new garden, new pets

new garden, new pets

I already started three vegetable beds last year, and extended my garden to house another four. I was planning on planting tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, peas, beans, carrots and a mixture of herbs. At the beginning of the year, my enthusiasm and motivation was great, but it diminished over time… mostly due to a very well known garden-pet: the slug!

Since the garden is in a rather musty and wet area there were huge amounts of slugs! They left my tiny and fragile tomato plants mostly alone – I guess that is due to the fact that they have a special odor, but everything else was gorged down in almost lightning speed (especially for a slug). My equally tiny and fragile cucumber and zucchini and pepper plants seem to be the most delicious thing the slugs had seen. read more

Straw-berries? Strawberries!

Is their name a coincidence? I can’t tell for the history of the word, but it is definitely true for my new strawberry-patch! A very dear friend contacted me and asked if I wanted 30 or so different kinds of strawberry plants. And who says no to such an offer? – not me!

So with the help of another dear friend, I prepared two beds, both 5×2 meters, then we layed out the black “mulching and anti-root” sheet and fixated it on the edges with soil. Usually, strawberries create offshoots around the mother-plant, where new independent plants will develop, which is usually a good thing. The sheet however keeps them from forming roots in the soil. This is necessary in my case, because I don’t want the different kinds of strawberries to mix. read more