Monday, December 4, 2017

Seed Swap/Exchange Event

Hello my fellow readers,
I have some good news for you. We are having meetup this week. Your opportunity to meet other gardeners and exchange seeds and plants. If you are a member of our seed exchange group (link below) then you also get a free seed packet from mygreenchapter.com
The location is at Ripe Market, Zabeel Park
Date: Friday, December 8th
Time: 10am to 12pm

My Green Chapter

Facebook Event link

Seed Swappers UAE link

Thursday, November 16, 2017

What my backyard looks like now


This was my backyard again. Every year I do soil building. I plan to transition to no till gardening in a year or two. Our soil is sandy and nutrients and organic matter is lost quickly.
This year I am experimenting with adding even more manure and compost. So far I added around 15 kgs of compost from Tadweer and around 15 kgs of manure (this year I added sheep and cow manure) per square meter. This is so much more than before. I don't know what the results will be but I'm positive and enthusiastic. I asked the gardener to dig it into 20 cm of soil at least. I also plan to add chicken manure (5kgs per sq meter) and Sustane fertilizer. To help with water and nutrient retention I plan to add more coco peat. To bring the pH a bit down I plan to add peat moss (I try to use it less, but it has given me good results before, but I'll add it only once). I didn't test my soil but I read that sandy soils tend to be alkaline, and peat moss helps a little. If I am still within my budget by then (after all I have around 90 square meters to fill, plus pots, plus trees that I need to fertilize, I've already spent way too much, but I believe it's worth it) , then I'll also add perlite. After research I have become convinced that it does helps with water and nutrient retention (I strongly believed it didn't, well it's never too late to learn). Even though vermiculite it better, it costs at least 3 times more, so I'm passing on it for the moment. 
Let me know what you're doing in your gardens now, and show a picture.

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Determinate vs Indeterminate

Alright, some of you may have no idea what I'm talking about, or to be correct what am I to talk about today. Tomatoes. If you know me, or have been following me for a while, you probably already know that tomatoes are my favorite vegetable to grow. I know, I know, technically it is a fruit, and could be even classified as a berry. And in my house we sometimes treat them as a fruit (well, we like to munch on them, on them homegrown ones though). But I still consider it a vegetable cuz we mostly use it as such.


  There's so many varieties of tomatoes. Big tomatoes, small tomatoes, tiny tomatoes. There's the traditional red, the pink, the brown, the yellow. There's the round shaped, the bell shaped, the sausage shaped and even ribbed shaped.  There's tomatoes for pickling, tomatoes for slicing (aka eating fresh), tomatoes for drying and tomatoes for salsa and pastes. Tomatoes are incredible, they come in many shapes and sizes, and colors, and are used in so many different ways. Tomatoes are used all over the world. Ok, I think you already know I LOVE tomatoes, and don't judge me, once you try a homegrown tomato (if you haven't already) you will understand why.

  Growing tomatoes is easy. Give them what they want and you're good to go (oh shall I say grow?!). I won't be discussing about growing tomatoes in this post, I'll leave that for some other time. Today, I want to discuss about the growth pattern of tomatoes. In botany, there's such a things as determinate and indeterminate growth. When growth is not terminated then a plant is said to have indeterminate growth habit (in other words it just keeps on growing). On the other hand, determinate growth is determined by genetics and it usually stops at a certain point. Tomatoes can be either determinate or indeterminate. Determinate tomatoes usually have a bushy growth habit, don't require staking and the tomatoes usually ripe together over a short period of time. Indeterminate tomatoes grow into long vines, need some sort of support, and will produce for a long time, often until heat (or cold in colder climates) or something else kills them. Technically they are perennials (plants that live for over 2 years), though rarely grown as such, due to them being tender.
Here you can see Tiny Tim tomato growing in a pot

  When you buy your seeds you can check the seed packet to see whether the variety is determinate or indeterminate.  It may not say it directly so look for keywords such as "short' or "compact" for determinate tomatoes, and "very long" or "need staking" for indeterminate tomatoes. This information is usually written on the back of the seed packet. It's important to know what variety you're getting so you can plan you garden better. For example, if you're growing tomatoes to make sauces then you'd want to consider indeterminate tomatoes as they usually ripen together rather than over a period of time. You need to provide more space for determinate tomatoes as they have bush growth habit. Indeterminate tomatoes on the other hand will need a trellis or other support. So knowing what type you're getting is very important.

