gardening again - garlic and composting

I think it was @luzcypher writing about growing vegetables, or myabe it was @kyle asking what other Steemers did, but I've decided to get into action with some growing. Or perhaps it was the Lunar New Year. I used to grow vegetables, in the 1980s.

So here's the space, early in the morning a few days ago. It's south facing, and it could well be difficultly hot in a few months time, but having to rig up some netting screens will no doubt be good for the house as well. And that small wall might provide a little shade.

In the first flat that we lived in, in Haikou, there were a number of very overcrowded aloe vera plants, with so many roots that there was practically no soil. I started composing our fruit and vegetable waste, and the first thing that I found was that everything broke down a lot quicker if it was dried for a day or two in the sun. If all the waste went straight into a pile, it pretty soon got very wet, and smelly, and since it was just outside the bedroom window, that wouldn't cut it.

• On the tray is yesterday's waste from the kitchen.
• In the plastic bag is waste from the previous few days, and a tiny amount of soil. This is a poor-man's compost tumbler.

• And in the milk-cartons are cloves of garlic, aiming at producing green garlic in a month or two. There are few tea leaves at the bottom, a bit of the one-day-dried vegetable waste, and then some soil.
• The larger carton, for a mango-flavoured yoghurt drink that my son loves, is garlic, but also a rotten tomato, just to see it the seeds will germinate.

It's a start!

Each day during this two week holiday I will try to bring back some soil. It would also be good to find some breeze-blocks somewhere, to build a vertical garden up against the wall to the right. We might even buy some bigger pots.

Thank you for reading, @richardjuckes.