I’m back. As Heather O’Rourke once said in
Poltergeist. Kind of.
I haven’t done any gardening for quite a
while. There are two reasons. I was looking after my mum who has now gone into
a nursing home.
The other reason is that I hate the cold
weather and couldn’t face going out into the garden.
However I don’t need to. I was going around
the supermarket when I caught sight of some bargain buckets. They come with
compost and seeds. All you need to do is fill up the buckets with compost and
scatter the seed and water.
I bought pepper and chilli buckets. If they
come up I will make curry I thought.
I know I could have got the stuff much
cheaper at any garden centre but I am a sucker for anything that is nicely
packaged and labelled as convenient.
I have never claimed to be a gardening
expert. I know about orchids and that is it really.
When it comes to planting seeds they
usually don’t come up for some reason.
Anyway I followed the instructions. Tipped
the compost in. Scattered said seeds and watered them. Then chucked a bit more
compost over the top. I had some left but hoped that didn’t matter.
I waited two weeks and nothing seemed to be
happening. I was just about to throw the buckets out when I noticed some small
seedlings coming up but only in the chillies bucket.
After reading a gardening magazine I
realised I should have placed the seeds carefully, spaced out in the bucket
rather than just throwing them around.
They are all coming up together now so I
guess the chillies won’t grow very big if they are all cramped up in a small
space together.
After several weeks just one seedling came
up in the second bucket. I joked to my mum in the nursing home. I have paid £5
for one pepper.
Anyway just a few days later a few more
made an appearance. Now I have around 16 seedlings. I can’t wait to make that
curry.