Hi, November. What season is it in your area right now? In my area it is the rainy season. This time the rain that fell in succession was very heavy. In addition to rain, there were also strong winds that occurred along with the rain.
In Indonesia, we do not have a fall season. But the end of the year is always an extra challenge for farmers and people who have a hobby of gardening. This is because of the high intensity of rain interspersed with hot sunlight after the rain. That makes conditions for gardening or farming more difficult.
The most important thing is to learn the types of plants that can survive high rainfall as well as those that can survive when exposed to extreme heat.
Since last month, I have been very busy in my garden. Especially, this week at the beginning of November. Very heavy rain occurred in my village. My garden was flooded. I didn't have time to take pictures of my garden during the flood. I only took pictures of the current condition of my garden after my garden managed to recover from the water.
You can see in a bed, I use small stones that I use to circle the plants in the inside of the bed. I do that to maintain the soil in the area around the plants, so that the soil does not come down carried away by the rainwater that had flooded the bed.
Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of small stones. So, I can't apply it to all of my beds.
The plants in this bed are mustard greens. But the mustard greens are bigger than the mustard greens in general that I planted before. So actually this mustard greens is the first one I planted in my garden. I'm very excited to see how big this mustard greens will be when it's ready to harvest later. Is this mustard green really bigger or is it just like mustard greens in general. Let's see later.
In the next bed, there is a new type of vegetable that I planted for the first time in my garden. They are a type of curly mustard greens similar to lettuce at a glance. But the difference is that this type of curly mustard greens has a white stem.
Continuing to the other beds, I still have productive purple eggplant plants. You can see that there are many purple eggplants. There are eggplants that are ready to harvest, there are eggplants that are still small.
This time I also harvested purple eggplants. In fact, a few days ago I had harvested these purple eggplants. They are very productive. I am very grateful for that.
In fact, the purple eggplants that I planted in this bed were not really cared for with intensive fertilization. But because this type of eggplant is easy to care for, they can easily bear fruit abundantly on their own. Wow, that's great! Thank you nature for its very cool gift.
Next, in the bed near the bed planted with eggplant, there are water spinach plants. Still a few weeks old. Water spinach is a vegetable that is very easy to plant and care for. In addition, water spinach is also very resistant to weather. That's why water spinach is recommended in my area to be planted. In addition, water spinach can also be made into many delicious side dishes for our daily food here.
Continuing to the other beds, this November I made some changes to these beds. Initially, these long beds only had 2 beds. However, I renovated the beds so that the total number became 4 beds. The larger number of beds allows me to plant a greater variety of vegetables. That will make my garden more colorful of course.
The remaining 2 beds I planted with the same types of vegetables as before. There, there is a large mustard greens type.
For one more bed, I planted it with Mustard Green Flowers. I got the seeds directly from the previous Mustard Green Flowers plant which created new seeds by itself. So I don't need to sow the seeds from the beginning.
Next, there are tomato plants that survived through heavy rain and strong winds. I am grateful. I have strong plant supports. I use sturdy bamboo poles to support the tomato plants.
Currently, my tomato plants have grown thickly. The tomato flowers that previously appeared have started to turn into small tomatoes. Yeay, I am very happy about that!
During this fruiting phase, I also fertilize the plants. my tomato plants with liquid organic fertilizer. This liquid organic fertilizer can be obtained from compost liquid that ferments itself.
I hope my tomato plants can bear fruit abundantly and survive until harvest. Because there will be continuous rain and wind coming during the end of the year.
I almost forgot. I also have a large turmeric harvest! I forgot that I planted turmeric plants since January this year. Crazy, almost a year. I saw the turmeric plants starting to flower.
Sure enough, when I take look at deep planting medium, there were already lots of turmeric in it! I got a lot of this turmeric.
My plan: I will give this turmeric to the traditional drink maker. Also, I will give this turmeric to my sister in law because she needs it to sell food.
Meanwhile, before I posted my gardening journal this time, I did the activity of transplanting my chili seedlings.
Before moving the chili seedlings to a larger planting medium, I pruned the shoots of the chili seedlings so that later the chili plants would have many new branches and produce more fruit. Of course, I have done this method in previous chili plantings and it worked. So, I did this method of pruning the shoots of chili seedlings again.
Well, that was my gardening activity in early November. There are more and more variations of the types of vegetables that I plant because I really like vegetables. I want my garden to be even more productive.
The challenge of rapidly changing weather from rain to dry and hot weather can happen in the same day. In fact, it does not dampen my enthusiasm to continue fighting so that my plants can be harvested successfully.
If I succeed in harvesting, of course I want to share the results of my gardening with my neighbors and my relatives. I am very happy to be able to share later with the people around me. It is like a very great mood booster. Until next and happy gardening!
Best Regards,
Anggrek Lestari
Anggrek Lestari is an Indonesian fiction writer who has published two major books. Now She is a full-time content creator. She has a goal to share life, poem, and food content that makes others happy and can get inspiration.
Contact Person: authoranggreklestari@gmail.com
Discord: anggreklestari#3009