More experience of sitting down gardening
Shallow raised bed, not a success
Standing up gardening has one big drawback for me. I will fall over and I do. Digging a hole with a spade is not an option. In fact The Wife has banned me from that activity but secretly I’m quite relieved. Instead I do sitting down gardening, it is what it says on the tin. I gained more experience of sitting down gardening this summer.
I was more adventurous this year but not always successful. Nonetheless I was really pleased with my successes and I even see failures as a positive result.
The biggest success
Throughout the whole of this summer we have only bought one bag of salad. All other green salad came from the garden. There was one exception, The Wife wanted a watercress salad and growing that was a step too far. Endive lettuce and red leaf lettuce have been very successful Lambs leaf lettuce was good but did not crop for very long, same goes with rocket.
Parsley, chives, basil, mint and other garden herbs have all thrived. Strangely enough my biggest failures were with coriander and some lettuces. The slugs and snails really enjoyed them.
Can gardening help to relieve stress?
The best bit
I love going outside to the raised beds to pick the salad and use it in a meal. Simple pleasures are often the best plus it’s so incredibly satisfying. There is zero waste, no packaging to throw away. The flavours and textures far excel anything that comes off the supermarket shelves. Best of all is the knowledge that we are eating what we have grown. Pesto was a huge success.
More experience if sitting down gardening
My spectacular failure was producing a second crop, it just didn’t happen. The satisfaction and joy when I had produced something from seed completely overwhelmed me. Now I had to do it again and I’m juggling with a very limited amount of space where I can ‘grow-on’ my plants. It’s all a matter of experience.
A surprising failure
I bought a selection of sweet pea seeds and sowed them in my tiny greenhouse, it’s only as big as a fridge. I used cardboard tubes from the middle of empty loo rolls which I filled with compost. Brilliant idea for germination and early growth because I did not need plastic seed trays. During summer the sweet peas grew to about a metre tall, flowered and then died. Looking back I realise the depth of compost where I planted them, only 15 cm, much too shallow.
Is this cheating?
I’ve got to ‘fess up here. I bought pots of herbs from the supermarket and planted them, it was a great success. I have tried to grow parsley from seed and never succeeded. Sometimes I need to be realistic.
Fantastic therapy
The Wife encouraged me to grow only salad leaves and herbs. My fingers are not quite as green as hoped but things will improve. Talking to the plants every morning is great therapy. Similarly in the evening when I water them. The plants don’t seem to mind, I’ve yet to see them blush or go red in anger.
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August 2019
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