Long time no see..

It has been a while since my last post, and a lot of things in my life have changed, but one thing that remains is my love for gardening. So here is my attempt to revive this blog and try to get back to a set schedule.

The garden is alive and doing well

In all that absent time, I didn’t gave myself a chance to do much gardening, but my little garden in japan has survived well. There is a long story about how it is doing now, but I will let that for another post.

The strawberries grew very nicely

For now I just want to thank deeply to everybody who sent me messages and mails wondering what had happen to my little garden in Japan. It is amazing to know you guys care, Thank you very much!

And they are many other things growing too

I really don’t want to let this blog fade, I still have a lot of tips to share, projects to try and gardening to do.

Time to get my hands dirty again.

Making a strawberry tower

One of the first steps to help my garden recover after its last disaster was to start propagating the strawberries. I lost my main crop completely, but I was very fortunate that all of the back up strawberries survived, with them I can very easily replace all the lost plants.

I need all the strawberry runners I can get

I'm in luck, because most of them are giving out plenty of nice runners. I only have to guide them and then separate into the big strawberry planters.

Lucky me they are a lot of healthy ones growing

Now I only had one plant of each variety and there is a risk to lose some if anything happens. Also, I need some time to make sure there are no more grubs and to renew the soil from the big strawberry planters, so the first thing I am doing is filling all the gaps in the strawberry tower. It has been quite easy as all the runners seem to be just the perfect length to reach all the other levels. I am sure the tower will be full very soon.

The tower is already filling up

My only worry is that there will be enough runners to fill everything before the cold comes and the strawberries go into their dormant state. I need at least 24 plants to fill every gap available and so far I only have 6. I will add a bit of fertilizer to help them keep spreading, but other than that I can only wait and cross my fingers.

My little garden in japan September 2011

In September I went back to Mexico for a couple weeks, and while I did leave the garden in good hands, a lot of things happened and the garden really suffered. We had two typhoons a bunch of heat waves, a small cold wave, caterpillars munching on several plants and just to top it all, beetles. Over all it was much than the little balcony could handle, even if I would have been here.

The garden got a lot of damage

• Most of the plants on the flowerboxes died or got too damaged. The very strong winds from the typhoon even split open a couple of them.
  
  
• All of the annual crops went full dry or sick, they were on their way out anyways so no point trying to rescue them.

This marigold got split open by the wind

• The grape got a bit hurt by the wind, it lost a bunch of leaves and its trellis got slightly damaged.
  
  
• The calla lilies were almost all eaten by caterpillars, they also suffered from the wind and got all bended, so I must repot them.

The pumpkin and most summer crops died

• Most of the herbs died from the drought, so my herb patch is gone. I will have to start getting them again too.
  
  
• The main strawberry crop died completely. It was all munched from the inside by grubs. It is my fault for not using proper mulch, but at least this time I got a back up to start them again.

June beetles love the strawberry, the soil is perfect for their grubs

• For the rest of the plants, most are a bit hurt or got damaged soil, so I will be repotting most of them.

I already started getting ready for the new garden

So, now I have to work hard and bring the garden back to life. It will be a big project that will take me a long time, money and effort. But it is all good. This is a great opportunity to start over and also to share a lot of techniques about starting a garden from scratch. Keep posted to see how it works