GARDENING! Working with the kids - @merenludick and @aimeludick

Good day fellow Hivers and Gardeners!

Spring Day has arrived and gone here in South Africa, but the wet and stormy Cape Town has a few more rainy and windy days for us still for the moment.

This post is partly Gardening, part Family memoir/weekend experience and part DIY.

Myself and the kids worked around the garden, around the house and even cleaned up in the roadway outside our home, though I am not about to take photos of that public area.

The Fence

Here we have @aimeludick standing next to the gardening fence I put the frame up for months ago. Still not complete for several reasons: Its been raining cats and dogs. When it was not raining, then we had all manner of social happenings and goings on that took our time away from home.

Thus we had a spare day on Saturday and I decided to give this fence a look over. I was supposed to get wood from a friend but the wood was not ready and unfortunately, that meant a waste of both time and fuel on Saturday morning, but this was before everyone woke up.

I had these gates bits laying in this yard when we moved in. I decided that instead of doing nothing, I would do something and fixed these gates to the one end of the fence.

It completes a little part of the fence, there is no need to waste wood on that part, plus it gives a nice solid frame for me to mount them on. I can now use these frames for plants that creep upward and need a place to attach to. I am thinking cherry tomatoes, but I support the concept of mixed planting so I will need to research what would be a good plant mate that can also benefit from the frame.

Potting around

Of course the area behind the fence all the way to the garage wall is supposed to be a veggie garden. But I am still working over that bit of dirt and will be planting into the ground in beds in some places and making raised beds in others.

In the meantime we own a boatload of little pots and seeding trays. While I try to figure out where I am going to plant what and next to what, I am going to put stuff into the pots so I can move them around while the seedlings grow and become stronger.

Rocks! There are not enough rocks in my yard alone, so myself and the kids went out into the neighborhood and foraged around for some rocks.

As all gardeners know, these help with the drainage at the bottom of the pot. In Cape Town, they also aid by adding weight to the bottom of your pot because it is really windy here. It's not called the Cape of Storms for nothing.

@merenludick was helping me with this step!

@aimeludick helped me fill these up with some potting soil. I have my own compost but for seedlings I will be using something more refined and I had a bag of potting soil in the yard from more than a month ago for this purpose.

Some progress at last! In the background we can see the sprouted onion still carrying on. Finally it will not be alone any more!

Planting out

A while back I germinated some Green Pepper seeds. Not a lot of them made it to this stage which is why I like using glass. @aimeludick and I planted out the healthiest ones into the pots and we shall see if they make it.

To be honest I waited a little too long on this step and could have planted them out a week or two earlier but once again - very busy lately.

I don't know how many of those seeds are really viable but judging from the last batch I would say less than 10%. On my next germination session I am just going to add more seeds in to increase those odds!

I am keeping these little ones indoors while they take root, moving them around to where there is sun and keeping them moist. Holding thumbs for them!

Let's see what happens next time!

Cheers!
@zakludick