Thursday 5 May 2016

Planning a vegetable plot in the desert with HDYGG

This is the piece of land I'm going to develop and turn into a vegetable patch.

I've done quite a bit of research and as I've been successful with growing tomatoes, chilli's, peppers and strawberries, I'm fairly confident I can make a go of this.

There's a lot of preparation to do and I fear I've left it a bit late with summer almost in full swing. I have no idea of the terminology I need to use in this post, but I'm going to dig some trenches and mould the sand into moulds either side as this is what I've seen in other peoples gardens. I of course have no idea if it will work or not, as I have no idea what they are actually growing, but it looks good.

I've purchased some poles to grow peas up and I'm going to sow the seeds into coir pots, so I can just dig them into the ground as the less handling seedlings have the more chance they have of survival.

To prevent the dog and the gardener, trampling the are down I've also purchased some twee fence edging to protect the area. I will also sow the melon and onion seeds into pots, but the carrots, cauliflower, courgette and spinach seeds will be sown directly into the sand.

The seeds packets all state they require 'loomy' soil, which is heavy in sand, but I only have sand, so it will be a case of trial and error. 

I had a lovely trip to a different garden centre and enjoyed a coffee while I browsed through a book on gardening. The staff were very knowledgeable and helped me choose some ground cover, for the front sand pit as the plants there are coming to an end.

I did think about building raised beds and I saw on face book how vegetables had been grown using breeze blocks, but this is a hobby and could start to get quite expensive, so I'll start small, see how I go and build on it from there, based on my successes or failures.

The lawn on the other side of the villa is doing week, I treated it this year and it's being watered daily, it did die off last year, but as you can see it came back nicely.

I purchased a couple of house plants and split them to fill the pots, they weren't expensive and won't flower, but I loved the look of the leaves and the patterns.

Meanwhile, the hydrangea is doing OK indoors, but I have nothing to measure it buy to know if it would be doing just as well/worse/better outside.




14 comments:

  1. I hope you get some success with your sand planting. I'm having the opposite problem at the moment as my husband has overwatered my tomato plants and killed a whole lot of them!

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    1. noooooo, strangely enough the hotter it gets the more the watering is reduced here

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  2. you know what? where there is a will, there is a way! you go. i wish you all the best of green luck!

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  3. It's just occurred to me that I have never seen a weed in your garden! Is it too hot for them to grow? I'll keep my fingers crossed for your veg, very intrigued to see how the melons grow :)

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    1. there are weeds in the garden but they die quickly and are very easy to remove from the sand

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  4. Good luck with the new planting - between research and sheer will power you can do this!
    Loving your new plants - and the grass is looking great too. You have been busy :)
    Thanks for joining in again lovely x

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    1. thank you, i really enjoy the weekly challenges i set myself so i can have something to blog about

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  5. I live in the Philippines before. Awfully warm but not as warm as where you are. I will be looking forward to seeing how your planting goes. I dont have a garden so I only have potted plants too. I think they are thriving. #hdygg

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    1. I've abandoned the idea of a vegetable garden, it's too hot outside

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  6. Oh my, how I admire your perseverance - wishing you lots of growing successes x

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    1. I've given up now, the heat has defeated me

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  7. Really interested to see how you get on with the veggies, lawn looks fantastic.

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    1. ive delayed the veg plot idea until september

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