I’ve always wanted to grow my own food. And yes, I’ve done it too, for a while.
(writing that sent me to my blog archives. Remember this garden? I had to stop myself from digging too deep into the archives because I actually don’t even really have time to write this post, let alone read my own blog archives. I did find out that some older posts have missing pictures though because I deleted my Flickr account. Will have to fix that. Some day.)
I’ve also always wanted to grow medicinal herbs, but we used to live in a region that had so much pollution that I never really felt safe to do so.
Traveling and lack of time, energy and space made it hard for me these past few years, but now I’m dreaming again. After all, we have half an acre of land and that may not be enough to do real homesteading on, but it is plenty to play with.
Most of what you see here. behind the artificial grass, is my future garden, where I can plant whatever I want. It’s a lot bigger than it looks here. And then there’s the rest of our lot, that needs some landscaping. I think it would be fun to make a cactus garden with all different kinds of cactuses and succulents. And we need color. Bougainvilleas of course, but there must be some other possibilities too. All in good time…
Since we live in a completely different climate now, I have a lot to learn. But that’s part of the fun. Our coconut trees are growing steadily and we’ll probably have our first coconuts in about a year.
My first papaya tree needs to be planted soon, it’s growing really fast. The other seedlings need a bit more time, but they’re coming along too.
Two weeks ago I’ve planted an avocado pit and a kalbas. I’m watching it constantly, but so far, nothing has happened.
We already have quite a bit of aloë and agave growing here (it was here when we bought the house). I need to look into harvesting and using the aloë (there must be a way to keep it longer than a few days too) and I want to find out if the root of this agave is edible.
I found out I should have started growing a vegetable garden about now to be able to grow when there’s rain and to harvest before it gets really hot and dry so I have to skip this year. Next year I want to grow some corn and beans and maybe some zucchini, pumpkin and/or squash too.
Also on my list for next year: bananas, mangos, and soursops. Oh, and a lime tree (we use a lot of lime in our drinks). And I also want to try to plant a pineapple. How cool would it be to make a fruit salad or a smoothy with fruit from our own trees?
I would also love to find the edible kind of cactus that is indigenous here but isn’t growing on our land (the one in the picture is inedible but beautiful).
Oh, plenty of plans and dreams. But that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?