  Happy Gardening
Yana

Saturday, September 30, 2017

The season has began again

Hello fellow gardeners,
The gardening season has began again and I hope this year we have even more success. I have decided to wait till October this year as it's very hot this year and from last years' experiences I know it would be too much trouble with most plant to start earlier. I was also on a vacation and came mid September and the past couple of weeks were spent on adaption and preparations. 
I have finally organized my seed collection (well still more work to do, but it's not a mess it used to be). I used Ikea storage boxes and it worked out great. 



I have read a few book and learned a lot of new things. I am looking into converting my garden into a permaculture garden and I need to learn even more. I hope to talk about what I learned and what I intend to do, in the blog posts this year Inshallah. 

I have marked the beginning of the season by starting cabbages, broccoli, cauliflowers and Brussels sprouts yesterday. I don't usually start seedlings indoors, and neither am I a fan of seed starting to begin with, but I feel I need to learn to do this. These brassicas particularly, take a long time to grow and they never reach maturity in my garden. They don't like heat and struggle to take off in the beginning. By the time they're growing it gets too hot and they never reach harvesting stage. So the only option I see at the moment is starting them indoors and planting them out once it's cool enough. I know I should have started them a bit earlier but I hope I still have the time for them to grow. 


This time around, I added fertilizer to the potting mix. They say you don't need to add fertilizer when starting seeds but my experience tells me otherwise. The potting mix we use doesn't have much nutrients, and adding fertilizer later, when the seedlings start growing, is troublesome for such small pots. By the time the seedlings are growing the fertilizer becomes available so it's a win win situation. I used Sustane, one of the only organic certified fertilizers I found here. I used the recommended dosage for container planting and mixed it into my potting mix. For the mix I used the following formula: 
1 part compost (I used a bit of mine and a bit from Shalimar)
1 part sweet sand
1 part coco peat
1 part perlite

I settled for this because it gives the texture that I feel is good. Feel free to play with ratios, and let us know what you think.

I hope to start others this week. If you have any questions or comments do write below.

Happy Gardening
Yana

Monday, May 15, 2017

What you should do in your garden now or "How to prepare your garden for summer"

Hello, fellow gardeners. Whether you're new to gardening or have some experience, or even someone in between, the question of "what I should do in my garden now that the weather is getting hotter" would cross your mind every year around this time if you garden in Dubai or any other place on earth that has extremely hot weather. A lot of vegetables you grew in winter would be done by now, or nearing to be done. You probably have a lot of annual plants that are dead and dry. You also probably have a lot of plants that you are afraid to lose during the summer (every year I lose some trees in summer). You also probably already miss your lush green garden and are probably having plans for the fall. I know I do all the things above and I have created a little guide for you in order to help you prepare your garden for summer and fall.

1. Assess your garden for dead plants. Pull the dead plants and put them in the compost pile. I only pull plants with thick stems. I cut the plants with thin stems at the base leaving the roots to rot in the ground providing the soil bacteria with food.

plants in this bed are done


2. Provide shade for sensitive plants. Do you have newly planted plants in your garden? If the answer is yes then you need to provide them with shade. If you have sensitive to heat plants, such as bananas, then you also need to provide them with shade. I use shade cloth and hoops to provide some shade for my plants from the blazing summer sun. If you have plants in pots that receive little shade then move them to a location with more shade (it's fine to have very little sun in summer, it's too hot to handle direct sun for most plants). If you have space in your garden then you could buy a 3x3 tent from a hypermarket and arrange your plants there (I suggest you secure the tent in case there's wind, mine is secured with screws to the ground). I also have shade cloth around my tent.
I am not fond of planting new plants (except annual flowers) in my garden in late spring or summer. They don't get enough of cold weather to survive transplanting and usually don't adapt to the hot weather well. I prefer to plant between late fall and early spring.

my new bananas (I need to work on this still)


3. Apply, or reapply if you already have it, mulch around your plants. The weather is getting hotter and hotter and the plants get stressed. Mulching your plants will help to keep the roots of your plants cool and prevent moisture loss, which is a big problem in summer. Cool roots help your plants cope better with the heat just like the roots that have enough water (but don't overwater as this can be bad too).
I use hay for my mulch but you can use anything that is available at hand. You can use many things as mulch such as shredded newspapers, dry leaves, dry plant materials, straw etc. The reason I like hay is that it breaks down very fast providing nutrients in the process.

this Pakistani Mulberry tree needs more mulch

hay


4. If you need to fertilize your plants then do it ASAP, as the hotter it gets the less advisable it is to fertilize. Fertilize away from the stem and preferably use less than usual (unless it's natie palnts or plants that handle heat well). I only use organic fertilizers such as manures, Sustane (the only certified organic fertilizer I have found in Dubai so far), compost and fish waste (whatever is left after I clean the fish along with the water I used to clean it, if you keep fish in aquarium then the aquarium water is a great way to add nutrition to your garden and conserve water at the same time).

