My garden journal

It's been my dream to have a garden for a very long time. I'm coming from a farming family, but since I moved out I didn't have the opportunity to grow my own vegetables and fruits. Last year in October, we finally managed to get a garden in the local community centre. It is 200 sqm big and more than enough for us.

The former owner didn't do proper cleaning in autumn even though they promised us to do so, so we had a lot of work in spring. The weather was not on our side, so everything was difficult and took a lot of time.

Recently, we have finally started to see the results of our continuous work and we couldn't be happier! I'm thrilled to share some of them here in the HiveGarden community!

Our garden is located in a lovely area with many other small gardens. It's only a few minutes outside of the city, and we can come here every day.

There were already some perennials, trees and bushes from the former owners, such as the elderflower tree. It has already started to bloom and I love its scent. Today, I have harvested some flowers to dry for tea and my entire apartment smells like a meadow. I will harvest more for syrup later this week too.

We also have a small gooseberry bush which will not produce many fruits this year, but we hope that next year we will be able to enjoy it.

Our red and black currants are living their best life. They are so lush and there are plenty of tiny fruits hanging on the bushes.

We are also lucky to have a quince tree. There are hundreds of tiny cute quinces that will be ready to harvest in several months.

We will make liquor that we will share with our families and friends as presents.

I have planted two rows of green peas and they are growing nicely. Today, I have placed a trellis to support them.

Since the garden was a mess before we started working there in March I planted some vegetables later than I normally would. Here are my shallots and red onions that should be bigger, but they are little fighters and will get there.

My biggest pride is our raised bed with radishes and lettuce.

My husband is traveling this week, so a friend of mine from Prague is visiting me and she also helps me in garden. Yesterday, we harvested our first radishes. Look at how great they are.

They are juicy and tangy, just like they should be. We ate the bulbs and the greens will be turned to a delicious pesto today together with carrot tops. There is almost no food waste in our household!

My family is used to red radishes and they were surprised to see the yellow ones. They asked me to grow a couple of them into the seed, so that I can bring them home and they can plant them too.

We also have a large rosemary plant that surprised us with plenty of flowers this year. They are delicious and add colour to our meals.

Our sage is flowering too! I will harvest and dry the flowers in a couple of days.

We also have many flowers in the garden. The tulips are gone already, but there were almost 100 of them.

The season of roses has started and we enjoy seeing all those colours. We have 7 large plants and each of them has a different colour of the roses.

This one is my favourite. Each flower has slightly different colour and they vary from orange to deep pink.

Unfortunately, the leaves were sick, so we removed them yesterday.

I have found some delicate bellflowers. They last much longer than I expected.

There are also plenty of columbines in various colours...

And peonies! I was so happy to see that there are peonies planted under the quince tree!

This week, I have planted many vegetables including cucumbers, zucchinis, celery, peppers, chilli, cabbage and more, and I will share them with you as soon as they grow a bit.

See you next time!