Seeds of change
Posted under Gardening
I can’t remember anything giving me as much simple pleasure as the morning dash to the greenhouse to see how our seeds are doing. The boys are very nurturing of their seeds (Bertie’s various tomato types shown here) and are diligent waterers. We first grew tomatoes a few years ago, in an effort to encourage Bertie to eat them. It worked, but alas the same experiment with cucumber failed. And nothing will ever persuade Diggy to eat a tomato [shades of Lola].
It’s been a fair amount of work reclaiming the rather neglected greenhouse. MrSpud has put in a LOT of hot, backbreaking work digging out the old soil and then wheelbarrowing endless amounts of lovely new stuff in. Then there’s all that planning and planting and watering and pricking out and weeding etc etc. Our garden is in a right old pickle but we’ve sorted out a small part of it so we can have fresh veg and fruit this year, and we’re loving being in the garden together and having a ‘group project’ to work on.
MrSpud is in charge of fruit and veg and I’m in charge of flowers. We’re living up to our gender stereotypes but that’s ok. I’m growing various flowers from seed and – EXCITEMENT – they’ve started to sprout. MrSpud is really going for it…tomatoes, cucumber, spinach, salad leaves, various lettuce, melon, peppers, chillis, spuds, carrots, kale, sweetcorn, pumpkin, squash, peas, various beans, radish, beetroot, courgette etc etc. The rabbits can’t wait.
It’s about 33 years since I last grew anything from seed. I had a small garden as a child and, if I remember correctly, the last thing I grew from seed was a packet of those ‘mixed wild flowers for children’. It’s a puzzle to me why they need to be ‘for children’. What makes them child friendly? That they don’t mind being neglected…they grow fast…don’t mind tantrums?
Earlier in my growing career, when I was about 5 or so, I had a vegetable patch where I grew very fine runner beans and potatoes. One afternoon I found something hard and metallic in the ground whilst weeding. I diligently dug it out and then shouted to my Dad, ‘Look what I’ve found! What is it?’. My Dad didn’t look impressed, in fact he looked quite panicked and told me to stand still and not move, and to hold on tight to my treasure. He calmly walked over, took it from me and put it on the garden wall. And then he called the bomb squad out because what I’d found was a hand grenade, left over from the war. Happy days.
I’m hoping the Megaboy’s garden won’t be ‘quite’ so interesting in terms of historic finds. And that the thrill of watching flowers grow from seed will, for me, be every bit as intoxicating as it was all those years ago.
Watch this space.
