𓋺 Creating a Nursery in a nomadic setting 𓋺 First #GardenJournal at the Sanctuary!

Greetings dear Hive Garden Community,

I hope you are having an inspiring and magical time with your gardening, wherever you are in the world.
Like many of you, the weather especially in Europe has been so weird, cold and unpredictable and pushed me to overcome my frustration by giving myself more freedom and flexibility in starting this gardening season!

Often, it can feel like present conditions don't meet the requirements for the "right time" to create something (especially when one has crazy hi-def visions), but sometimes all one can do is do with what one has available and start modestly from there.

We recently moved to Croatia, and I could only realize then that the conditions were wayyy different than back in the cushioned western european part, where when Nature has its flims, we can still gaslight it with central heating, doublepane windows and bulletproof isolation.

When we arrived though, a month ago exactly, it was still very very cold (still is, with a couple of warm sunny afternoons thrown in the mix thank God). Plus we were cohabitating with the previous owner during the weeks of the selling procedure and his moving out.
During that time we practically had only a bedroom available and all other places warm enough for installing a proper plant nursery were still packed with junk and his belongings.

But I wanted to start seedlings! Reason being that we invested everything we had left into this property and garden, and would be more dependent than ever before on the harvest this season. For that, I wanted to be able to plant "teenage" plants into the soil when the last frost had passed and not start only then!
Especially because last year, many seeds sprouted quite late on me and did not make it to maturity or were just too young and frail when I transplanted them into the soil and were a feast for many bugs and slugs before even having the time to grow and establish themselves.
Up to now, I have not yet been able to see a single paprika, okra and melon fruits from all the seedlings I ever planted.
While I was panicking here about that situation that seemed like I would not be able to start in time, I was super intrigued about how they had done it before electricity and entire indoor seedling stations, as for example here in Croatia, their traditional cuisine is loaded with paprikas.

The natural conditions here are definitely much better than dried-out, compacted urban western Europe gardens, the soil here is so loamy, the house has most probably been built from the clay of this property.
Plus, the biodiversity here is astounding; there are so many insects I have never seen in my life, which tells a lot about the rich ecosystem.
So with that in mind, I decided to relax and trust Nature's wisdom and resourcefulness and do with what I have available and our creative problem-solving.
I approached this season with all my vulnerability, reminding myself I'm not perfect & I rather do what I can do now than fuss about details and seeming perfection.

Especially when I unpacked the seedboxes last month it reminded myself of how blessed we are; I had saved those seeds over the past couple of years into a nomadic bug-out seedbank; the most compact solution I could come up with; I used tinboxes, vintage pillboxes, empty beads containers, glass laboratory tubes and unused perfume vials that we had in stock from our perfumery packaging.
I even had filled multiple vials with seeds that would be fit for currency or exchange if the times would become apocalyptic, as my seedbank was more valuable than any cash I had in my name.

But that time has not struck and we have been welcomed into a big and fertile garden that would be home for many of those seeds; herbs, flowers, vegetables and even many future fruit trees, by saving up any seeds from the food we ate throughout the year purchased from the organic store. That taught me a good start about seed saving; such as I didn't know that although most seeds can preserved as such right away, other plants like tomatoes and squash needed to be fermented in water for a couple of days to activate and become viable, so this year was the first time I did that and was eager to see the difference of sprout!

Also, not sure if many are familiar with planting by the moon; being in a female body and having the moon cycles living inside me, nothing else made more sense to me already since a few seasons. This year though, we purchased this awesome and extensive 'Astronomological Calendar' by Phoenix Aurelius Research Academy, who from his works in Alchemy has developed this calendar that is neither tropical nor sidereal, but details the real-sky constellations and moon phases along with the most favorable days in each moon cycles for planting leaf, flower, fruit or root vegetables, alongside many other alchemical operations that are correspondent with the different phases. I would love to talk more extensively about this calendar, and hope to make a post about it soon, while I still figure it out, as it is very technical afterall.
Suffice to say for now that, similar to the farmer's almanac, these are the main points to consider;

Plant, transplant and harvest the following when the Moon is in:

Waxing moon (sap goes up)

🥬 Leaf Vegetables: Water Element constellation ♓♋♏, pisces, cancer, scorpio
🌸 Flowers: Air Element constellation ♊♎♒ gemini, libra, aquarius
🍅 Fruits and vegetables that are harvested for their fruits: ♈♌♐ aries, leo, sagittarius

Waning Moon (sap goes down)

🥕 Root vegetables: ♉♍♑ taurus, virgo, capricorn

The important detail is to not follow the zodiac, but real-time position of the moon, therefore this calendar is the closest to the position of the planets as you would observe them in the sky in real-life depending the time of the day.
Also worth mentioning is the constellation Ophiucus ⛎ , the 13th sign, that is best for the soil, compost, manure, and other sorts of fermentations.

