* Time has really gotten away from me these past months and I haven't posted anything about the Resurrection Garden in what feels like forever! Parts of this blog have been sitting around half finished for months so I'm excited to finally release it from it's purgatorial state (otherwise known as the draft folder) and out into the world. *
In mid October 2013 I had 5 of the 7 beds dug out and began throwing about some seed. Much to Wildflower's dismay, I had trays full of seedlings in our house that I'd been growing from seed and they were doing well on the window sill because I was finding that very few seeds that I was direct sowing into the garden were germinating. Over the space of a month I'd wasted quite a few seeds over a few different sowings with very poor results to show for it, and so I start chitting seeds at home to see if I could work out if the problem was with the seeds or if I'd need to start looking elsewhere.
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| October 2013 |
Chitting the seeds (essentially pre-sprouting seeds on a wet towel/paper) was working a treat and within the month I had 4 trays filled with various kinds of lettuce, spinach, Zucchini, Cucumbers, beetroots, Leeks, tomatoes, squash, broccoli, kale and Rainbow Silverbeet/chard and wanted to get them into the garden as soon as possible. The temperature was slowly coming down more and more so I was keen to try and give my seedlings the best chance to establish before the winter months kicked into high gear, but fighting with the weeds was proving to chew up a considerable amount of my time so things felt like they were progressing at a painfully slow pace. I'd look enviously across the grass at Shookinton's Garden which was overflowing with leafy greens and dream that mine could look so beautiful, but at that point it felt like I was spending so much time just trying to establishing the new plots and liberate the soil of weeds that I'd never get there.
At one point I foolishly began to let myself believe that I was almost finished with all the hard labour of clearing the soil.. then I began tilling the 6th plot and was slapped back into reality. The pile of rocks in the image above is just what I had pulled out of that small plot behind it and it's worth noting that in the past 2 years I've paid 6 day labourers, working a total of 4 days, just to clear the rocks, stones and rubbish from the soil. This pile simply represents what they "missed."
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| Little Feather taking a tour of the recently completed Resurrection Garden |
But all praise be to the Lord on high that there actually came a day in mid-November when I stood amongst the piles of freshly extracted rubbish and random debris, sweat on my brow and covered in compost from head to toe and realised that I'd finally done it; all 7 beds were ready for planting. It's hard to put into words and convey properly what that moment felt like, but after 2 years work, suffice to say it felt good!
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| Early November 2013 |
I'd already planted some seedlings of tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, squash, zucchinis, beetroots and broccoli in 3 of the beds that had already been completed and most of them were coming along nicely. My cucumbers began trailing up a wire lattice I had drilled into the back wall and were just starting to form fruits, but the season was getting late and temperatures were dropping and it came to the point where I'd given up hope that they would ever grow big enough to harvest. Their final nail in the coffin was when I came out one morning and found half of the vines hanging dead with a hangman's noose around their necks.
You see, in their daily attempts to recover the downed kites that land on our grass, the kids who live over the garden wall throw rocks tied to lengths of string as far as they can into our property in a series of seemingly never ending an attempts to try and hook the crashed kites then pull them back over the wall. As the rocks are pulled back towards their owner, they drag across the grass, through the garden, occasionally hook onto something of mine and then with one final heave hoist parts of my garden high into the air where they generally become hooked on a nail where they are destined to remain. Even in the design phase I knew this was going to be a potential problem for everything that grows in my garden, but unless I want to be the kind of Scrooge who tells poor kids they can't try and get their kites back when they come down in our yard (and literally hundreds, maybe even thousands of kites come down in our yard each year) then it's just something I have to learn to let go of; even if it means regularly experiencing the loss of my plants. Just chalk it up to one of the many unique (and frustrating) challenges of gardening in Banaras.
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| Broccoli, Eggplant and Radishes |
But much to Wild Flower's elation, by the end of November I had removed most of my seedlings from our house and gotten them into the ground. Sadly the weeds were still fighting their way back into control of any space I would neglect for more than a week or two but I'm taking the long view of my battle with the weeds and feel like I'm taking ground, especially since my straw was delivered and I started heavily mulching the beds. Sadly I have little of a positive nature to say about my rubbish saga (my lovely neighbours still toss any and all of their waste into my garden; be it plastics, organics or faecal) but Kya Karna heh! What's a guy to do?
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| Little Feather harvesting her Radishes |
One of the seeds that I always get Little Feather to help me plant is Radishes. I figure the connection between planting a seed and 6 months later harvesting vegetables from it can be a difficult concept to lock in place for little ones and that's why Radishes are great; they germinate within a couple of days and you're harvesting them fully grown around 5 weeks later. And there's just something about watching your kids pulling up handfuls of beautiful shiny red radishes that just fills a papa's heart with glee! So if you're wanting to encourage your kids into the garden and looking for something to grow with them I'd encourage you to stick Radishes right at the top of your list, just above snow peas, non-hearting lettuces and cherry tomates.
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| Late November 2013 |
When it got to the end of November the garden was looking like it was on the verge of kicking into high gear. I still had to be patient with many of the slow to mature crops but it was clear that the tomatoes, lettuces, radishes and broccoli were all thriving and I was genuinely enjoying every second of being out in the garden. I'd regularly grab one or both of the kids and a coffee and come and sit up there in the early mornings and try and enjoy the fact that my son, who had only slept a handful of hours, had once again woken up and started his day before the sun had risen. And you know what? When you're sitting in a place that twelve months ago was a barren wasteland but is now filled with crops that are thriving, it actually does make the mornings for this sleep deprived father just that little bit happier.
