Hive Garden Journal Challenge - Jan 2024

Hi FAM,

Happy New Year! I hope everyone have a wonderful year ahead.

I just spent my whole morning working in my little garden. Feeling so proud of myself for my garden journey so far so I thought why not sharing with you guys, our lovely garden community. It has been a while I haven't shared anything on Hive so the New Year and my beautiful garden gives me a bit of motivation to write.

This summer I wanted to dedicate lots of my time for the garden, meaning no travelling over the holiday periods, also we want to save money for our oversea trip next year. Therefore, I had an opportunity to experiment new plants in my garden. I'll show them in a minute but first let's start with my usual ones.

I had planted tomatoes, basils, salad mix before so I am quite confidence about growing them this year. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Last year, I lived in an appartment with at least 6 hours of direct sun so it was really warm inside, a perfect condition for tomatoes and basils to grow. This year, I moved to a townhouse with a backyard so we don't have the same amount of sun, much less to be honest, only 2 hours of direct sunlight between 12pm and 2pm. I did the same thing, sowing seeds early spring, however, the plants struggled to grow. I gave it two months before deciding to buy tomatoes seedlings instead. They are flowering now and starting to have fruits. So far, I am happy with them.

^{You can see my salad green in the white containers did really well, however, the tomatoes on the right struggled to grow}

^{After 2 months, I gave up on the tomatoes I grew from seeds and bought tomato seedlings instead}

^{Now my tomatoes are doing well}

Then the next one is basils. I tried to plant them next to tomatoes as they are good companion plants. However, as I mentioned they didn't do really well with the little sunlight we have so I planted them seperately. I can easily move it to the front or the back of the house for more sunlight now. So far, not much basils for our tarta and pizzas but hopefully with our warmer condition and my special love, they will thrive soon and give me plently of basils to enjoy.

Salad green are doing really well with my shaded backyard. It will be one of the plants I keep on planting as it is so easy to grow and care for. And the flavour of fresh green from my own garden tastes so much better than the supermarket ones.

Let's move on to my new plants this year. I had planted pumpkin, drawf beans, capsicum, strawberries and Vietnamese herbs. So far, I can say drawf beans are doing really well, exceeded my expectation. I was worried that with the amount of sunlight we have, the beans could not be happy. However, I already harvested the first couple of beans to eat so far. It is considering as a successful experiement for me as I only expected to see purple bean flowers.

^{I run out of space so I planted drawf beans and pumpkin together. I am not sure if they are companion plants but I won't do it again because I notice the beans enduring strong sun while pumpkin seems to not like it much}

Then strawberries. I didn't plan to have them in my garden but I got them from a member of a garden community here so I told myself let's give it a try. As you might know, strawberries need a lot of sun and space which my backyard is lacking, so the fruits I got weren't big and juicy. Oh well, I like the lush green they bring to my garden so I don't mind at all.

My Vietnamese herbs are doing super well and I can't wait to finally enjoying them with some Viet dishes. For pumpkin, it is too early to say anything as I only have one female flower among many male ones. Hopefully, I will have more. Oh one thing I forgot to share. One of my many garden mistakes happened in this very morning. Because of the pumpkin plants only produce male flowers, I thought to myself, that's it they won't have fruit. So I pulled one of the plants out. Guess what, I saw a strong and healthy female flower near the base. Silly me I have my full regret now. Anyway, that's what gardening about, right? We need to learn about patience and learn from our mistakes.

Fortunately, we can eat pumplin leaves and flowers so I stir-fried them with a bit of garlic. Yum Yum. I miss the flavour and texture of stir-fry pumpkin leaves. I ate them all the time when I was in Vietnam. I might grow them more to just enjoy the leaves instead of having fruits.

That's it for today, FAM. To a 2024 with full of joy and happy gardening for our community. Cheers

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