Chapter 11: The Big Vegetable Garden
Zhao Yeqing climbed down the observation tower and became more determined to plan how to survive. The situation outside was now worse than he had imagined.
People's thoughts are very strange. When they see greater suffering, they feel that their own suffering is nothing.
Suffering cannot be compared, and she does not feel comforted by seeing the suffering of others. It is just that when people have no one to rely on, she can only be determined and work hard to save herself.
She carried a backpack when she went up the mountain, intending to pick some wild vegetables to bring back.
There is a small stream below the spring. There is a small pool on the hillside where the stream converges. The water in the pool is clear and the deepest part is slightly green. Some small fish and shrimps can be vaguely seen in the cracks of the rocks nearby. This kind of small fish is called willow root fish. Wild willow root fish will only survive in places with unpolluted water and good environment.
Zhao Yeqing observed that there were quite a lot of small fish. She would come here in a few days to try to catch a few. Frying small fish was her favorite when she was a child. The small fish raised in this natural and pollution-free water source would not have any fishy smell even if they were put directly in the water to cook fish soup. They tasted extremely delicious.
As I thought about it, I couldn't help swallowing.
There are many ferns beside the pond in spring, and now is the most tender season, which is her target.
The fresh and tender fern can be broken off with just a little force from your fingers, making a crisp "click" sound.
In addition to eating fresh ferns, pickled ferns are also very delicious. Although eating too much pickled vegetables is bad for the body, she thinks it is harmless to change the taste occasionally.
I picked a handful of ferns and put them in the backpack, and saw a lot of Artemisia selengensis on the way home.
The leaves of this grass are green with a hint of white, and have yellow flowers on them. The Artemisia selengensis that grows around the Qingming Festival is another kind of mugwort with a fresh fragrance. The Qingming rice cakes they make here are made with this.
Spring is the season for eating wild vegetables. Zhao Yeqing feels that even if she doesn’t plant anything in spring, the mountains can still feed her.
Her stomach was rumbling when she got home, and she had to restart the wood stove at home after a power outage.
Zhao Yeqing had been too busy weeding these days to have the energy to cook a proper meal, and had just been boiling water to eat instant noodles. Today, there were such fresh wild vegetables, and he planned to treat himself to a good meal.
Turn on the faucet, water will flow out normally. After a while, when the water is completely clear, wash the fern under water, cut a piece of bacon and scrape off the black ash with a knife.
The bacon in the countryside is all smoked, and she personally thinks it tastes better than air-dried ones.
Boil the bacon and cut it into thin slices. Chop the garlic and chili. Heat oil in a pan, add the chili and garlic and sauté them until fragrant, then add the bacon. When the bacon is fried and oil is emitting, add the chopped bracken. The bacon itself has a salty taste, so just sprinkle a little salt on it and it's ready to serve.
The bracken was fried with bacon, the smoked bacon was crystal clear and full of flavor, the fresh bracken was crisp and had a hint of spiciness, and it was served with steamed rice over firewood. After one bite, Zhao Yeqing immediately realized that he had not steamed enough rice.
This is definitely a great dish to go with rice, the kind that can’t be satisfied with three bowls of rice.
There was no refrigerator to keep the food cool, and she adhered to the principle of not leaving any leftovers after finishing the meal, so there was nothing left on her plate.
She collapsed on the wooden bench, touching her stomach. Her grandmother said that if she worked right after eating, her intestines would break, so she took a nap with peace of mind.
When I woke up, the sun was already setting.
The chickens outside the door were clucking. There was a little black chicken that was particularly naughty. It always wanted to peck the big white goose. But every time it was about to do something naughty, the big white goose would peck it on the forehead, and then it could only run back to the chicken flock cursing.
Zhao Yeqing stared at the time, it was 4:30 in the afternoon.
I went out with a bag of fertilizer and sprinkled it on the newly reclaimed vegetable garden as base fertilizer. I will come to sow seeds tomorrow. The base fertilizer is sheep manure, which I bought together with the seeds. Unlike granular chemical fertilizers, animal manure is mild in nature and will not cause the seeds to have overnutrition, burning the seeds and seedlings, and it has sufficient fertility.
Because the vegetable garden was large this time, she did not plan to raise seedlings anymore. When she woke up early the next morning, Zhao Yeqing went to the vegetable garden and sowed seeds directly in the ground.
First, sow the vegetables in the leafy vegetable area, which is the area with the fastest harvest. Choose Chinese cabbage, lettuce and spinach to plant. These vegetables can be harvested one month after germination.
Then there are fruit vegetables. She grows tomatoes, peppers and eggplants in the yard. She plans to plant a few more peppers in the vegetable garden. She grows chili peppers in the yard. Outside she wants to plant string peppers, thin-skinned green peppers and colored peppers, as well as some okra.
Okra seeds are very hard, so she soaked them in warm water overnight in advance, so that the germination rate would be greatly improved when she planted them today.
The growth period of okra is not short, so it should take until midsummer before it can be eaten.
Cowpeas, green beans and cucumbers are planted in the climbing vegetable area. Because they will be put on the shelves later, the intervals in the middle are relatively wide, and there is no waste around the edges. Onions, ginger and garlic are planted in the gaps of the reserved shelf space.
Potatoes and sweet potatoes are more troublesome. It is best to let sprouts grow on the tubers before transplanting them. Direct planting is also possible, but she has never done it before. She just glanced at them in a book she bought on growing vegetables at home.
Zhao Yeqing wanted to try everything, so he took out potatoes and sweet potatoes and cut them into pieces. The most annoying little holes on the potatoes and sweet potatoes when peeling them are the growth points where sprouts will grow, so he made sure to leave one or two holes on each piece.
Cut potatoes and sweet potatoes into pieces, bury them in the soil with the cut side facing down and the growing point facing up, and water them.
Leave a few pieces of cut surface and put them in water with the growth point facing upwards, first hydroponic the germination point and then plant it.
The vegetable garden has been initially built.
Zhao Yeqing wanted to let the geese out to walk around so that there would be no snakes around.
But she was also afraid that the goose would not want to go back once it came out, and would just run into the woods and be finished, so she had to give up the idea temporarily.
Unless she fences in the big vegetable garden too.
Zhao Yeqing looked around and saw that the area of more than 200 square meters was fenced off...
emmm......
Next time.
The big tree that fell behind the yard was still next to the wall, and its branches just brushed against the wall and extended into the yard, which was very unsafe.
The original wall was built smoothly, so snakes generally couldn't climb up. But now there is a big tree used as a ladder, and it's hard to say for sure. Even if there are geese, snakes won't come in, but what if there are other small animals?
There had been cases of leopards running onto the road in Meishan before, but that was when she was very young and she hadn't heard of it since.
Grandpa said that those animals are now in the deep mountains and rarely come out, but who can tell now?
Although this wall may not be able to keep out leopards without this tree.
There was a long hand saw in the tool shed. Zhao Yeqing wanted to try to saw off the branches that were sticking into the wall. She had only sawed dry wood before, and this was her first time to saw something fresh. She didn't expect it to be so difficult.
After all, he is a former forest ranger. Even if it is no longer a protected area, he will not allow people to cut down the trees on the mountain at will. The firewood in his house is all broken branches.
The wet tree trunks made it more difficult for the saw to slide. Zhao Yeqing only sawed off two trees in half an hour, and he couldn't even make a fist.
really,
Try it and you will die.
I just sawed off a branch.
She turned around and met a pair of cold eyes.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
