My garden in May 2019

Another month passed by and it's time for an update on my garden. I must confess that I'm not a passionate writer and it usually takes me days to create a decent post, but it sure is a nice training, so I try my best to keep this a little bit entertaining for you fellow steemians.

Unlike April which was incredibly warm and sunny this year, May turned out to be very cold and rainy. The rain sure was desperately needed but some plants were kinda hurt by those wheater escapades and don't look as healthy as I would like to see them.

Nevertheless there is plenty going on in the garden and I took lots of pictures for my documentations.

Plants are incredible!

If you stumpled across my last gardenjournal, you might remember my sweet potatoe plant that got a hard beating a couple of times and was looking pretty bad. Pretty dead to be precise.
Well, she just came back!

Wanna see more amazing plant resurrections?
I tossed some potatoe peelings on the compost for them to rot and instead they decided to grow little potatoe plants all over the place:

Animals are incredible, too!

Last fall I had a little 'accident' while cutting some trees. Poor snail was hidin' in da bushes and got caught in the loppers.

Imagine my surprise when I found her still hanging around in my garden - life and kicking!
Apparently she is not that mad at me after all.

In contrary to certain slugs, which are rotten bastards from hell, most snails are actually pretty useful animals that are primarely eating weeds like dandelion or dead plants.
In order to save those guys I rarely use slug pellets and collect them by hand instead, but this early in the year whole plants can be exterminated by those slime monsters and the occasional use of chemistry is needed to keep your sanity.

Birbs are another very beneficial species as they eat annnoying insects and deliver calming noises. Unfortunately we had very little luck with our nesting boxes for a couple of years now. Either the baby birds died from cold weather or the adult birds were slaughtered by cats. This year they built their fluffy nest and were never to be seen again...

Mrs. Bumblebee was quite happy about this opportunity and decided to use the abondoned house for herself. You can't see much but a little tunnel that they use to crawl under the moss. They rarely leave or enter the house, so I can't get any footage, but once you touch the nest you can hear them buzzing.
Nothing beats a bees nest in your garden!

The first harvests

This is the reason we go through all the hassle of maintaining a garden - the yummy results!
Three years after planting I can finally harvest my green asparagus:
There are 7 adult plants in my garden of which 5 can acutally be harvested and I get just the right amount for 2 servings every 2-3 days. For some reason they seem to become woody very fast, though.

Way faster harvests can be achieved with radish. They take nothing more than a month from planting to plate and are one of my favorite summer snacks. The hardest part is to keep sowing new plants every week to maintain a steady supply, which I forgot during the bad weather period and now I'm running out...

Cold frame

Plants that grow indoors are not used to wind and sunlight and it's very hard to keep a healthy temperature to light balance. In order to solve that issue, I usually set up a primitive cold frame to keep my plants outside as early as possible and make them grow faster. Look at how much faster and healthier the cabbage grows in a greenhouse environment! Therefore I figured I need to set up something more professional - it's definately worth it.
First note on next years' to-do list:

• build a green house

The red one was growing inside the cold frame while the green one was not. Quite the difference indeed:

Project of the Year

In my last gardenjournal you already got a glimpse of my most favorite garden project of this season - the aquaponic system.
The symbiosis of plants and animals and the ability to use your available space much more efficiently, makes it an incredibly amazing concept. Plus - no more watering needed!
To be fair, my setup is not very professional and certainly not optimal but for me it's more an experiment and foundation for a possible aquaponic project 2020.
For the most time this year I only had a little thyme plant and no fish in my system but as we are pretty safe from frost now, I invited the first inhabitants.
Say hello to my fishies!

I'm officially a pet owner now.

The little fellas are still very shy so it's hard to get a nice shot but they are slowly getting used to me.

In my opinion the aspect of fish food is essential for successfull aquaponics. Whatever you feed those fish will eventually be eaten by you. Therefore I try to provide them a varied and healthy diet.
What that means is essentially me hunting for all kinds of insects all around the garden. There are plenty of woodlouse, gnats and other bugs that are themselfs very well fed and thus perfect for the fish.
Additionally I grow a colony of mealworms that are very high in fat and protein. A nice addition to the menue would be something like duckweed which can probably be found somewhere in a local pond. I definately need to look around for those.

Plant-wise I started with mint, different species of strawberries, basil, lettuce and tomatoes. Some of the first plants are already developing lots of roots. A sign of happy plants.

I can't wait to see the results and eat my first aquaponic veggies!
See you again for my June garden update. Until then enjoy some more pictures of my garden:

As my ginger died over the winter I needed to grow a new plant. I also found come tumaric roots and decided to grow one of these as well. Looking quite nice already!

The fails

No garden update without a fail. For some reason most of my pepper plants suddenly stopped growing alltogether while others are growing fine. Maybe the seeds were too old?

For more garden related Posts check out @simplymike and all the contributors to her awesome #gardenjournal! Also @sustainablelivin is hosting a very cool weekly #gardencorner.

https://steemit.com/homesteading/@simplymike/steemit-community-garden-journal-challenge-may-2019-with-steem-bounty
https://steemit.com/gardening/@sustainablelivin/sustainablelivin-1559358544793-garden-corner-9

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