The Veg Patch Diaries: Entry 03

Disclaimer: I am in no way a professional gardener. In all honesty, I have basic knowledge at best and next zero practical experience. This is simply me chronicling my adventures in vegetable gardening!

Sowing Seeds

It has been two weeks since my last entry, so let me show you what I have been up to in my little vegetable patch. I got around to planting some seeds at last!

Preparing to plant some seeds.

I used the seed trays that the seedlings came in which we bought from the nursery. Of the seeds I have, I selected beetroot, radish and rocket to plant. I still have a lot of other seeds available that I want to plant, but I did not want to overdo things. Plus, I only have three seedling trays.

All planted and ready to grow.

I used some 'germination mix' that I got at the local plant nursery to fill the trays before planting a seed or two in each of the pots. I have a crappy memory, so I used the plant makers I made to mark which tray contained which seeds.

Onion Patch

In my previous post, you may have noticed a plant in a plastic bag 'pot'. Well, it's more than a single plant. These were onions gifted to my mother-in-law years ago. They are tenacious, as they have been growing with no care in that bag in a corner of the garden for quite some time. Exactly how long, is something my mom-in-law cannot recall, but it has been more than a year or two.

So I decided I would plant them out. Little did I realise exactly how many of them there were! They are really small onions and with some research, I believe they may be pearl onions. I could be wrong though. I planted several out into pots before quickly realising I had nowhere near enough pots to accommodate them all.

Onion patch and onion pots.

So I selected a patch of garden bedding and began planting the onions out there, spacing them so that they would have a decent amount of growing room. They are difficult to see in the photo, but they are there. My dog doesn't care that they are though and tramples them regularly, haha.

My little vegetable garden, 25 August 2022.

Growth

I watered the seedlings every second or third day, along with the rest of my little veg patch. Unfortunately, I think the sun dried them out a lot quicker than they were getting moisture, which made them slow to sprout. I was starting to get worried that they wouldn't come up at all when five days later, I saw the first of the tiny leaves poking through the soil. I honestly felt like a proud parent!

My plant babies.

The seedlings were not the only ones with visible growth though. I would like to share the following two photos with you of my spinach seedlings which I planted out when I first started with the vegetable patch.

Spinach, 25 August 2022

I don't know if you can remember, but I stated that I was afraid one of the seedlings might not make it, as it had somehow been damaged before I planted it. You can see the one in question, second from the right. I was happy when I saw new leaves starting to sprout from it. I knew it had a chance of pulling through then.

Spinach, 3 September 2022

When I looked at the difference between the two photos I was in shock! I hadn't realised it had grown that much in a week. I am getting more and more excited to taste the 'fruits of my labour'.

Sunburn

On a less positive note, I was an idiot while planting the seeds. While I did put on sunscreen, I was also wearing a racer back top. There were areas of my back I was unable to reach with the sunscreen. Something I only realised that evening when my back was itching, painful and hot.

At first, I wasn't sure what the cause was. I lifted my top and asked my husband to look at my back and tell me if he could see anything. He made several horrified noises and told me I had burned badly. I have been suffering since.

I often refer to my skin as rice paper, because it is mostly void of melanin and extremely thin, to the point of being basically transparent in places. I had the nickname 'vampire' in high school. Keep in mind, I am old, so we are talking about vampires that spontaneously combust in sunlight, not sparkly ones. It was (and still is) an accurate nickname. My skin can blister from sunburn, as though I stuck it into flames. It also doesn't take much exposure for me to burn. As little as five minutes can be enough depending on the UV factor for the day and so forth.

I am not going to post a photo of my sunburn. It isn't pretty. With help from my husband, it was kept from blistering badly by slathering it regularly in aftersun which contains aloe gel and tea tree oil. I also cooled it often with cold water. That did not prevent the itch from driving me insane though.

Eventually, I switched to overly generous helpings of Ingram's Camphor Cream with Aloe Vera. My skin was drying out and dying off, so the itch was at a whole new level. Of course, the worst thing you can do is give into it and scratch. So every time I was thinking of taking sandpaper to my back, I had my husband slap more cream on. It is a lot better now, but I am dealing with all the dry skin peeling off, which is a little gross.

Lesson learnt, or rather re-learnt. I am still a vampire. No going out into the sun without double or triple sun protection.

Thanks!

As always, thank you for stopping by and taking the time to read my ramblings. I am not sure what exactly I plan on doing next with my veg patch. Whatever I do though, I will be making sure to take decent precautions against the sun or avoid it altogether by working in the late afternoon.

Credits:

• Photos by me;
• Canva for helping me make the photos look pretty.