My urban garden....Spring 2013.

My garden is a complete disgrace.

If my garden was your child, you'd disown it. That's how much of a disgrace it is. Weeds. Everywhere. In every garden bed. Weeds.  Not just a few here and there, but a mat, a covering, an entire lawn, that is (was) on the cusp of flowering and going to seed. Luckily I avoided a major catastrophe, and ripped them all out today, because once they go to seed, it's over.

If you haven't figured out by now, I try to grow things organically (except for my use of pyrethrum last year to deal with the aphids), so any use of herbicides is not an option.Just hard labour of ripping out weeds, by hand. Weed by weed. I basically spent the afternoon filling up my green bin with weeds today, and there's still more to do, but I'll see how much impact this round has had.

Other than that, I started my summer plants a few weeks ago, but this year, I'm going to stick to the old faithfuls. No more experimental plants that yield like 3 tomatoes to then have to deal with the heart break of spending 1-1.5hrs a day watering to get a tomato plant that gives me THREE DAMN TOMATOES (I'm talking about you Hillbilly). So I'm going to grow things that give me millions. BILLIONS even.

Tomatoes
- Rouge de marmande
- Yellow pear
- Tommy toe
- Brandywine

Peppers
- Hungarian Yellow
- Some red one that is long and pointy
- Padron peppers (how could I NOT grow Padron Peppers?!)

Eggplants
- Purple striped ones
- Little Fingers

That's it for now, I'll start all my basils and other summery herbs when the weather gets warmer. I decided I'm going to grow mint in an entire garden bed, make it into a weed. Everyone loves mint, if I have too much I'll just have to drink mojitos all summer to use them up.

Anyway, here are some pictures of what I've been growing.

 1 (one) beetoot. Not sure if it is bulls blood or candy stripes. I'll have to just eat it to find out.

 General weekly harvest, of beets, cabbages, kales, chervil (omg, I have so much chervil), chicory, nasturtium, french sorrel, a couple of carrots.

 

 I really don't know what's happened here, it's a 3 year old swiss chard plant that went to seed, but the main plant stayed alive and now I have a hanging garden of mini swiss chards.

My wasabi plant - grown from seedling approx 12 months ago and is currently in flower. The caterpillars got to the leaves, but otherwise still doing very well. I wonder how I'll propagate the plant...

The summer to come, seedlings. A little later than usual, but there is still hope.

Where?

My urban garden

THREE WHOLE MONTHS?!

SHIT.

Was my last post 3 months ago?! In all fairness, I have planned to blog about something for a while, but time has been so so precious.

Let me take you back to May.

I ordered a whole lot of chocolate. I ate it. I decided sugar was not my friend. I decided I needed to do more physical activity to counter my sedentary lifestyle of sitting in front of a computer all day and yes, please don't even highlight that I'm blogging about that very fact, in front of a computer at night.

Anyway, to cut the long story short, I decided to get off my fat ass and changed my routine. 5am starts. 9pm finishes, training twice, three, or even four times a day (not necessarily advisable if unless you're really ready to be crushed).

Kettlebells, Yoga, Pilates, Swimming, Running. It is a miracle that I am in fact alive after such an intense 3 months.

My weekly schedule would consist of:

Yoga - Ashtanga (2x week)
Pilates - (up to 5x a week, reformer - I won't lie, been some of the hardest sessions I've ever had).
Swiming - (up to 2x week, 2 km per swim)
Running - (1x week, when my knee doesn't decide to cave in, 10km)
Kettlebells (2x week, 2 x 30min HIIT sessions with a PT)

So, that is where I have been.

On top of that, meticulous food preparation. No matter what people tell you, it's not fun people. It is NOT FUN preparing breakfasts, lunches, dinners that, let's face it, isn't that appetizing when it's meant to be "clean food". What does "clean food" even mean?? Well it means basically nothing delicious.

Right now, I really just want a fucking burger to calm my nerves.

Anyway I digress,  at about 12 weeks I decided to get some metrics because I'm that much of a nerd that I don't believe in mindlessly exercising and eating clean without some hard, scientific evidence. None of this tape measurement or scale stuff, I decided to go straight to get a DEXA scan. The most accurate way to measure your body compositions such as body fat, lean mass, and bone density. To cut the long story short,I am still basically fat, need more muscle and am borderline osteo. No jokes. That is the literal truth and I'm not even exaggerating. Ok, I'm exaggerating a little, but I still have some way to go. (~80,000kJ).

Week 15 over. 3 more weeks, and I'll go in for another scan to see if I've improved.

Anyway, back to eating chicken, and grass for another 11 weeks - I'm aiming for 26 weeks and then I'm eating a whole fucking cake. Not a bite, slither, or slice, but an entire cake.