Stage Three : Planting Stuff
Finally! I get to plant my seedlings.
I was careful not to go too crazy with the seedlings purchases however I have discovered that I love walking around the gardening centre.
Especially when I am talking to Mom on my mobile and shes telling me all sorts of cool things about plants .. and stuff.
The pea straw indeed increased in size and filled the potager nicely, but not the 4 times that I thought it would.
So I bought some more vegetables container soil and some compost and dug every thing over well before getting started on the planting.
The one silly decision I made?
To do all this work on a night where it was threatening to thunder and storm in Auckland.
Problem with that? Yes, I watered my garden with my own sweat.
I bought peas and some bamboo to make a climbing frame.
I bought some brocolli, baby carrots, celery, spinach, parsley, tom thumb lettuce and cos lettuce.
I also bought a pot to sit on the potager and a climbing tomato plant.
Hopefully the pot will not fall off (or get blown off) so I hopefully have secured it enough by driving a stake through the pot, through the drainage hole and into the bottom of the potager.
I also bought a few Marigolds as companion plants.
Companion plants provide a form of pest control without the use of sprays.
I chose Marigolds to start off with as a lot of the gardening web sites that I have been reading say that Marigolds keep white fly and other bugs away.
So I have dotted them around the corners of the potager for it is only small.
However I did plant a cluster near the tomato pot, to try and keep the aphids off.
Harvest time is hopefully around 6-8 weeks – we shall see!
For now I have my (green) fingers crossed