Our first garden project

We brought with us two pepper plants in 5 liter pots. Both were Black Naga Chilis that had lots of green fruit that were just not enjoying the Dutch climate. They were refusing to turn dark before we left, so we just threw them in the van. The LOVED the Portuguese sun and my husband was so happy.

We know they will probably be dead when we get back here around Christmas, but we decided to make them a nice home anyway.  Since the neighbors keep the land clean for me by letting the sheep in, we needed to fence off an area against the sheep because hot peppers are poisonous to them.

We made our first raised bed with roofing tin. There is a big stack in the barn that used to be the building's original roof. We used wood beam to make corner pieces and screwed it together.

The bed was filled with trimmings from one of the cork oak trees at the bottom, 10 bags of 50 liter organic soil mix and 5 bags of organic horse manure mulch mix. I was worried it would be too hot for the peppers and kill them off, but instead the peppers perked up even more and everything ripened!

We found this metal frame in the barn and made a little door with it using fencing and some steel wire.

Our little pepper plants look so happy.

We have 5 more sheets of steel waiting to be made into more raised beds for our next trip.

 

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