Yesterday's 'Granny-time' was with my mom - Omi'Son. She had prepared a wonderful activity for the girls, and really put in a lot of effort to get everything organized for their first real gardening experience. She had bought some organic compost and had asked me to get Petrus, our gardener, to prepare 3 beds for us.
In the first bed we planted some gooseberry plants, which my mom trasplanted from another garden. Apparently they don't transplant well, so we will have to see if they last. We also planted tomatoes and basil in this bed. If you plant them together, then they taste better - they compliment each other - I never knew that...well I really don't know anything about gardening, so this has been very interesting for me.
Next, was the veggie bed. Here my mom is explaining to the girls what this stuff is that they had to sprinkle on the bed...she called it plant food, not sure if it has another name.
So, here's Rachel sprinkling the 'plant food' onto the bed.
The it was time to sprinkle the chalk. My mom said that the chalk helps to keep the snails out of the patch...I really hope it works, I would hate to find slugs or snails in my lettuce!
The girls then had to gently mix the plant food and chalk into the top layer of the soil.
My mom and I took cover from the sun in the shade of our trampoline.
I had to pick out some herbs for some pots - these we will plant next week.
Then we picked out some veggies. As you know, Glen HATES vegetables, and so I had to be very careful about what I picked out. Even though Glen very much dislikes cooked vegetables, he really loves salad. So everything that was planted was picked especially for the salads I hope to make from our organic garden. As you can see there are merrigolds (flowers) with the veggies. Apparently insects really don't like the taste of the roots of these flowers, so if you plant them inbetween your veggies, they would more than likely stay away from your veggies too! Nice trick Mom!
So the girls planted a row of merrigolds and then a row of carrots...a row of merrigolds, a row of green peppers....etc...etc...
When all the sowing was done, they watered their special garden patch diligently - they really did work very hard. Now, until the plants are growing nicely, the girls have to water their gardens every morning and every afternoon.
We ended our gardening time by filling bottles of water and sticking them upside down in the ground. The bottles are open by the way. This is another trick my mom learned. You are supposed to have one bottle for every square meter of garden. The idea is that the water will slowly seep into the ground keeping it moist, and well-watered. I will need to fill these when they get empty.So there you have it - a very industrious granny time. Next week we are planting the flowers in the third bed and the herbs into the pots. I think that I could really get into this gardening thing - especially if I start to see the results in the lovely salads! Look out for future posts on how are gardens are doing.
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1 comments:
I really enjoyed this post. Barry has been encouraging me to start a veggie garden but I've thought it will be too much work...do you want to send your girls over?
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