My new Vegetable Garden

I have set up the new veggie planter, purchased seedlings from the nursery, studied up on companion planting to see which of the seedlings will grow well together and then lovingly planted all the new herb and vegetable seedlings. With the new vegetable planter it has been incredibly easy to do and surprisingly, it was lots of fun! Now it’s time to sit back, give the plants a good daily watering and lots of TLC and then see what happens. As this is my first foray into vegetable gardening I’m excited but also just a little sceptical. Can I do actually do this? Time will tell …

I thought you might be interested in what I’ve planted. As I have negative experiences with planting from seed in the past, I decided my first attempt at vegetable gardening should be planting from seedlings (“Instant gratification” is what I was really going for here. We’ll leave the seed planting for a time when I am a little more experienced with this).

So here is what I’ve planted in the basins: (see photos below)

[one_half]Basin number One: In the first basin (Far left), I have a Strawberry plant which is a fair size and already flowering. I couldn’t resist, it was such a pretty plant and we love Strawberries. I’ve planted cauliflower (bonny hybrid) and one rocket lettuce plant in there as well. Cauliflower is supposed to work well with Strawberries. I bought the little Bumble Bee as a “scare crow”, so that the birds don’t come and eat the strawberries (wishful thinking!)[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Basin Number Two: In the second basin (Centre Left), I’ve planted two chili plants. The first is called “Long Red Cayenne Slim”. Its supposed to be very hot with green to red fruit. The second Chili plant is called Golden Habanero. Together with the two chillis we’ve planted parsley (type: Big Ben moss curled) and three little seedlings that lost their label. (I think they are lettuce but am not 100% sure. They look like lettuce).[/one_half_last]

[one_half]Basin Number Three: In the third basin (Centre Right), I’ve planted at the back, Oregano (Rosenkuppel), a Sweet Pepper star yellow, a few Cherry Tomatoes and Sweet Basil (because I already know Tomatos go well with Sweet Basil).[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Basin Number Four: In the fourth basin (Far Right), I’ve planted at the back: Lemon Grass (which Stefani uses a lot in her Thai cooking) and Coriander (which we use a lot). In the front: lettuce (green Cos) and spinach (bright lights).[/one_half_last]

As usual, I bought too many plants, so some extras still need to be planted out into the garden. These include Rosemary and Garlic Chives and a few cherry tomato plants I didn’t have space for. I planted them in the bed with the existing Sweet Basil and Tomato Plant (which are both thriving!) If I’d know vegetables grow so quickly … I might have started this a long time ago!

Costs involved:
I’ve worked out that the amount of money I spend buying Sweet Basil and Parsley alone from Woolies in a period of one year, pays for all the seedlings, potting soil and the vegetable planter I bought! So as long as the sweet basil and parsley reward me with usable leaves, we’ve broken even. Any additional crops I harvest from my new little Vegetable Garden will be a bonus! And how wonderful that I won’t be wasting left-overs anymore. I really hated throwing away what we didn’t use every week because it was no longer fresh. So that alone will make me happy and if it tastes better than store bought I’ll be ecstatic.

If this works we’ll progress on to growing cucumbers, onions, potatoes and who knows what else … but for that we will allocate a bed in the garden. I already have my eye on one!

Photographs of the individual Basins: