My first job was to clean out all the old pots of their soil and remove all the dead flowers from last year. Then I dumped all the potting mix down the back of the garage where the ducks had dug water holes, this worked out quite well as we don't have ducks in the same numbers crapping all over the place or trying to walk in the front door. I did this over a couple of weekends and it felt good to be as one with nature even it was only for about an hour or so.
If your wondering why I just didn't reuse the old potting mix I thought if I'm to give this a real go I need to start from scratch.
Second thing on my list was to look through the junkmail for what was out there and see how cost effective I could make this. I understand there are always going to be setup costs to begin with but I didn't want to be financial irresponsible. My poor suffering husband dutifully drove me to the Garden Centre where I spent about $70 on plants,compost,potting mix and buckets - not too bad. I was really getting excited on the drive home, with my mind racing with ideas. My kids just think I'm nuts and who can blame them, Phoenix was keen for about two seconds and then gapped it inside. I also chose vege's that are easy to grow, fun to watch grow and yummy to eat.
Thirdly deciding how many plants to put in each bucket - last year I tried to cram too many half dead, cut price plants into a pot/bucket and this just did not work. This season I put bigger plants; one to a bucket and then smaller ones two to a bucket and so far so good. I reused my planter boxes and larger pots to get me started before working on the buckets.
No comments:
Post a Comment