Watermelon Update

So I have watered and waited and this is what I have got (below). It's not exactly what you see in the shops and it shows the hard reality of trying to grow something especially when there are so many dry days here. There are also many pests to ward off such as rats and slugs. You can see the bite marks from something that was trying to destroy this piece of fruit but it failed. The other watermelons that survived were much smaller than this one. I had to pick them as the plants have already dried up.

I should add that my excitement at even growing one this big faded when I cut open the watermelon in the picture. It was not good as it was too dry.

At least there's consolation in the goodies below which we have also picked today. It makes up for the disappointment of yet another watermeloness year. 

Preparing For the Grapes

 These pictures were actually taken two weeks ago when we finally went into the basement and cleaned everything in there. As you can see there was a lot of stuff there including these massive wine demijohns which we were informed have a capacity of 50 litres.
Thankfully there was no sign of the rats who had been there previously but the smell down there wasn't the greatest. The mould on the walls was also not very good for the air down there.
Some of the wood had to be replaced as it was rotten.

Finding a wine press was a pleasing sight as we have all the tools now to prepare wine. It's been a good seasons for grapes as it's been very dry. There's just one more month until harvest time but some of the grapes are already ripe. Wine making is an art and my expectations are not so high for the first batch as I really don't know anything about how to make it but I am looking forward to trying it.

The Good and the Bad

The Bad

Slugs are eating their way through lots of the things we have planted. They have eaten our pumpkins, courgettes and nearly all of our cucumbers. Desperate attempts to save one last pumpkin sadly failed despite going round at night and rounding up as many slugs as we could. Below is just one portion of snails just before they got boiled.

The Good

Flowers are blooming and it's strawberry season. I don't have a picture yet but there are so many strawberries that we are finding it hard to think of ways to eat them and preserve the ones we can't possibly eat. We are in the process of making jam and have been enjoying smoothies the last few days but there are so many there that we may have to just restrict our diet to strawberries for the next while. Radish has been picked, the salads are growing well and we have finally planted the tomatoes that we had been growing at home. The vineyard is proving to be a challenge. We have pruned the shoots and branches without grapes and are carefully monitoring them for diseases as this seems to be a big problem here. Fingers crossed.

Farm Update - Dealing With Pests

Digging in the soil can reveal some strange beings that you can't imagine living there. One such thing is a beetle grub. Not only does this pest eat at the roots of vegetables but it is also a pretty rancid looking thing in its larvae stage and not something I would like to see a lot of. It is known as the Cockchafer or May Bug (Melolontha melolontha) and has a four-year life cycle. It has only one month as an adult beetle. 

At the weekend, we found two of them, a couple apparently, one which was in the process of egesting whatever it had eaten. As you can see they are quite big and fat, juicy targets for birds and they explode when pressure is put on them by the sole of someone's shoe. This is exactly what happened to one of the ones we found but the other one got away. 

This was just part of the fun I had this weekend, the other involved weeding large areas of land to save the poor strawberries that were being strangled by these unwelcome invaders. If all goes well, our efforts will be rewarded soon and we can enjoy the tastier fruits of nature.

From Gardening to Farming

As a certified horticulturist I thought I knew something about how to make things grow but it turns out that beyond the basic requirements of watering, providing sun and keeping plants in reasonable conditions, I don't know so much.

It's been a long time since I studied Horticulture and there is very little I remember, however I didn't think that my skills were so lacking.

I have gathered some knowledge in recent times from helping out at a my friends' land and have learned to distinguish weeds from strawberries for one thing. Working on my girlfriend's grandparents' land has also helped but when you don't have the help of experienced people it's not so easy. My girlfriend, Yulia, has a lot of experience but there are questions that need answering when it comes to planning and preparation of certain crops.

Before all of that, we had to figure out how to obtain a piece of land to grow things on. With our limited funds we thought we would just ask as many people as we could and also search online with the unrealistic hope that someone had a piece of land that they would be willing to let us use for free or at least for a very low price. This was a very idealistic plan but it actually worked.



About 25 km from Bratislava we now have the place we envisaged for some time but never really thought was possible. It is a proper farm with a neighbour with hens. There is even a vineyard on it and we've been told that on a good year, the owner produced as much as 300 litres of wine.

There is a big patch of land and also a little cottage and basement. Absolutely perfect.


It does need some work and we've just started to realise how much of a commitment it is to plant and maintain such a large area. We've also had rat problems in the basement. These horrible creatures have made a mess of potatoes that were stored there and it seems that there are quite a few of them lurking in the depths of our cellar. Poison has been put there and we've found two dead bodies to date but suspect there will be more. The soil is also a bit stony in parts. We've been given lots of advice on how to take care of the grapes but most of them involve spraying them with chemicals which we are reluctant to use.

So far we've planted carrots, beans, onions, potatoes, radish and weeded a large area of strawberries. We've also lit a huge fire of old vine branches which probably put us first on our neighbours' hit lit with all the smoke that blew in their direction.

There's a lot to do but it's been enjoyable so far despite the aches I'm feeling in my back right now.