5. This step and then next step (6) can be combined if you wish to. Keep your soil alive during the summer (I am talking about garden beds that probably won't be planted). Soil is alive, it is a living thing. Ther are many organisms in the soil that have a mutually beneficial relationship with the soil and the plants. I won't go into details here but in short, you want to keep your soil alive by keeping it moist and by having enough matter for the organisms below to feed on. If your soil goes totally dry and there's no organic matter to break down some organism will start dying off and eventually, your soil will die. You also want to prevent soil erosion which can happen with unplanted soil that is exposed to elements (in summer we still get winds). How can you keep your soil alive and prevent erosion in our hot summers? Keep it covered, by adding mulch or growing green manure or cover crops (I haven't done this yet so I can't comment much) and keep it moist. I didn't try growing cover crops yet and don't know what will do well in our summers. The other option is mulch. Water your beds, add mulch ( look at point 3 above) and water some more. Water it once a week to keep it moist. I think by covering the mulch with cardboard sheets and removing them for watering every week is a good way to prevent even more moisture loss. If you go this route don't forget to secure it so it doesn't get blown away (you could use interlock tiles). If you're going to be traveling ask someone to water for you. If this is not an option then create a thicker layer of mulch and cover with more cardboard.

6. Prepare your beds for next planting season. This step is a part of step 5 above. Whether you're creating new beds, or are working on your existing beds, a little planning will go a long way. You can enrich your beds now and by the planting time your soil should be very well prepared for new crops. Add layers of  hay, newspapers, organic matter (like your dead plants, leaves etc), kitchen scraps, compost, manures and finish off with shredded newspapers and hay. Water well and cover with cardboard. It's based on guerilla gardening, also called sheet gardening. Some people swear by this.

7. Put away unused pots and tools. If you have unused pots it's a good idea to put them away somewhere cool, or at least in the shade. The sun can cause some damage on some pots, especially unused plastic ones. Also, keep your tools in the shade for the same reasons. Every year after summer I have a few pots that break down from being under the sun all summer long.

8. Plan for your fall garden. Don't wait till August as it you could get overwhelmed. Decide what you are going to grow this fall. What varieties are you going to try?. Draw a plan. Write a plan. I once read somewhere that dreams become goals only when they're on paper, while they're still in your head they're just dreams. So if you dream about lush productive garden start setting goals now. Plan what you're going to buy (like maybe you need pots, or maybe you're adding new beds and need to buy more coco peat). Get your seeds. If you have some extra seeds you could use our facebook group for seeds exchange and acquire new seeds practically for free (if you haven't joined yet you can do it here). Prepare everything you need during summer so that when it's time plant you're all set.

my garden last season

9. Start a compost bin (if you haven't already). Save all your kitchen scraps and dead plant material from your garden and throw it in the compost bin. Try to mix dry materials (dead plants, dry leaves, shredded newspapers, and cardboard) with green (like kitchen scraps, fresh leaves, grass clippings etc.) materials. Keep your compost moist, don't let it get dry, but don't let it get too wet either. Turn it every few days. Come August and your compost should be ready.

my compost bin

 dead plant material ready to go into my compost bin

10. Learn new things about gardening. Read books, magazines, blogs (like my blog), learn from your mistakes (assess what worked and what didn't for you this past season). Ask questions (here on my blog or on another gardening forum). Take notes in the process.

I hope this little guide is going to helpful to you in any way. Ask me any questions below in the comments.

Happy Gardening
Yana

Saturday, May 13, 2017

A little update

OK I know I haven't posted this year a lot, especially on my blog. I really would have loved to but sometimes things get in the way. Nevertheless I am still gardening and still care about this blog. I really wish I could post a little more.
The gardening season was very weird this year and we had to "close" early and forfeit plans for summer garden (maybe next year Inshallah). Overall the garden didn't produce as much as last year but I still managed to freeze some carrots and beets, and pickle some cucumbers. We didn't buy any tomatoes,parsley, green onions, salads and leafy greens throughout the season as we had plenty to eat fresh. Our trees are growing and getting bigger.
Here are some pics for you.