Planting / Week 1

I chose to plant my veges fairly close to the house, as I dislike the spiders and snakes and bugs that live among our other plants on the block. Inspired by a Better Homes and Gardens segment on Friday February 25, I used some styrofoam containers we had left over from Crisco.

Step One: Poke some holes in the bottom of the containers for drainage. If you don't do this then the water will stay there and will essentially rot whatever you have put in the pot.

Step Two: Find a place to put your containers before you fill them. Two reasons, one is that they may be very heavy to carry, and two is that the containers may break. You also need to keep in mind that the bottoms of the containers need to be slightly off the ground. If they aren't, then there wasn't much point putting drainage holes in the bottom. I (with the help of Dad) put my containers on a few spaced out beams of wood that we had lying around. Better Homes and Gardens suggested putting pot feet on the corners of the containers. Something like these:

Step Three: Adding your soil. Depending what you are growing, you need to choose different soils. If your growing roses (which are edible so could classify as part of a kitchen garden) you would be better off with soil designed for roses. The same goes with citrus trees. My soil was part black sand and something that smelt really bad, I'm guessing it was some animals manure. Dad actually mixed this up for me and I will need to ask him what exactly it was. I started shoveling it into the containers being careful that the container with beetroot in it didn't have any big lumps of stone, clay or wood in it, otherwise they could turn out a little mis-shaped. After the soil is in you need to water it until water comes out he little holes you made at the bottom. This ensures that all the soil is damp.

That is my Dad lending a hand (he has all the garden know-how)

Step Four: Planting. Really, you should plan your planting out fairly well, but we sort of just put plants where they fitted. I had 7 planter boxes and this is how they turned out after planting:

Box 1: Capsicum

  

Box 2: Lettuces and Cherry Tomatoes

Box 3: Peas (Really not expecting these to survive because of the storm we got on Monday February 28th, they really did look dead)

Box 4: More Cherry Tomatoes

Box 5: Mini Cauliflower

  

Box 6: Garlic Chives and Beetroot (The chives do need to be moved into their own container)

Box 7: Sushi Cucumber

There is also a pot that I failed to take a photo of that has the mint in it.

After planting all the veges out you need to water again. If you have only just watered the soil in then you may not need to but I put the soil in on a Saturday and the plants in on Wednesday March 2, the the soil had dried out but considering the storm we had on the Monday I'm quite glad that most of the little plants weren't subjected to it.

Happy planting!