My First Entry to the Steemit Community Garden Journal Challenge (December)

Hello everyone,

Last night I was scrolling through my feed and I came across @simplymike's Steemit Community Garden Journal Challenge... I am quite surprised I hadn't heard of it sooner! I post about my garden all the time so this sort of challenge is perfect for me. It is the last edition of the year so I am glad I caught it before it ends.

December in Spain has been pretty mild so far though the temperature is dropping slowly but surely. The garden is coming along slower as a result but there are some advancements which I will be sharing with you today.

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The radishes and spinach are continuing to grow happily in the poly. The mesh bags were featured in a previous garden update but I wanted to share them here too.

In the bags there are: cauliflower, calabrese broccoli, purple sprouting broccoli and some black cherry tomatoes.

After bringing the mesh bags into the poly I noticed there were some midges around the plants, which I think could have been due to excess water that was in the root training trays the plants originally germinated in. I used a mild soap water solution to spray them and all the rest of the plants in the polytunnel too and that has done the trick, for the time being at least!

Not much has changed since they were planted in as the sun isn't shining on them as much as they might like, I might have to rethink a different location for them. The sun is shining on the rainbow carrots though, as you can see!

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From the poly we venture into the greenhouse where I have a variety of plants growing.

The dwarf French beans have progressed and we now have some cute little bean pods growing. I have to say I am very pleased with them!

I also have some little celery plants, more of the same black sweet cherry tomatoes that are in the poly (I am growing them in both places to see where they get on best) and my first batch of purple sprouting broccoli. Last week I planted another tray of calabrese broccoli which you can see are just starting to sprout up. Not pictured are a tray of leeks and more of the dwarf French beans which have yet to germinate.

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Just outside of the greenhouse are my handmade raised grow boxes. Due to the level of pests in that area I have to cover the boxes with netting to keep the plants safe. Even with the nets in place I have had to manually remove cheeky snails and grasshoppers that find their way in there!

In one box I have golden and purple podded peas. The golden ones have progressed the most, putting out flowers and now some pea pods. I am yet to see anything from the purple ones, hopefully they catch up soon.

In the other box I have sugar peas, my favourite type of peas! They haven't scaled in size but they are prolifically putting out flowers which is promising. I look forward to seeing some tasty sugar pea pods in the near future :)

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That's all for now! I hope I have made a worthy contribution to the Steemit Community Garden Journal, I look forward to future editions. If you are a gardener I encourage you to enter too!

Happy gardening!

Gardeningchef