Gardening in Dubai in the rain.

3 weeks of rain glorious rain here in Dubai and I'm loving it.

 There was a bit of damage at our local car park after high winds and sadly numerous car accidents

 I've been able to wear my favourite purple croc boots and my supermarket, leopard print boots bought in South Africa.

 I was given some organic seeds to sew a few months back, but I have absolutely no idea what these are, so I've planted them in rows, thinking potatoes?????

 I spent over an hour tying up all the plants after heavy winds, my back was killing me.

 I'm hoping to see a bit more life in the garden over the next few weeks, my tomato plants are producing fruit at 1-2 per week and the strawberries which are growing better are very bitter.

 There has also been some regrowth from last year, plants I thought I'd removed but they'd obviously seeded, I'm happy where they are though.

 The nasturtium is growing well, I managed to get it to flower last year, lets hope it does again this year.

 You've probably worked out by now that my gardening is pot luck, I have no idea what these bulbs are, but they're growing.

 The are more seedlings to be planted out, some are sunflowers, which I put into bigger pots.

 These two seeds trays have yielded nothing for the past few weeks, I moved the trays indoors and seedlings started to sprout within 36 hours. Sweet peas need a constant temperature to germinate, I recall now that last year they did the same thing.

How do your seedlings grow in Dubai with HDYGG?

My attitude to gardening is 'throw it in and see'

We'll it's now time to transplant into bigger pots and try to work out what everything is.

I bought 2 of these with no idea what I was buying, now it's flowered I can see it's an eggplant.

A couple of 'guess the plant' to fill up two hangers.

My strawberry seeds came to nothing and I'm still waiting for the garden centre to get some plants in so I can fill these hangers.

My mother is visiting for the next 3 weeks and is 'green fingered' although she says she's not prepared to do any weeding as it's still too hot for her, coming from the UK.

We have trips to the Botanical gardens, Miracle garden and Za'beel Park for the How does your Garden Glow night display.

Grow your food at Zabeel Park and Social Enterprise

I visited Zabeel Park in Dubai on Friday evening, it costs £1 for entry and parking was plenty and free.

My purpose was to find out more about the Grow your own Campaign. There weren't many stalls, but I registered, picked up some organic seeds, cuddled a chicken, listened to a vision of the future with the focus on school gardening.

The Ripe Market starts this week and I'm very much looking forward to being a frequent visitor there.

The park is huge, I was only there for an hour and took a quick walk around as it was very humid.

There is plenty to do there, free public toilets that were lovely and clean, BBQ areas, cafeterias, Mega bowl, an exhibition centre currently featuring 'Reading is Positive Energy' a children's play area and a handy train at a small fee to help you get around.

As always when you're in Dubai, you can see the Burj Khalifa from everywhere. The grass was green, trees numerous and birds on almost every branch.

One of the stalls at the Grow your Own event were a Social Enterprise group called Enable. The aim of the project is to create entrepreneurial skills for people with special abilities, starting with product concept, manufacturing, merchandising and selling, to enable individuals to start their own retail units and achieve financial independence.

100% of Enable products are ploughed back into development with the individual receiving 15% of the sale.

I purchased a succulent in a beautiful wooden pot and on Saturday saw a wider variety of items for sale at the local garden centre.

Last week I blogged about Forcing Cut Roses to drink and went out to buy some to try it out.

Wow, it really worked. You can see from the pictures the difference after 5 days, between putting a spot of bleach in the water, just putting them in normal tap water and having plunged them in hot water first.

Day 1 v Day 5

Forced to drink (plunged in boiling water)

                                   

 Normal tap water

Bleach in water

I couldn't find any Hydrangeas to Hydrate, but today one of my students brought me this beautiful bouquet as I'd been off sick all week, so I've hydrated the one on the left and we'll see how it goes next week.

The school gardening club, nearly fell at the first hurdle. last week we made newspaper pots and planted tomato seeds, no one watered them all week, so we were really surprised to see how they had grown, this week we 'pricked' them out and then planted some peas in plastic bags with cotton wool, so we can see how the roots grow.

Next week I'll be in the UK, so the students will be designing plant labels and on my return we'll be planting sunflowers, lettuce and cress seeds.

January in the garden with HDYGG?

I've not been up to much in the garden, in fact I've done very little in January compared to previous months as I've returned to work full time.

Everything seems to be growing nicely though, I water the garden at 5.15am every morning while I wait for the kettle to boil and as it's winter the sand isn't drying out that quickly.

I've identified my 2 mystery seedlings, it would appear they are tomato plants.

The birds have taken a fancy to the tomatoes, we have so many, I don't mind them snaffling up the odd one or two.

I've lost the packaging these seeds came from, so I have no idea what they will look like when they flower, they've now been transferred to the sandpit also.

 I've over watered the lavender, I've now transferred it to the sand with some compost dug in, in the hope it will recover.

Despite regular watering, the leaves are dying on the plants, the sun doesn't stay on this part of the garden for long, maybe that's the issue.

Despite it being winter, the temps still reach the high 20's during the day and weeding the sandpit was very hot and tiring work, those roots go down a long way and had to be dug out.

I transferred some seedlings, the labels had worn off so it is 'pot luck' gardening here.

 No sign of the daffodil, that has been sitting in this pot since April. 

I've transferred the Geraniums into the freshly weeded sand pit and planted a variety of seeds in the compost.

 This photo was taken today and you can see the bulb pushing through the soil.