Wednesday 18 May 2011

Gardener's World, Here I come

We moved into the Littlest House in May last year. After spending a few weeks unpacking and painting we remembered that we had a garden, but it was a little too late in the season to achieve much. We made sure we could reach the barbeque and left it alone for the rest of the summer. So I was excited this year to start work on it.
I’m a complete novice when it comes to gardening and go about it with much more enthusiasm than skill, so it’s been a steep learning curve. Today I’d like to record for posterity the lessons learned so far this spring, to offer some advice to my future self next year.

Lesson 1
Homegrown organic lettuce tastes awesome. Slugs and snails think so too so make sure you grow enough to share.

Lesson 2
Nasturtiums are incredibly easy to grow, fill all the gaps and are edible.


Lesson 3
Sweet peas are also easy to grow.  Probably easier just to pop the seeds in where I want the plants to end up. 

Lesson 4
The biggest pests in the garden are not slugs or snails but four legged creatures that wear a furry coat and whiskers. They like to play in seed trays. This is why you have varying successes with the herbs this year. Sow herbs straight into the pots rather than faffing around with transplanting seedlings. Get over feeling sorry for the little plants so you’re able to thin them out.



Lesson 5
You don’t seem to be able to grow chillis bigger than 2 inches. Buy a chilli plant from the Garden Centre.

Lesson 6
It’s looking less and less likely that your strawberry plants will produce strawberries this year. It seems they take a little while to grow.

Lesson 7
Courgettes can surprise you. Just when you’d given up on anything ever growing two enormous leaves may pop up after some rain.

Lesson 8
Don’t plant all the seeds in the packet. You probably don’t need two hundred tomato plants and you’ll feel too sorry for them to throw any away. Also, deal with your tendency to anthropomorphise plants.

Lesson 9
Lesson 8 applies to Sweet Williams as well. Particularly as you learned after sowing them that they apparently won’t give you flowers until next year and you now have a teeny tiny garden.

You can always let someone with more garden space grow these for you and they look very pretty in a vintage milk glass vase.
Lesson 10
Don’t let City Boy loose with secateurs unsupervised. You weren’t aware until very recently that it was a climbing hydrangea growing over the shed because last year he hacked all the buds off before they opened.

Lesson 11
They sell baby plants at the farmers market. You don’t have to grow them all yourself from seeds. Added bonus: You can buy exactly the number you require rather than end up with 380 seedlings you don’t know what to do with.

1 comment:

  1. Hiya,

    Thanks for dropping by and entering my giveaway!

    I'm new to 'growing my own' too and love your lessons! I agree..sometimes it is easier to buy a few bits from garden centers!

    I felt evil thinning out the Carrots!

    Gemma xXx

    ReplyDelete