I started this post on 11/24/2020 and it had two words in the draft all this time, “My grand”, and nothing else till not. And sad to say my veggie garden is in similar shape.

My first attempt at planting seeds, I put a few seeds in a starter pots with seeding soil. I watered them everyday and put them in a sunny but cool spot. Well, out of two pots of eggplants, I got 2 seedlings and only one looks like it is doing well. And the shiso, nothing sprouted. Sad.

A couple weeks later my cousin brought over radishes from her dad’s garden (Uncle H), and was laughing about how he planted his seed. He liberally spread the seeds in the garden and a lot of the sprouted and this was from thinning out the radishes. I decided to try Uncle H’s technique, it couldn’t be worst than I did.

First to tidy up my new veggie garden of weeds, and “sigh,” cat poop. A stray neighborhood cat was using it as a litter box in the area that I decided to plant. I scooped out the poop, weeded, and spread a layer of coffee and cacoa grounds in the bed to keep the cat away. I read cats dislike the texture and smell of coffee grounds and we save our grounds for the plants, it works out perfectly. Once there garden was clear, I planted my kale who was looking pot bound and the Waialua pepper plant I got from the half price rack at Lowes in the top bed, daikon seeds and a papaya seedling (birds brought the seedling to us in returns for morning papaya from my mom) in the lower bed.

Using Uncle H’s technique, I planted one generously seeded row of daikon.

Just in case you were wondering, Waialua peppers are a hybrid of a jalapeño and the daikon that I planted are long white Japanese radish. I use a lot of that for pickles for our meals.

Haha! It worked! Both the coffee/cacoa grounds to keep the cat away and Uncle H’s technique. Now I’m patiently waiting to my veggies to goodies for our meal with them.

More gardening adventures to come. I’ve been spending much more time outside in the garden. Twice a day, weeding session to get the yard back to what it was like when my dad worked on it. And I started a science experiment with some dying orchids. That’s for the next post.