If you like to have a look at it yourself, this is the link to his calendar.

So on that day (April 3rd), we had a perfect day for fruit vegetables, as the Moon was waxing and in the constellation of Leo.

So with all these seemingly unfavorable meteorological conditions, yet the perfect day for planting, and the feeling that we are still in a nomadic setting, I decided to use what I got. We had thankfully brought some growlights as they were meant to be installed on the future vivarium for our snakes, Shiva and Shakti.
Last year, I started many seedlings in eggboxes, so the previous owner having disposed of many I decided to use them and start the seeds like that inside a plastic storage box. Thankfully he also had a bag of starter soil laying there that I was free to use. With those things ready, I went ahead and started my setup.

I also had started seedlings a few days earlier with a tomato we bought in an organic store on the day we hit the road to Croatia. You might glimpse their sprouts on the bottom left.

The night before, I had soaked some more "heavy duty" seeds, such as dates, pomegranate, lemon, blood orange, apple, peach and spaghetti squash; all seeds from fruits and squash we had aten during the year, with some purchased passionflower, okra and siberian watermelon seeds thrown into the glass as well. I was really hoping to get them to grow for our future conservatory/sunroom.

With those soaked and planted first, I moved on to the small seeds in the pillboxes; opening them gave me so much joy, a beautiful arrangement of potential abundance!
The time has finally come to put them into the soil after such a long sleep!
Remember, this is Fruit (Fire) day, so although I would have loved to plant in some Mangold too, I had to save them up for a ...... you guessed right, Water Sign day!

My favorites to try for this season were in this vial below; Crown of Thorns zucchini that came out too late last year and it's fruits never really developed properly, Grenadilla, San Marzano tomatoes (I must try sundrying tomatoes this summer, I even prefer them over fresh tomatoes!), Paprika Macho and Okra. A cilantro seed glitched in too on the bottom left, don't know where it came from!

Now with all the "eggshells" filled, I still had a container of seeds of paprika and cherry tomatoes that I had saved, but that looked a bit molden. I also had a full glass with Hokkaido pumpkin seeds I had fermented but their shells were heavily cracked when dried. I wasn't sure if they'd be viable, but decided to try them out and threw them all together with basilicum seeds (no water sign day, but hey this is an experiment batch afterall!) into a hanging pot that I found laying around in the new garden and just see what happens. I also put many of those tomato and paprika seeds into a plastic box that you buy carrots in at the store.

I'm so glad I did, as this is how they look today!!

For the record, this is how I do my lists; on the get-go, my style. It's not super clear for anyone who wasn't there, but like I said, no fuss, most important is I recognize the seedlings, and sometimes I check my grids like that to verify what kind actually came out of the soil.

And I must say the results surprised me; we actually seem to have more sprouts that space available right now and hope that the time will be clement enough for me to keep them outside, or at least in our future sunroom. But really stoked to have apple and pomegranate sprouted; future trees!! That's so fascinating and deep.

These sweet dumplings sprouting from the seeds I had saved from kitchen scraps last winter had to be moved into an empty icecream box as they had no space anymore in the eggbox, their roots were almost 15 cm long already!
Below you can see our first baby apple-tree;

Three spaghetti squash that I had soaked, exploded!

And here is the nomadic nursery box, as of today, with a bit of move around and move out, but many paprikas, goyo kumba and okra, plus the much anticipated Crown of Thorn zucchini on the bottom left! The big coco pods are housing some dates and other fruit trees that hopefully will come too. If you see the little green ball just above the 2 okra seedlings and below a cocopod is a pomegranate seedling that is slowly rising :)

Thanks for reading and Stay tuned!

KPHI