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Monday, May 3, 2010

Vegetable garden

A couple of weekends ago I finally managed to find time to plant some vegetables in my garden.  After doing a lot of research I decided to grow most of my vegetables in large pots rather than directly in the ground.  For me it was easier and more practical to use pots because in order to grow vegetables in the ground you have to prepare the soil a few weeks in advance by turning it and mixing in a number of different nutrients.  To do this I would have had to wait longer to plant my vegetables and I would have had to spend a lot more money on gardening tools, as well as buying a storage unit for the garden to store the tools in.  So I decided on pots.

one of our tomato plants...it is much larger now

I headed off to Bricorama to buy a bunch of large, cheap pots as well as a small shovel, soil and my plants.  I ended up getting 6 tomato plants, 6 cherry tomato plants, 6 strawberry plants, one zucchini plant and one bell pepper plant.  Since we ended up with so many tomato plants (I had only planned on buying 1 or 2 of each kind but they only sold them in packs of 6), we planted some in pots and some in the ground.  If the ones in the ground do well, then for next year, when we have more time, we might prepare a section of our garden to be a potager.   All in all I didn't spend too much, and the pots were the most expensive.  The plants themselves varied from 2 euros to 5 euros for the packs of 6 tomato plants.

the strawberry plants

When we got home from Bricorama we spent the afternoon planting, working on the garden, and enjoying the sun.  It was a great way to spend a nice Saturday afternoon and hopefully by the end of the summer I will be enjoying some delicious homegrown vegetables!!!

Lionel working in the garden

Since we planted our vegetables, the plants in pots have grown quite a bit...the tomato plants are about a foot tall now!  The ones in the ground haven't grown nearly as much, but they haven't died, so we will see.  But I'm definitely looking forward to tasting the fruits of my labor!

1 comment:

  1. :) THEY GROW SMALLER IN POTS.... and weaker and their flowers are blooming later and the vegetables... well, they come out later and not veryn tasty. You dont't have to put any ingredients in the soil-just use the spade and make the soil softer ,dig a small hole and put the plant there if u want tasty vegetables. Plants grown in pots are like children in an orphanage- they survive but they keep hitting their heads over the walls no matter how yiu tr to help them....If u have a garden,the idea of growing plants and vegetables in a pot is really bizarre.... Only basil, some species of thime and sometimes chilly work well planted like this.

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