Mijts Blog

Where we live in PNG the soil is not suited to a garden. We didn’t even bother to have any plants in the first 18 months as regular ash fall from the volcano killed any plants that were around ……BUT…….. the volcano has been inactive for several months now (except for one short burst!).
Stephanie also loves to garden so when we saw some plant pots at one of the trade stores recently we bought them and Stephanie started to bring plant cuttings etc from her village. Then one weekend there was a plant sale at a local church so Stephanie and I went and filled the back of the ute (including Stephanie in the back to ‘watch the plants’).

Nick bought some shade cloth and very inventively gave us a bit of a ‘shade-house’ – he tied broom sticks to the security fence then tied the cloth to the fence and to the beams under our high-set house. He also brought back bags of soil last time he visited Open bay.

Our ‘garden’ is all in pots – and every time the septic tank has to be pumped we will have to move them all – but we are very proud of it, nevertheless.

The plants have grown beautifully in the couple of months that we’ve had them. The foliage on some of them is quite spectacular!

and we are even starting to get some flowers:

Last time I was in Australia I bought some lettuce, Basil, tomato, capsicum and rockmelon seeds and Stephanie has successfully grown some seedlings – she even boiled the soil first! We are now hoping to bring in some more soil and make a little vegie garden out the back!

Stephanie’s father is also trialling growing some of these out at the village – so fingers crossed – we might have some great salads soon!