New SFgardener in Belgium!

Hi everyone,

I'm Sara, and I just started my SFG one month ago. I'm a GP in a free clinic, a mother to two and pregnant with my third, so my time an energy is limited! Nonetheless, I have a nice garden, and I like gardening, so I decided to start with something manageable... a SFG.
In March I made 7 2x2 'boxes' with bricks from our old fireplace. I didn't use Mel's Mix, just use our local soil, which is very fertile. I am making compost to add after each harvest, to keep it rich. I also plan to make a combination of crop rotation and SFG. Since I don't want to grow potatoes, I have 2 years of starwberries instead. I made a very nice plan of my garden, but already I'm feeling that it's not so perfect, because I'm really waiting for the radishes to be ready foor harvest, so I can get my broccoli and cabbage in. My peas are growing well, but the beans aren't showing, and the 'pastinaak' (a kind of carrot) is not germinating either...

I'll take some pictures soon.

Sara

Hi Sara
I'm a newbie too!
Is your pastinaak bigger than a carrot and white? I think it is like a parsnip and they can take a while to germinate. I sowed some yesterday and the packet says 14-32 days. When did you sow yours?

Welcome, Sara -- good heavens, I don't know when you have time and energy to breathe with all of that (but I admire you for all of it!)

We were just in Brugges last weekend...all the flowers are so gorgeous, I'm not surprised it's very fertile.

Welcome to the Forum. It's great to see new SFG'ers from all over the globe.

@ LaFee: Yes, I think you're right, a pastinaak is exactly like a big, fat, white carrot! But I sowed mine more than a month ago, and still can't make it out. A complicating factor is of course the fact that I use the existing soil, so a lot of weeds are sprouting faster than my parsnips. They are all very friendly, annual weeds, like marigolds and nasturtium, but I'm afraid to pinch any of them just yet, in case a parsnip seedling looks just like a marigold seedling... We'll see what comes of it. If nothing shows, I can always try sowing in small rows, that should make it easier to make out which ones are the goodies, and which the baddies.

Hi Sarah,

pastinaak is the same as parsnip, and mine took from march 13 till april 17 to show just the tiniest little green leafs...they are very, very small, so you can easily overlook them or mistake 'em for something else. It seems they will grow into rather high plants though... I'm very curious what they will look like, and whether or not I've planted them in the right spots to be able to reach all other veggies by the time they grow big!

Mine look like this now (the one in the middle, I planted carrots around them), but at first you could only see the small "kiemblaadjes", a bit like spinach-seedlings, but shorter. the cloud-shaped middle leafs came a bit later.

Hallo Myriam,

Dankjewel voor de foto! Ik ga toch nog een tijdje wachten voor ik de pastinaak opgeef en iets anders zet. Ik weet nu immers waar ik naar op zoek moet, en de onkruidjes zijn ook nog heel klein. Je hebt toevallig geen warmoes (ook snijbiet genoemd) zaailing in je tuintje, want die laat zich ook nog niet zien!

Groetjes en veel succes met je tuin!

Sara

een fotootje van m'n jonge snijbiet vind je op m'n blog: snijbiet
Inmiddels zijn ze al uitgegroeid tot aardige plantjes (heb er al wat van in de sla gehad!).