April - week 4 in The Simple Home
Being able to grow some of your own food is a wonderful skill to have. Many gardeners dig in the soil, some create raised beds and, increasingly, some happily grow what they can in containers. Congratulations on taking this step if you're a new gardener. I hope the fresh vegetables and herbs you harvest will reward you for the work you do in setting up.
This week is the last in our gardening month. The topic is the housekeeping of gardening: watering, fertilising, composting and keeping your plants disease and insect-free.
April, week 3 in The Simple Home
By now you have probably had enough time to think about what you want to plant and where it will grow and hopefully you've gathered a few containers and some growing mix. Depending on what you're hoping to grow, you might also have a trellis or bamboo and string and you might have thought about fertiliser and a few tools. I hope you find second hand items and can keep your setup costs as low as possible because gardening can become expensive and it doesn't have to be.
Containers and potting mix
Types of containers
Look around your home, garden and garage, as well as your local recycle centre, to
see if you have any suitable containers. Most of them need to be big. If you restrict the root growth of what you’re growing, it will also restrict
your crops, so large containers are better than small ones. Of course you can grow a few herbs in small containers, or plant then around the edge of larger containers. Look for old rubber tubs, an old slightly rusty wheelbarrow, boxes made from untreated
wood, polystyrene troughs or metal containers. Most of the recycled containers
won’t last a long time because they’ll be sitting in the sun all year long. But
that doesn’t matter. You can change containers when you change seasons and
start planting again. Keep that in mind and as you go through the year keep an open eye for follow-up containers. And if you have any good ideas for containers that you're using at home, share them with us here.
April, week 2 in The Simple Home
For all our new gardeners, there are two things I want you to decide on this week - what you're going to grow and where you'll grow it. I hope you've found some big containers, if not, you'll need to get on to that this week too. If you're not sure what to plant, grow what you eat, not what's in fashion or what you want to taste for the first time. Your garden should be full of what you eat and that will probably be the common vegetables like tomatoes, pumpkins, onions, beans, cabbages etc. I'll write about two commonly grown back yard vegetables - potatoes and tomatoes. Planting larger plants first will give your container garden a feeling of being anchored and then you can fill in with your smaller vegies and herbs. If you don't want to grow potatoes or tomatoes, it could be anything that needs a trellis, such as cucumbers, peas or beans, or a couple of fruit trees in large pots.
Hanno and I were going to plant up our two potato containers yesterday but we were both exhausted after planting and fertilising the rest of the garden so we came inside early and rested. I chose the location for the potatoes last week but yesterday morning, sitting on the verandah listening to the radio, I realised the orange tree would shade them most of the morning, so I moved the empty containers to a sunnier space on the other side of the garden.
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)