The Veg Patch Diaries: Entry 03

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(Edited)

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.


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33 comments
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Good to know people still find me interesting 😂 Onward to the next goal!

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You're welcome @pixelhuntersam. Looking forward to you reaching your new target 😅

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Good job!

Sorry about the sunburn! Rice paper. Lol

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Thanks. Haha, rice paper is sadly pretty accurate, as is a vampire. I need to see about investing in one of those huge-brimmed straw hats. And maybe some UV protective clothing. So I can use that in addition to sunscreen, and working late afternoon.

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"Gardening by moonlight" 🤣🤣🤣

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Great to see all those plants sprouting, and I hope the sunburn feels better soon ! The important thing to remember about being a vampire; compound interest is your friend 😁

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That is why I am here on HIVE, where all the cool kids are at!

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Your plants are growing in a good way and will bear fruit of your labour very soon.
Take care of yourself because you matters the most.

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Thank you so much! I will definitely be more careful from now on.

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Ouch the itching and the pain must have been unbearable. Hope you are feeling better now.

Hmm we never really realize how much time passes us by when we are in the garden. The gardener's curse I guess. Hehe. I often forget to wear my gloves and end up chipping my nails. Hehe.

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It's a lot better now, but at one stage I could barely focus. All I wanted to do was scratch!

Well, as far as curses go, there are a lot worse out there! Gloves are pretty useful! Especially when you get in it with the rough work.

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Hello! Keep it up but maybe do the planting and hard work when the sun is not as powerful - wow! I am so happy to see this post get some amazing rewards!

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Thanks! I am definitely moving my gardening to very late afternoon when the shadow of the house protects me. Alternatively, moonlight gardening, haha, like a proper vampire.

I was actually extremely shocked and surprised when I saw how well this post was doing 😱

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Yeah, some of the strongest voting accounts I have ever seen - and you seem to have all of them this time! Hahaha!

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I am still in disbelief, I think I will wait for the payout before it truly sinks in. This has been by far my best-performing post. And it has been extremely encouraging to say the least.

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Beats my record! https://ecency.com/hive-193816/@jasperdick/music-live-video-wacky-instruments-0f64a3f48feb8

Has Zak taught you how to trade HBD for HIVE on Hive Engine? What is your strategy for growing on Hive - the default 50-50 payout and save/stake?

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No @zakludick hasn't gone through that with me yet. I suppose I should learn, haha. For now, I am doing the 50-50 payout. I still need to learn about the other stuff.

I could have sworn I saw some of your posts with higher payouts? Huh, maybe the sun fired some of my brain cells as well.

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No never! I tend to do at least 4 posts a week, if not more, and turn almost all of my rewards into HP (you can set this up when you write the post or convert HBD to HIVE when you receive the rewards with Hive Engine), but I've never had a single post do this well! Well done!

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I enjoyed reading this post, @pixelhuntersam! I planted and experimented with radishes some years ago. I found them quite easy to grow and they are fast growers too.

I would love to follow your progress with the onions. I think I might think of planting some too.

Now I see where the sunburn came from. Ouch! I hope you have a speedy recovery!

Enjoy your evening!

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My hubby loves radishes, so I am hoping that they do well enough for me to present them to him eventually. He has been quite excited about that, even going to check on the seedlings occasionally as well, haha! If all the onions take, I may have quite the bumper crop. Not entirely sure what I would even do with all of them, perhaps a jar of pickled onions. Otherwise, I have at least two friends who enjoy cooking. Might pass some on to them 😁

Happy to report the itching is down to bearable levels! I am almost done being a reptile as well, as most of the skin seems to have finished peeling. Was a bit worried about my tattoo getting damaged, but it has weathered my stupidity thankfully!

Thanks for stopping by!

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So hubby is a happy chappy and maybe one of these days your friends can also celeba=rate and share in the fruits of labor! Well done!

I'm glad to hear that your sunburn is busy healing. Especially with peeling being over by now.

Enjoy your evening, @pixelhuntersam!
!CTP
!ALIVE

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welcome to gardening.. lol

Its such the best feeling when you see seeds come up that you grew, and even better when you put something on your plate that you grew as well.

Sun is pretty tough on new plants. Yes keep them well watered, work in the afternoon, and when you have little seedlings through if you can cover the soil with a little bit of mulch to stop the sun baking the soil around the seedling this can be good too.. just depends on where you are.

happy gardening and DO keep us posted on your progress

BLINGIT (Sarah)

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Thank you for the welcome! I think I am already addicted 😂

Thank you for the tip! I will keep that in mind. I also have an idea for a potential DIY to help keep the soil moist. I have no idea if it will work, but I am going to give it a shot. If it does, I will have a new way of doing some recycling too!

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Good job! Happy to see them successfully sprout, the feeling when you get to taste the fruit of your labor is self-satisfying. It start from planting a few to non-stop planting, only then you'll realize you have plant obessession😀

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I think I already have a plant obsession, haha. I majored in Botany after all. This is just taking it to the next level. I used to grow orchids at my parent's place. I am considering bringing a few of those plants to my place now, but it is a long trip. And growing up we always used to have a veg patch on the farm.

This feels like I graduated to the next level though, having my own vegetable garden. I definitely plan on continuing to expand it. Getting a proper raised bed box in. For now, I have them in pots so that my doggos don't pee on the leaves I want to eat! 😂

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Onions are amazing plants and well worth taking the effort to grow well. You're doing nicely!

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Thank you so much! I am looking forward to expanding as time goes on. And having a record to see the growth is really a lot of fun as well!

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The feeling of seeing them grow from a small seed is simply indescribable.
I look forward to seeing new reports of the growth!

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Thank you! Having a record to look back on is nice and it lets you clearly see the progress made!

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