How to Carry on Gardening

Dany garden

If you’re unwell or feeling low, gardening can be very therapeutic but you have to adapt your techniques to match your energy levels. A friend of ours is a keen gardener with a large garden but she is not well this year so to conserve her energy and keep pleasantly busy she has created a micro garden close to her house with bits and pieces she had to hand.

Vegetable Bed

vegetable gardenBy making efficient use of a small space Dany is hoping to grow enough produce for one person for a month. She has filled her daughter’s old strawberry garden with a mixture of humus and sandy soil.

In the front section she has planted some lettuce and sowed some radishes, carrots and rocket and coriander, garlic and a few shallots – which shouldn’t grow too high so they don’t and block access for the middle row.

In the second row she has sown parsnips, beetroot seed and green peas and planted out a green pepper which over wintered inside in a pot.

The row at the back has tomato and cucumber plants (which will soon have straw round them to keep the moisture in) and green beans which will hopefully climb on the wire mesh at the back.

The close planting of this mixture of vegetables will hopefully keep the weeds down as will the lovely old tiles from the house placed around the fence.

She has also squeezed in thyme, dill and basil and strawberries in pots but there isn’t room for the courgette plant, which has it’s own patch at the bottom of an old swing.

 

 

 

Aromatic/Herb Bed

aromatic gardenDany has a separate bed primarily for herbs where she grows dill, basil, leaf celery, coriander and parsley.

She also added some borage and calendula officinalis to stop insects.

And in the remaining space she snuck in some rocket and some green peas.

 

 

 

Fertilizer

Dany doesn’t have the energy to shop for heavy bags of compost so she makes her own fertilizer from nettles.

She chopped 1kg of nettles and poured 10 litres of rain water on top and left them to ferment. In less than 2 weeks it should stop fermenting. Then she will filter it and dilute it to use as fertilizer. It can also be used against flies and other insects in the garden.

She is also going to add some flowers to prevent insects from settling in.

 

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