So i wouldn’t ever claim to be a gardener. I love seeing other people’s garden, and I love learning about what someone has planted in their garden. I also love the idea of having a garden. However, I move so much, about every six months, that is up until January. This is the longest I think I’ve held an address in about 9 years. So, it’s only natural as the weather starts to turn to summer, that I want to try my hand at gardening, thankfully the husband, is also keen to have a go.
Here is a snapshot as to how our attempt is coming along. We’re not sure how much success we’ll have, but we’ve had a lot of fun so far, and some challenges, and also we’re learning a lot.
the wild of our gardens, complete with our cat that loves to stalk through it
another thrilling look at a overgrown garden bed
After all the hard work of weeding
After all the hard work of weeding the fun part began. With a fresh canvas, we were able to start thinking about what it would look like. We got some local sheep manure and mixed it with some soil from the garden centre and also started to do a weekly watering with blood and bone.
I got ridiculously excited about all the different possibilities of what to plant, and thankfully, my husband was there to be a tether back to reality.
So we went with sweet 100’s tomatoes and basil as its companion plant. We also planted parsley, roly poly carrots, marigolds (or calendula), chillis for a bit of fun, capsicums (or bell peppers), cucumbers and coriander.
check out our burgeoning garden, once we decided what to plant.
and directly across, the other garden bed.
We also purchased a gorgeous bucket of lettuces, it already has four heads of lettuce planted in it, and you just pick it as needed. We went a bit crazy, so we left it alone for two weeks and its cranking again.
Still to plant, some catnip and sage.
I’ve loved the experience so far of gardening (with the exception of the slightly achey joints), its been amazing, how many lovely people have offered us sound advice and even gifted us with plants to start with. It’s so satisfying to see the unkempt garden made over and I’ve even enjoyed the investigative part of gardening, our basil was just being chomped through, and we finally figured out it was the hungry caterpillar.
However I think the best part has been trying out a new activity with my husband. We both have a few activities that we do separately, and we have a few that we do together.
Taking an interest in the garden has been fun to do together. As mentioned early, he’s been really great at grounding me with what we can achieve, considering our garden space isn’t the largest, however he’s also been awesome in having fun with what we plant. We aren’t big chilli eaters, but we both thought it would be fun to try out something a bit different, and agreed that they’d look fantastic too. We’re sure we can find plenty of people to share our chilli’s with. It’s proved to be an activity that we both can get outside and enjoy together and it’s been fun planning and discussing the garden too. I’ve been able to be creative with what we’re planting and how to plant. The husband didn’t know anything about companion planting, but it was something I was interested in trying out.
While the motivation to start gardening has been different for both us, it’s given us something new to do together, and that has made the process really worth it. Now let’s hope we get a few little something somethings from the garden.
- Companion Planting (valenciacommunitygardensblog.wordpress.com)