How We Mastered The New Site

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

We bought our plot five years ago. Neither I nor my husband have ever worked on the land. We did not understand either soil, or garden plants, or weeds and crop diseases. We didn't even know how to dig properly. But after all, this site is already ours, and we decided to create a paradise on it, however, the thickets of weeds two meters high brought melancholy, sadness and even fear. However, as they say: the eyes are afraid, but the hands are doing. And we were also lucky: our site turned out to be in a good place - 8 acres of land on a hillock, around the forest, behind the forest - a quarry, around amazing silence, clean air … And good neighbors are nearby.

And we started to work. First, they mowed everything, and then little by little they began to cultivate the land - piece by piece, they began to build a house. And now I am glad that we started building the house and cultivating the land at the same time. The plants have already grown, the entire plot has been developed, everything grows, blooms and makes us happy. For the first time I picked up the magazine "Flora Price" in the year of the purchase of the site. I read, studied the experience of other gardeners, the advice of scientists and dreamed. In these dreams, there was a garden full of flowers, with trees and bushes, with fruits and berries, so that it would become a resting place for our whole family, and after all we have two little kids.

In winter, we planned our garden, painted it, and in the summer we tried to bring these plans to life. At the same time, of course, life made its own adjustments, something had to be changed, altered. And now five years have passed. Now we have an almost completed large house, a young garden in which apple trees, pears, plums, and sea buckthorn grow. At the end of the last season we already tasted our plums, Lada pears; everyone liked the apples of the Memory Lavrik and Orlik varieties… In our garden there are bushes of black currants, gooseberries, honeysuckle, raspberries of various varieties, and garden strawberries. We set up a swing in the garden, and then we wanted to sit and enjoy the berries, as they say, without leaving our place. Therefore, I planted part of the raspberries in a circle with a diameter of 1 meter right in the garden between the trees, tied them up - I got a column strewn with berries. We cut the grass in the garden with a trimmer, so we don't suffer from overgrowth.

We have a small vegetable garden with a greenhouse 8 meters long. We grow tomatoes and peppers in it. We also planted three vines of grapes in a greenhouse, however, we cannot say anything about him yet, because this is his first wintering. The early and winter-hardy varieties were chosen - Korinka, Novy Russkiy and Kristall, so we hope that they will spend the winter safely. Over the years we have created a large flower garden in the garden, a rose garden; 15 varieties of clematis grow and bloom on all kinds of arches and stands. My favorite roses amaze with their beauty - climbing roses. Of course, every year there is a lot of trouble in preparing them for winter: you need to remove them from supports, arches, tie them, cut out excess shoots, remove leaves, wrap them in "packaging". In addition, they are very prickly, so special care is needed here. The husband grumbles every time at the same time, says that he was all punctured, but does not require removing roses from the site. And this is understandable: when in the summer these roses bloom, and then clematis picks up this flowering, then lilies, astilbe, then it really seems that you are in the Garden of Eden, your eyes are resting, your soul is happy. And such a scent is in the garden - beyond words!

And these plants are not the only ones on our site. Irises, peonies, chrysanthemums, lavender, hosts, various chamomiles, geraniums, cereals, as well as ornamental plants - conifers, stephanandra, spirea, cinquefoil, hybrid tea and floribunda roses delight with their flowering and beauty. Last season we decided for the first time to grow watermelons and melons. We read in the magazine more than once that many gardeners are already growing these melons, so we tried it. My husband built a greenhouse from bars, and at the end of May I planted a month-old seedlings there. Probably, it was possible to plant her in early May, when she planted tomato seedlings. After all, the beginning of May was warm, and at the end of the month it got a little colder. And my melons with watermelons took root for a long time. But not a single plant died, all survived. We grew hybrids of melons Augere and Iroquois … The past summer was favorable for melons and gourds. I watered them regularly, covered the plantings with a film at night, at the beginning of the growing season I fed them with a diluted solution of Gummi, once spilled with Fitosporin.

I left two fruits on each plant. But somehow I had no time to take care of the melons and to feed them regularly. My little daughter (she was a little over a year old then) gave me time to work in the garden only when she was sleeping. Therefore, in the past season, no plants especially spoiled. Melons grew weighing 3.1-3.2 kg, the rest - less, watermelons of the Suga Baby variety gave one fruit weighing 4.5 kg, another 4.2 kg, the rest were smaller. A special science is to determine ripeness, especially in melons. We overexposed a couple of them - we shot them in mid-August, but we had to shoot a week or two earlier. The aroma was amazing and the taste was excellent. I believe that the first experience of growing melons in our garden was a success.

Tomatoes also succeeded in the past season. True, not all varieties were pleased. Due to the heat, the temperature in the greenhouse was very high, because it stands in a very sunny place. As a result, the tomatoes turned red very quickly, and did not have time to ripen inside. I especially liked the varieties: King of Giants - its fruits did not crack, they were very large, ripe well and turned out to be very tasty; The king of Siberia - yellow, large fruits, ripened very early, they turned out to be very sweet. The variety Sweet Tooth was disappointing - it did not match the description on the bag - instead of a bush up to two meters high with small fruits, bushes up to half a meter high with medium fruits of medium taste grew, besides, the variety was not early. The variety did not match its name and description either The pride of Siberia. Instead of large, tasty fruits, small tomatoes grew, watery and of a completely different shape. Although I would not judge tomatoes by their taste in the past season. The heat caused many plants to behave unnaturally. There was a large harvest of cucumbers last summer, they grew by leaps and bounds. The first time they didn't hurt me at all, not a single bush died.

For the first time last year, I grew leeks. I got all the information on his agricultural technology from the magazine "Flora Price", as I had no idea how to handle him. The Winter Giant variety was a success, the plants were large with a thick, long stem. He stood in the garden until mid-autumn, and then I harvested the entire crop and froze it for winter use. But in the summer we ate it, treated our neighbors. I salted part of the onion, fried dumplings with it. And he kept growing and showing off, even the heat did not oppress him.

I haven’t grown cabbage and potatoes on my plot yet. However, judging by the quality of the heads of cabbage from the stores (coarse and tasteless cabbage), you will probably have to master the lessons on growing this "lady". There are many plans for the next season. We will try to implement them. I love my garden very much, I want to create on this piece of land, create beauty for myself, for my children, for people. Many neighbors come to see my garden, admire my plants, even ask for advice (although, I think, they have more experience), but I am pleased. For example, I learned how to propagate roses from cuttings, clematis and willingly share them with my neighbors. I talked about my first successes in the garden, maybe it will give someone more strength and confidence in the initial stage of creating their garden.