confessions of a gardener - part i

In the Yates Veggie Growing Challenge’s blogging tips, we are required to be honest in our blog.  With the end drawing closer, I thought that it would be timely for me to summarise the things that I have opened up about over the course of the competition, both explicitly and implicitly. 

•          While I enjoyed helping my parents around the garden during my childhood in Whangarei, I got into gardening after being diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression in my early 30s.  The garden has benefitted me immensely by improving my mental health.  This is something I wanted to share during the journey and now is the right time.  This topic warrants a separate post, so I will continue with this in Part II which I will write soon (I can’t promise it will be tomorrow as I have the YMCA 10k race plus lots to do around the garden, so I might have to pick an easier topic to write about)
•          Urban self-sufficiency can be achieved but it is an all-consuming job which leaves very little time for other things in your life
•          I have a love/hate relationship with the garden!  I am extremely passionate about what I do but there are times I seriously wish I wasn’t a gardener (but then as Sarah said, I also ask myself what else I would be doing with my time)
•          I take the garden way too seriously.  Both mum and I have invested a lot of our time, energy and finances into the garden.  It can be stressful and I get quite upset if things don’t work out as planned, even if some factors are beyond my control, for example, the weather. 
•          The veggies we grow helps both mum and I control Type 2 diabetes.  So far, we have remained off meds and control our condition with just diet and exercise. 
•          Increasing my intake of veggies (in conjunction with exercising consistently and monitoring my overall diet carefully) has enabled me to lose 23.6kg over the past five months
•          Over the years, gardening has taken a toll on my physical health.  I’m pretty sure I suffer from RSI.  I have issues with my neck/trapezius muscles and wrists/forearms, which are incredibly tight.  These injuries cannot be attributed solely to the gym and running.
•          I don’t gel with a couple of our neighbours who sometimes catch me while I’m outside. I am busy, whereas they are busybodies who ask too many personal questions and gossip about me behind my back.  Some people need to learn how to mind their own business
•          We stopped hosting wwoofers after two years of being hosts.  Wwoofing isn’t what it used to be.  We found it difficult to deal with the negative attitude of some wwoofers.
•          The garden is far from organic, something which I’m not proud of. I seem to be relying increasingly on sprays to protect plants from pests and diseases.  Climate change hasn’t helped.  I always sprayed the roses and fruit trees with Yates products.  Then I had to start spraying the celery with Liquid Copper for rust and now it looks like I will also have to spray the garlic, too.  At least liquid copper is organic.  I also had to spray my seedlings with Success for the first time, to protect them from being eaten by pests.  The increased use of non-organic sprays around the garden is something I’d like to reflect on more in the new year.  I’d like to come up with organic substitutes in the future
•          There is some waste from produce stored in the fridge which hasn’t been utilised and is therefore no longer suitable to be given away.  There is also sometimes waste from produce that doesn’t store well, especially potatoes (despite being kept in hessian sacks, the potato dust I mentioned that I was trialling earlier doesn’t really help them keep so I decided not to use this additional chemical in the gardening process)
•          We don’t have a composting system for disposing and recycling garden waste.  Simone’s recent post on this topic is excellent and I will be making a note of her points
•          I have plenty of crop failures!
•         I use too much plastic in the garden.  I need to follow my own advice in Mini Challenge #2 (which I definitely didn’t deserve to win!)

Today’s photo is of some of my many celery seedlings in the nursery.  I hope to keep them rust free by spraying them every fortnight with Yates Liquid Copper.