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[More than a year ago, 500 days to be precise,](https://peakd.com/hive-140635/@fermentedphil/always-renewing-building-a-new-raised-food-garden-bed-with-old-materials-and-decorating-it-with-succulents-or-hivegarden-journal) I built a raised bed from scrap materials. In the last couple of months, I "upgraded" this system by making it slightly bigger. It is by no means perfect or even "working", but I get a lot of veggies from it.
In the 500 or so days, the "wall decorations" have grown so big that you can almost not see the wall anly longer (see the photograph below).
What started as an experiment grew into a beautifully decorated wall. It is not done growing yet, but I am surprised how big it got. But not only this, the swiss chard and other herbs in the garden has grown so big in the last couple of weeks and months, that I have needed to give away so much of what I have grown. But is this not the point of gardening? To grow too much and give away to friends and family?
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Where I started with about 10 or so smallish succulents in the wall, now they have almost covered the whole wall. I am contemplating whether I need to "thin" them out a bit because harvesting my herbs has become a problem...
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The swiss chard has basically grown the size of my arm. I have never grown such large leaves. I am not sure what happened, as they were on the brink of dying, now they have found new growth.
I have also sown new seeds, now already seedlings. From salad rocket, to wild rocket, basil, amaranth, and more swiss chard. But it has been a struggle, as something constantly eats my seedlings. Slugs, snails, and various other critters. I have tried the eggshell and coffee ground trick to keep them away, but this has not worked. I will soon try the beer trick, making the slugs drunk and kill them by drowning. But we will see.
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I am also again trying to grow peppers. In the previous attempts, all of my seedlings were eaten by slugs and snails. Now, I have tried so many things to keep these seedlings alive, from batches grown with many seedlings, to single containers, to direct sowing. Now, something has to work, as I have been trying this for too long and too hard for it to fail yet again... Keep an eye on this space! (I have so many roasted pepper recipes I want to try...)
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It is funny really. I have zero space left in my garden to plant new plants, yet I have this desire to keep on making cuttings, to keep on making new baby plants. If I had the will and time, I could open a nursery, where I sell these plants and their seeds. But for now, I am just making baby plants for now reason besides that I feel too bad to throw them into the compost. So, I still make cuttings, and I literally make space in the garden to plant them. How counter intuitive? But this is something I want to call "Gardening as a way of life". Something along those lines.
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And lastly, elsewhere in the garden, there are lemons by the dozen, and so many wild strawberries growing - I have yet to harvest a single wild strawberry! The avocado trees are flowering, and soon I hope to see some figs as well.
For now, I am drenched in garden work, I cannot keep up. But it is a way of living, and I am moving along with my garden. I will dive deeper in this image in coming posts, but is the garden not a moving piece of art? I like that image.
Either way, happy gardening and keep well!
*All of the musings and writings are my own, albeit inspired by the garden and all of her delights. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300.*