Past, Present and Pandameisje: Update: My square foot garden on the roof terrace

People who know me, know I like to make things, usually that is by sewing something, and recently crocheting something... But since the end of last year / beginning of this year I started my own vegetable garden in a 1.2 by 1.2 meter garden on our roof terrace.

So far we have eaten some of my homegrown Rocket (rucola), and my first tomato fell of the plant...

I did not dare to eat it, as I don't think it was full grown yet. They are the tiny sweet tomatoes, which are sold in cups at supermarket and greengrocers as 'Snoeptomaatjes' in the Netherlands.

Mieke's Makkelijke Moestuin

My garden is based on Mel Bartelomew's square feet gardening concept. I however learned about this from Jelle, who was a teenage boy when he started with his square foot garden, he has a pretty informative website about the concept, and also published a helpful book about his 'Makkelijke Moestuin'. Since this year he also sells the containers and the mix to put in those plant containers. The mix is made of 3 components: Peat, Compost and Vermiculite. The last one is a substance that is man(/factory)-made and can hold a lot of water. Together with the peat it can keep a lot of water and keeps the mix and your plants fairly dry...

Courgette in front, broccoli in the back
and carrots around

Next to growing rocket and tomatoes,
I am also growing the following plants:

* Beans, not the usually ones but the long stringy ones used in many surinam recipes like roti. Grown from seed, came up pretty fast, but plants are not looking to good now, leaves seem to be shriveling, think some pest is bothering it...

* Broccoli, bought them this weekend at the gardening center, have four plants of them now.

Broccoli

* Carrots, they are the short stubby ones which are called 'Parish carrots' in dutch, I grew some inside in a 'Garden in a crate', but there is only on left which still hasn't grown a proper carrot. Outside they seem to do a lot better, though they are still small, but with lots of green above the ground.

* Cauliflower, bought 4 of them from the garden center last weekend.

Mostly Cauliflowers, in back right is paksoi,
in back left is Courgette

* Courgettes or Zucchinis, these have been growing very well, I think the best after my rocket which is a great vegetable to start with. They germinate very well from the seeds, and seem to grow pretty fast. They must of course as they are supposed to grow quite big before making courgettes. I just hope they will have enough space in my little garden...

Courgette in my square foot garden

* Cucumber, grown from a seed, after planting it out, I did not expect it to survive, but with the warm weather of the last days, it seems to be growing and made quite some new leaves :D

Cucumber

The bigger eggplant

The tiny Eggplant

* Eggplants (aubergines) since last weekend I have one bigger plant bought from the gardening centre, and one of my own tiny aubergine plants, which I grew from it's seed.
* Garlic, when I started my garden it soon became to cold to grow anything, but garlic I read on Jelle's site would still work. Of the 4 cloves I planted 2 did really survive, and they are doing well, but the bulbs are still a bit small. I read in my book about growing vegetables that you should make a knot in the green to make all the juices to go to the bulb, and not the leaves. This led to the leaves breaking of so one of my bulb does not have much green anymore, the other one I did not make a knot in the leaves, thank god. I will see how it does and might harvest it not to long from now. The cloves I used came from store bought garlic for consumption that sprouted some green on the top.

* Onions, bought from the same biological supermarket as plant onions. Unfortunatley my mix (with all the Dutch rain) was too wet for my onions, so I had to throw away my complete first batch of onions due to them being moldy, and have now planted them in pots which I do not water, so they only get rain. I hope they will not rot this time...

One of my paksoi plants

* Paksoy (Paksoi), 4 plants bought from garden center last weekend, have read they will flower soon as well (like the rucola), so hope they will not do that, cause it makes them inedible.

Potatoes

Potato plants sticking their heads out

* Potatoes, I bought some seed potatoes from a biological supermarket. I have finally finished my potato container made from 2 old pallets. I cannot recommend making a container from an old pallet and these things are very sturdy and hard to take apart, and I had a lot of help from my boyfriend Erwin to make it... Potatoes are grown on the roots and if you want a lot of potatoes, you need to keep increasing the amount of soil on top, so that the plant makes more roots and thus more potatoes. To start with

a low container and gradually add soil and height to my container, I got some old conference banners from my employer TOPdesk. I also got the old pellets from my work, btw. I have sewn two bag of the banners, these were the sturdy plasticy ones, with a bottom of root canvas (worteldoek).

The first 2 or 3 potato plants are already sticking their heads above the soil, so I am very curious how they will get along.

First harvest of Rocket

Rucola / rocket

* Rocket (rucola), great stuff to start with, grows very well and provides lots of leaves to eats soon, do be careful they don't flower (interleave? doorschieten) cause then they aren't really edible anymore, but do keep one to have it develop seed you can use in upcoming years.

* Salad (Veldsla), I have taken a liking for these small salad crops, about 5 cms big leaves in my store bought salad and hope they will grow just as well as the rocket, tiny crops are forming already.

Veld sla

* Tomatoes (snoeptomaatjes), not very frost proof, but 3 plants seem to have survived a light frost, next to the 3 plants that were planted after the frost. These were all grown from one tomato I saved the seeds from, dried and then planted last year.

I also grow some herbs in my window sill at home and at work, but I will make a new post for that someday...