Gardening Lessons

The gardening plea has gone down well. We are in Yorkshire as part of a trip seeing family and I spent yesterday afternoon learning some gardening techniques in Granny's greenhouse. 42 plugs of yellow geraniums had arrived from an offer in a newspaper and Dad showed me how to gently poke them out of the plugs using a handy pointed device (this happened to be the part of a bird feeder which a bird would stand on, was it in use) and tease them apart, re-planting them safely in individual pots and then watering them. He showed me the way to handle plants, how to feed them, different types of compost. We identified plants in the garden and I was shown how to feed things and how to plant up my hanging baskets. I then looked through the weekend papers and am writing this after going on-line to place my order for 24 free sweet-peas. 

Granny has had a look through her bookcases and has found an encyclopedia of container gardening which I have been reading this afternoon and deciding on potential combinations of plants for different kinds of containers. Sadly it has been raining or no doubt we would have been in the garden as we were yesterday afternoon, sitting on the freshly mown lawn drinking cups of tea and enjoying the sunshine after all our earlier efforts.

Dad produced a box from his car which contained some old tools, some pots, some seeding trays and two containers of food. Granny has found some spare hanging basket compost with water granules already mixed in. Tomorrow we return to M's parents en-route to London where there is some other compost and some small plants which M's mother has  grown from seed for us. I look forward to having a bash myself next weekend at planting up some of the baskets and tubs.

Image from New Zealand Garden Stuff