Well, we finally did something about the garden. I feel guilty for not going back there the last two days but Monday I was still recovering from working back there 3 hours on Sunday…and today it was just too hot in the morning to get out there. I may squeeze in a bit tomorrow morning but I have errands to run all day so I think Thursday will be my first day back out there…it should be a nice view of just how quickly things sprout up and may convince me to get committed to the 1 hour a day goal I’m setting for myself.

We really want to plant some fall-winter crops and now is the time so we hope to get the beds into planting shape by the end of the month. We want to add some real soil since ours is very clay-like (which we hope will be great for our earthen oven but is another subject altogether) and also some vermiculite or perlite which will hold a bit of moisture in it too. We water the plants off our ground well so it’s free but we do need electricity to power the pump which pulls it from the ground. We could also lug it from the hand pump in the courtyard but 50 meters every few minutes doesn’t seem ideal. Oh, and did I mention we want to cover the greenhouse with plastic panels that will hopefully also help us hold a bit of heat in? We want to see if we can’t start growing a few more things in there year round too…oh yes, big goals for the fall in our garden!!

Anyway, I figured I would post a few photo updates of what transpired on Sunday. When I got inside I realized the photos aren’t so great…but hopefully you will forgive me. It still doesn’t look pretty out there but we’re getting somewhere!

What the strawberry field & the bed behind it looked like BEFORE:

And what I managed to do to it AFTER:
Got most of the big weeds out of here and we’re happy to report that the strawberries have spread throughout this entire bed and taken it over. Might not be good news to some but we have no problems with it. Strawberries are tasty and we should have plenty of room for everything else we may want to grow still!

This photo below may not look like much and I unfortunately don’t have a before photo just like it, but if you open the before photo above, you will notice the raspberry supports and all the weeds around it. The photo below is still a bit weedy but when you are out there personally, you can actually see the individual plants and there are no weeds around them. Definitely progress! I managed to clear the weeds all the way down this side of the yard in fact. Now we just need to build a new raspberry support & plant some blackberries where some of the raspberries died out.

Looking back to the other side of the garden, things still look bad here. There’s a lot of stray grass around that I’m going to have to tackle…either digging it up & flipping it to kill it…or pouring boiling water on it. Not really certain yet but I ultimately want to have the spaces under the trees for more herbs and there is another strong growing patch of strawberries over here so we’ll see what we end up doing exactly. We did harvest gooseberries though and ended up with just over 4.5 kilos (about 10 pounds). The currents are unfortunately under siege by ants and a bit overripe so we left them behind. Painful but what can you do?

Again, my happy little bay leaf plant. About time to cut some of these sprigs off and dry them. This plant just thrives out there which I couldn’t be happier about. Especially because we use quite a few of these and the leaves are really expensive here!

After the tons of seeds we started this year, here is what is left – 4 tomato plants which aren’t doing too badly. They have their first baby tomatoes on them so at least we’ll get a little fresh produce this year.


We’ve also managed to keep a couple zucchini plants alive and have one about ready for harvest now. They would be doing much better out in the garden I’m sure but it’s incredible they have survived this long. The one with the mold looking stuff needs a bit of help I think but on the other hand, it has produced the most so far which means I’m just going to leave it be for now. We all know how I can get a bit overzealous when it comes to curing things!


Which brings me to our gooseberry/black current crossed plants (can’t remember what they call them here) (EDIT: Josta berry or Jostaberry (Ribes nidigrolaria) – thanks to my mother-in-law who pointed this out!) but they are being ravaged by caterpillars…so I have to go pluck those little suckers off before they eat all the leaves off the plants! Still have to find a home for those in the backyard where they won’t be bothered…