My Garden Is Alive

SPRING HAS SPRUNG IN THE GHETTO

As it happens, I found a bee hive behind one of the walls at the back of my place. It's the structure that separates our section of the ghetto from others. Normally I'd be a little weary of a house of bees, but for some reason, this time it made me smile. Bee hives are a good thing. They give life on our planet, and that's no understatement. What can I say? Hive is alive, and so is my garden.

Ok. I know I don't seem like the gardening "type", and no, actually I'm not. However, if you've been following me for a while, you may remember me saying I was getting into it slowly. Actually, what I will do is try to find some of those posts I've made here in the past about my adventure into gardening and post links to them below this article if you're interested.

2018

I started getting into it in 2018, but I faced a few challenges back then. First I went on a pretty long trip out of the UK, so I wasn't home for most of the gardening part of the year. Besides, I don't know if you remember, we had the most ridiculously dry and long summer that year, so they crops would not have done very well anyway.

In late 2018 though, when I got back from my trips, and before setting off on another one, I prepared the little bit of earth I have at the back. Before that, I had to clear a whole bunch of abandoned wood from a broken fence someone had dumped there. The pile had been sitting there for several years so there was a lot of decay and fester. It actually turned out to be a good thing, since the soil underneath had become nice and dark - full of biodegraded organic stuff. Yum.

I had to construct a new, tall and proper, fence to keep the drug dealing kids that use the car park away from my precious crops too. That, I got someone else to do of course, at a surprisingly large cost.

2019

I didn't travel as much in 2019, relatively speaking, so I had much more time to spend at the back being a gardening enthusiast. I spent an awful percentage of the year in front of my computer trying to build a new business, and also churning out content all over the place.

I know it doesn't seem so now that we are living in the craziest year of all time, but 2019 was totally nuts! We also had that crazy climate here in the UK that caused a lot of crops to fail. My first attempt at planting berries and some fruits failed completely. It was way too dry (low rainfall) and the fruits all came out way too early and dried up. We have some wild raspberries growing along our street and even those didn't really come out right. Mine attempted to fruit, but quickly dried up before they were ripe. Not even the birds wanted them.

We also had the issue of bees not showing up for duty in Spring time. Bees, as well as butterflies, are critical when it comes to the success of berries.

Look at the photo below, the fruits are from last year (2019) but dried so fast that they never fell off. They're still there now! 2019's crazy weather did this!

The only success I had with berries last year were from plants I bought that were already starting to bud. They were grown and tended to by experts in a controlled environment. I made a number of posts about them last year, but it was during the time I was under a giant whale's flags, so they were vanquished to oblivion. I'll see if I can find some of them, like the video below, to include in the add-on section below.

2020

To say this year has been crazy would be to understate the situation. However, things have actually been great for my garden. The lockdown has meant I have had a lot of time to tend to the crops. I've been watering them regularly since rainfall has been so low. I do worry about the rainfall actually. This is England and it hasn't really rained this spring. It should be raining nearly every day, but instead it's only rained once this month!

Also, I don't know if the fresher air has any effect on crops. I've noticed way more bees than last year for instance. They are critical to the cross-pollination of plants that flower, and boy are they doing their job this year. Like I said, I have a hive behind my wall.

I currently have blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and some hybrids that I don't even know what they are. I was assured that they're "delicious" by the people at the store where I bought the seeds/plants.

Another challenge I had, which has now been lessened by how much time I've spent in the garden this month, is animals. All manner of birds and four-legged creepy crawlies frequent my yard.

The neighbour's cat wasn't really a threat to my crops, since he only used the soil as his personal toilet. Besides, since his arrival, the squirrels have vanished. He also chases the birds away too. Birds were the number 1 threat to berries and, so far so good, between me and the cat, they've been kept away from the crops. Perhaps I should build a little scarecrow for the garden :)

It appears, though, that even myself and the cat are not enough to protect the garden. Some of the plants never made it out of the gate at all. I used to collect these "Little Garden" things from Marks & Spencer. They let you have one if you spend more than £20 in the store. They are different plants, mostly edible, that you can grow and plant in your garden. The birds got to all of them before they had a chance to take root. Only the onions made it.

Talking of onions, I have managed to have spring onions in my omelette the other day, harvested from the garden. So now it's official! I have eaten from my garden for the first time this year. Also, today's lunch had another sprinkle of spring onions. It brought back memories of when I was a child and grew a lot of things which we actually ate.

In hindsight, I think the M&S plants were meant to be grown indoors, perhaps in a Kitchen window garden. Like I said, I'm a noobie, and homes are not that fancy in the hood.

So, if all goes well this summer, ecologically speaking that is, then I shall be looking forward to a very fruity and tasty late Summer/Autumn. I know the birds are looking forward to that too, so it's going to e a battle between me and my avian friends. I already started planning my defence. I've been eyeing up some nets I can put up around the plants to protect them from such a fate.

If you're interested, I've put a few links to older garden-related posts. I would have had to dig through blockchain archives to find them :)

Peace & Love,

Adé

---

Blasts From The Past

Starting To Grow Veg
Where Are All The Bees?