This weekend we’ve been busy planting. It’s been so much fun, (and let’s face it somewhat hectic), sowing seeds and planting flowers with the girls. We’ve learnt about what plants need to grow, how important different plants are in our ecosystem and most importantly we got our hands dirty in the process.

PEAS

First of all, we planted some pea seeds. We thought this would be a great place to start as we could talk about how the vegetables that we eat come to be on our plate. Plus, what better time to be looking at growing our own ingredients from the garden. We decided to plant the pea seeds in a pot as we don’t have loads of ground space in our garden. We planted the seeds about 3cm under the compost and approx. 5-10cm apart to give the plants plenty of space to grow. We staked the pot with canes to support early growth and watered it well. We will keep the plants well-watered and fed throughout the growing season. This is particularly important for pot grown crops as they can’t get any water or nutrients from the ground. If the weather forecasts frost, we plan to move the pot inside our conservatory. The girls also added some Ecofective Slug Defence on the top of the compost – the slugs and snails won’t crawl over the gritty texture and eat our beloved crops.

FLOWERS

For more instant results we got creative with some pansies and violas. We planted some in the ground and also made our very own hanging basket. With help the girls used a spade to dig holes in the soil and then lifted the plants from their pots and placed them in the holes. They then made sure they were well secure by patting the base of the plants, ensuring they were well covered in soil. They then watered the plants – this was their favourite part, in fact the whole garden was well watered on Sunday.

We also planted some wildflowers and sunflowers to encourage bees and butterflies into our garden. We scattered the wildflower seeds over trays of compost, then pushed the seeds into the soil and watered. These will be kept indoors until the weather warms up. To finish off we drew pictures of the insects we hope to see when our flowers start blooming.

We finally planted sunflower seeds in pots and will be watching these grow over the coming weeks. We don’t have a greenhouse so covered the pots with a cloche using plastic bottles. These activities took up lots of time this weekend and meant the girls had plenty of fresh air which was great.

Oh, and before I forget, the baby practiced her walking skills whilst the other 2 were busy gardening 🙂