As promised, here comes an update on our UA plot! 🌱
Have you started growing your own food?
Since germinating our small sprouts of veggies, we have learned about how to take care of our soil and plants, how to set the plot up for success.
Before transplanting the young greens, we prepared the soil. We grew green manure on our plot and allowed nitrogen to be fixed into the soil. After three weeks, we cut the manure and loosed the soil, to then and carefully mix the cut manure and compost into our plot. This provides a diverse source of nutrients and organic matter ready to decompose and provide nitrogen for the seedlings. This also ensures the soil is moist and will not dry or crack soon after transplantation. Did you know you can dig your weeds right back into your plot if they have not grown seed yet? If you soil has healthy microbes, it is one of the fastest ways to grow biomass in the soil and naturally fertilise your plants.
While getting our soil ready, we slowly started to expose our seedlings to increasing hours of direct sunlight. Did you know that very young plants can easily burn when directly transplanted from the nursery to the open sun?
Once our plants developed their secondary leaves, we could start to differentiate the seedlings and trust that these new leaves will provide them with the strength to survive in the plot. Then the day finally arrived, we transplanted our little sprouts. Be careful here, as the roots are very delicate. We learned that it is best to loosen the soil again until far below the roots, to make sure the fine hairs can move through the soil easily. The seedlings should also be spaced out with their final size in mind, to ensure they do not compete for space and nutrients later on, but also to avoid having to then sacrifice some of your sprouts. We also added some wooden sticks to support the fragile stems in case of strong winds and heavy rains, where a thin net as a rain protection roof has proven very useful. Once planted, the soil around the seedling needs to be gently compacted from above and watered carefully, to allow the roots to start growing into their new home by following the water.
Done – We have successfully planted our seedlings! ☀️
From here, we have to constantly check on our plants. Remember how yellowing can be a sign of nutrient lag, and how pests, fungi, and leaf minors might indicate the over-saturation of such nutrients or your soil being waterlogged! You can add more compost if needed and water only when it has not rained sufficiently. You should also carefully remove leaves that show signs of fungal growth like shown below, to give your healthy leaves a second chance. If you see leaf minors as in the second picture, try spraying them with neem oil – we had some good and some not so successful experiences so far.
Please let me know if you have any DIY or organic recommendations on pest control!
The process of watching your seedlings grow takes patience, but we have since been observing how our little sprouts turn into small plants, with sturdier leaves and stronger stems. It has also taught me to be curious and to accept small failures, as one of our tomato plants died and we are not sure if the rain was too heavy, or the snails too ambitious. I would love to hear about how you relate your learnings from agriculture to your life! Please leave a comment 😀
We have learned a lot, but remember this is a journey!
“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.” 🌱
Janet Kilburn Philips
PS: This is how our tomatoes, chilis, and capsicums look now!
Little Sprouts 