Saturday, 4 May 2013

One Lesson Learned After a Year in the Garden

On mulling over last year and the start of this year I thought what is the biggest lesson learnt so far? There are many indeed I'm sure but one came to mind straight away and it probably has something to do with it being spring.

Like all us gardeners I LOVE TO COMPOST, and last year put every scrap of compostable waste I could to this good use and by September I had some good rotting down done. So I got out my garden sieve and went to work on my compost heap and around an hour later I had got myself two large sacks of compost. I was very chuffed. The compost had plenty of rotten matter and manure and looked great, though not totally like the shop bought stuff. Anyway I stored it away for winter for the following year. 

Come early spring I decided to get some seeds done, and here is were I learned my lesson. I planted up lots of seeds and waited for some germination! Not long after some germination started to happen, but to my dismay is was not what I planted, it was everything else but what I planted, Dandelion, Poppy and other such easily germinating monsters. So I plucked them out and waited. Soon after what I planted came up and I thought YES my compost is good I can cope with a few weeds here and there. Of Course my first wave of extermination was not the last...... it never is. To cut this a little shorter my  little vegetable babies came through, but I have since found that they have struggled to get going and I know its because I used my own homemade compost. In comparison to other seedling done in bought compost they have grown much slower and are of a poor quality. So my biggest lesson learnt... DON'T USE HOME-MADE COMPOST FOR SEEDLINGS! There are plenty other ways to use it, next year its getting forked through the flower beds.

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