Six days (May 16) after I planted the seeds I visited my patch before going to work and got the highlight of the week. It had rained almost every day since planting and I could see the little green leaves pushing back the mighty soil; I felt like a proud parent. I was so excited I left work at the stroke of 4 p.m., the end of the official work day on a Friday, and rushed home to do some more ‘farming’. I wanted to extend the patch now that I could see that everything was growing and I wanted to do so before it got dark. I had put many seeds in each hole which resulted in many ‘clusters’ of shoots, and I am foreseeing that this may be a problem. Additionally, the last set of seeds that I threw into the forked area were not separated and so what seems to look like pumpkin is growing with what looks like cantaloupes and water melons.
I donned my ‘farm clothes’, including my Wellies (water boots) and extended my ‘farm’ patch to 10 feet by 15 feet. It was two hours of hard work, being bitten by mosquitoes but I persevered. By 6:30 p.m. when I was called in for dinner, I felt like I was on the brink of starvation. I concluded that if I was going to be a farmer, I couldn’t do so on an empty stomach.
Over the weekend I thought constantly about the growing clusters in the backyard and the fact that I had no clue about how I was going to deal with the ‘success’ of my planting efforts. I needed help. Now that they were all growing in clusters, what should I do? Am I supposed to move them, and if so, when? What is adequate spacing? Based on the visible shoots, is the 10×15 enough space? All questions that I have not yet been able to answer.
Posh Farming 