Project: Sprout & About

Time to share some more pictures about my heartful harvests from this sprout garden. Or is it heartfelt? Gosh, this is it, is it? The old me, the overly analyzing perfectionist, trying to learn about gardening, photographing, the English language, and what else? Life? Let’s put a gentle stop to that and look at some of the beautiful moments from the greenhouse instead! ❤ After all, I don’t want to find myself in December, looking back at the project and thinking what has happened – again. And quite frankly, it has been liberating to let the words flow, without judging myself too much about it 🙂 The sprouts don’t mind it, so why would I? Tell that to the overanalyzer.

But here is a tiny calendar for the sprouts in this post.

Now, come on, let’s peek in the second post about my HEARTy harvests! ❤

In the first Heartful Harvests post, I mentioned that the zucchinis were challenging our creativity when it came to finding ways to use them. And that is true: the zuccini was one of the most abundant plants. The interesting thing is that having planted one in a pot in the greenhouse and one outside in an open garden bed would yield such different results. Firstly, I took a conscious risk when I planted one of the zucchini plants in the 10L pot in the greenhouse. That experiment started promising, but didn’t end up so well. Managing to water it regularly and sufficiently was quite challenging, and so, the zucchinis grew all disfigured and dark green, if they made it so far as to grow into a fruit in the first place… It was a beautiful learning, after all. Now I know that squash needs a lot of space to grow.

But it went much better with the one growing outside. I couldn’t imagine it would grow as big as it did. And mind you, it still keeps growing in late September! Once the plant outside started to feel comfortable in its garden bed, the zuccinis wouldn’t stop coming. So yeah, in essence, the zuccini was many lessons learnt and many cooking recipes tested. Anyway, I love the vegetable!

The leafy rocket salad and lettuce need to be mentioned here, too. But that rucola would be easy to grow, they said. Oh well, no, it wasn’t easy to grow, say I! I started with rucola and lettuce early on in the project. Just like I had underestimated the herbs, so I did with these as well. There were a couple of times that we enjoyed lettuce in salads or in a sandwich, but there we more times when I left it growing in the garden. The same cannot be said about rocket salad, but despite its weak presence at a dinner table, the bees got even more of it. I have sown some more of this rocket salad in the garden plot in the hopes of being able to enjoy it more this time. 

And here we are going to have some more leafies to harvest later in the fall, if all goes right.

I absolutely love potatoes, let’s start there ❤

I am big on enjoying potatoes, so naturally, I was really looking forward to having them grow in the garden. Unfortunately, the potatoes suffered from a potato blight that viciously attacked my plants early in the summer. A weak variety, I was told. Apparently, not all potatoes get this disease, but this variety “has been in the family” very long. So, not store-bought seed potatoes. I hadn’t thought of the potato blight as a potential threat because I never remembered having this issue in the years before. I guess that’s because I wasn’t very big on gardening before. Whatever had happened before, this time, once I noticed a strange colour on the leaves, it wouldn’t stop from rapidly spreading. Very soon, I would start noticing it in the tomatoes growing right next to the potatoes, too. Of course, I hadn’t thought of this either; these buddies come from the same nightshade family! Tomatoes and potatoes, you’re kidding me! Sprout & About, you are teaching me a thing AND two, for sure. But in all the despair, I was advised to let the stems just die before I could start digging the potatoes up. And I was happily surprised. The blight hadn’t gone down to the roots yet, and so we still had a great yield. Can there ever be too many potatoes anyway?

Oh boy, the peas and the French beans. What a ride. The peas were such a mysterious and, honestly, partly disappointing experience too, I am sad to say this. But there’s also the positive side to this pea story. Because, to my surprise and delight – and against all odds – the peas grew to give tiny peas. The start was tough, during the early spring, but eventually the three plants would have a short and sweet bloom. They didn’t last long, but the ones we got were good. I ate maybe three peas, hahah.

And to cut to the chase about the second bad boy, there actually never was a French Bean. Didn’t get to see a single stem. Not a single sprout. I soaked and planted five beans in different places, but none would grow – at least this year! Don’t tell me they will suddenly grow next year? I don’t have the knowledge about that, but I would have certainly liked to have them this year on my plate. I was really anticipating cooking homegrown French beans, but hey, I couldn’t win in everything, couldn’t I, haricot vert?

So, oh, my heartfelt little peas and abundant zucchinis, brave potatoes, and funky leafy greens, I am proud of us. I was happy to be harvesting these veggies during the summer. Everything that has been growing in the garden has been such a source of joy and given me a feeling of accomplishment that I couldn’t have gotten elsewhere.

But wait, there’s still plenty to be shared. I have planned a few more parts because I haven’t talked about the watermelon, the chilis! It may be September, but the harvesting is not over yet ❤

Growing on! ❤