...how does your garden grow.
Today was a gardening day. I have always been eager to get my children involved in the garden, in helping to plant flowers, care for them and see the beauty as they grow and the same too with the vegetables and then we would also have the fun of harvesting them and eating them. The days are becoming just a little bit warmer now and we took advantage of a dry day to continue with our plans for the garden.
Boots on and coats on and out we all went to the garden armed with our trowels and stopped by our temporary green house. We filled up some trays with compost and transplanted the flowers that we had started off on our windowsills into the larger trays to give them some more growing space. We ended up with lovely rows of sweet peas, dahlias and morning glory. Again we filled 2 more trays but this time it was for the vegetables. We transplanted the growing courgettes and planted some carrots, parsnips, spinach, lettuce and spring onions. We then checked on the bottom 2 layers of the greenhouse where lie a medley of pots and trays filled with soil and a variety of seeds. You see we started growing some vegetables and flowers a few weeks back but then we were hit with super strong winds that unfortunately toppled our green house and all that was within. I couldn't bring myself to get rid of the soil and seeds that had spilled over the ground that we had lovingly planted and now lovingly picked up. I re-potted the seeds of which some had started to germinate and decided to see if I could identify any of the plants when they had grown some more. So today I examined the remains of the carnage to find that we had a variety of leaves breaking through the surface of the compost. I was able to pick out the spring onions, distinctly tall and thin, and I located a few parsnips as they had broken through with some of the seed still attached. As for the rest it remains to be seen. I wonder if we will end up with carrots in our flowerbed and dahlias in our vegetable patch! It was a good opportunity to show the boys how to examine plants from their leaves and their different textures and styles.
On from the green house we stopped round the corner, the designated corner for our potato growing efforts. We filled up bags with compost and planted our chitted potatoes and covered them with a little more compost. We also added a chitted potato to a clear plastic bottle with some compost with the hope that we can see how the potato grows under the soil. Our seed potatoes came from here. It is a project that aims to get primary school children involved in food production and thy send you out a kit with the seed potatoes, growing bags, stickers and activity sheets. It is free and all you need to do is register and registration for 2016 is open. Once registered then next year just before you need to start chitting you will receive in the post a box containing everything you need bar the compost. We did this project 2 years ago and only missed last year because we were moving house.
Our next gardening project will be to prepare the vegetable patch for planting. All being well we will get round to that at the end of the week. The fresh air and a chance to play in the dirt appeals strongly with my lively children and their are plenty of learning opportunities to go along side.
No comments:
Post a Comment