawberries and tomatoes need more sun. So i have moved them into a full sun place. they seem to be growing really well. My strawberries have started growing flowers and one of the flowers started turning into a strawberry!! I was so happy when i saw that first strawberry! i cant wait till all the plants are covered in strawberries.
my son also planted beans and they are growing nicely too.

My first Strawberry flower

My first strawberry flower

I am a little impatient. I do feel like i have had these plants for ages and they are not growing fast enough, but its only been 2 months .. lol .. and so i try to remember that it takes a while and i just have to wait. The fact that my strawberry plant is growing flowers and a little tiny strawberry is enough for me to know i have to be very patient and just enjoy watching them grow. 

My first strawberry flower has turned into my first strawberry

I will reap the benefits soon enough. (Hopefully .. lol)