I Garden To Keep Myself Sane (and Hopefully Healthy) | HiveGarden Journal

Every day I walk outside to the garden. Between writing copious amounts of what I want to think is somehow productive work, I walk to the garden to see how things are going. For lunch and dinner, I pick leaves, thus looking at how things are going again. Even if it is only a small garden, I am still giving it all my attention, in order to stay sane. Or so I tell myself.

In any case, it has been almost two weeks since my last garden update and things have been growing very well. My rosemary plants and rosemary cuttings have been growing at a rapid pace. Both the cuttings and the plants seem to have been established. I have harvested from them slowly, so as not to overharvest.

new growth on rosemary cuttings	rosemary plant

Most of my plants are also bolting, seeding, or already beginning to drop seeds, as in the case of the amaranthus or marog. It is almost ready to harvest, as I saw some of the seed heads are already dropping seeds. This is usually my time to harvest them.

Most of the rocket plants are also flowering but some are still producing loads of leaves. This season was one of the best in terms of salad rocket for me. I harvested so much the last three weeks, it is staggering (see the photograph below of my recent harvest).

amaranthus seed heads	flowering salad rocket

Various seed pods are already forming. It will be soon then I will harvest them. To my surprise, the mustard plant made some really big seed pods. If I am lucky, I will have many seeds that I can plant again soon. It will be interesting to see how well they will grow in the summer heat.

The wild rocket is also making seed pods. Once these plants begin their seeding, you will never run out of plants. They are so prolific and grow in increasing abundance. Self-seeding is always a worry because their seed pods are so sensitive. If they break open, there will be seedlings everywhere.

mustard seed pods	wild rocket seed pods

And then the humble salad rocket is also producing so many new seed pods. Soon I will have thousands of seeds again! It is amazing how quickly you can gain so much.

| mustard seed pods |

And then the lovely surprise that I got with the purslane growing between my rosemary plants. I am so glad about this because I just love their slight citrusy taste. It was such a wonderful surprise when I saw the first little seedling pop its head through the ground. Now, there is plenty to go around!

| purslane plants |

Then there is the sad situation of my pepper plants. Every day I check to see if there might still be something growing. I am not sure if these are the last two survivors of the attack on my seedlings, or maybe these are different plants. But of all twenty or so, only these two survived.

potential pepper survivor	potential pepper survivor

And the last update, the slow-growing garlic chives are also on their way to becoming strong-growing plants. They are growing so slowly that I hope that their taste will be beyond this world. They are also hiding safely behind the rocket leaves that just took over. In hindsight, I needed to plant them elsewhere. But I can do nothing about that now!

| hiding garlic chives |

And that is all from my garden this week. It keeps me sane in between the writing and cooking and trying to make sense of everything that goes on around us. Crazy times we live in. Luckily, we gardeners have a way to escape reality even if only for a brief moment.

Happy gardening, and keep well!

All of the writings and musings in this post are my own. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300.