How To Garden: What Happens Next
I’ve been working my Little Garden for the last six weeks, and it’s going REALLY well. However I have run into a few snags.
Once you’ve planted your seeds (check out How To Garden: By The Foys for tips), here are some things I’ve come across that I think you might need to know …
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1. FEEDING YOUR PLANTS
Turns out, water isn’t the only thing you need to ensure your plants successfully grow. As they get bigger, sunshine and water just won’t cut it – so you may need to buy some plant feed. Don’t overfeed them though – maybe 2-3 times a week. If you overfeed them you can kill them.
When I took my plants to my in-laws house, they were TALL but not wide. So my in-laws said “Oh they’ve stretched” which means they’re stretching for light because they’re not getting enough from the soil”.
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2. SUNLIGHT
Make sure you do expose your plants to a bit of sunlight each day – otherwise when you go to plant them outside, the sun will kill them. As ridiculous as that sounds, it’s true! Also, plants need sunlight to survive, just not huge amounts when they’re very small.
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3. TRANSFERRING YOUR PLANTS
Now this one I stuffed up a bit – when I went to transfer my New World Little Garden plants from a small planter to a larger planter, I replanted them INDIVIDUALLY. So I very carefully took each plant out of the small planter, and planted them into the larger pots (before going straight into the ground).
What I should have, was leave them in their biodegradable pot and plant them in a larger pot. I was worried the plants would be too close together, but the chance of killing them when individually transferring them is too high so I would definitely recommend simply planting the WHOLE thing into the ground.
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4. USING POTS?
If you prefer to use large pots rather than replant your plants into a garden, that’s absolutely fine! I know I won’t be planting my herbs in the main garden, rather I’ll be using a pot.
Because pots can dry out, you can line the base with a plastic bag (poke holes in it first to allow water to drain through). The bigger the pot the better too – if the pot is too small it will dry out quicker and you’ll have to water it more frequently.
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5. YOU WILL NEED FLOWERS
As I mentioned in my How To Garden original post, bees are crucial for pollination. Without pollination, plants wouldn’t produce fruit, and flowers wouldn’t bloom, so to have lots of crops we need to encourage pollination. Some plants (such as sweetcorn) use wind pollination, but most plants rely on other living things to move their pollen around.
- Bees are among the most important pollinators, so it’s important to attract these busy workers to your Little Garden. Butterflies, moths, flies, birds and even small mammals can act as pollinators.
- To get your garden buzzing, ensure you have plenty of flowering plants to attract bees and other beneficial pollinators. It’s good to have a wide variety of flowering plants so there’s always something in bloom: try planting marigolds, cosmos, salvia, alyssum, lavender, poppies and echiums in your garden too.
- Bees are especially attracted to yellow, white and blue flowers, while butterflies prefer red, orange and purple blooms.
Some of the above was taken from the New World Little Garden website and I highly recommend you checking it out for more useful tips and tricks.
6. HERE’S SOME PICTURES OF US REPLANTING:
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Essentially growing plants whilst it seems simple, does take effort. It really is great that the whole fmaily learns all about the importance of growing our own plants.
Thankfully, as I said above, the New World Little Garden website is a hub of information and I highly recommend checking it out.
Thanks very much to New World for partnering up with me on this one. The New World Little Garden promotion has finished in stores now and hopefully will be back next year!
New World have kindly given me a $50 gift card to give away! To enter to win all you have to do is comment below on this blog post and let me know: which vegetable would you like to grow?
EXTRA ENTRIES:
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Open to New Zealand residents only. Closes 07.11.17.
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