Monday, September 1, 2008

Tales from the world's most optimistic veggie garden #1

Well the veggies are in, they're finally fucking in. I've wanted to grow them ever since moving into this house and spying the perfect place to put them. Nine months later I've finally taken the first, arguably most important, step: the planting. But Christ I could have had a baby in the interim.

I've always suspected I'd make quite a good gardener, in the sort of vague way that some people believe they'd be good at sports or something given half a chance - despite a lack of any evidence to back up the claim. So I went all out at the shop: tomato, rocket, broccoli and squash. Had a bit of a hiccup when it came to the giant bag of potting mix I'd lugged from the garden centre bit of Bunnings to the check out though. The woman on checkout was surely only trying to be helpful but she got on my tits.

HER: You know this potting mix isn't very good, do you?

ME: Sorry?

HER: It's not a very good potting mix. It doesn't have the stuff that your garden needs.

ME: Oh.

HER: You need to add stuff to it.

ME: Oh.

HER: I'd say it's one of the worst potting mixes you can get. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

I wanted to tell her I didn't give two shits, or ask her why the store sold it if it was so shit but I'm such a pussy I said I'd leave the potting mix but take the plants then. Being too lazy to go back for a more superior type of potting mix and too embarassed to admit I was fine with some shoddy inferior brand actually I went to work in the garden minus any kind of potting mix at all but with the resonably strong conviction that some (allegedly) shit potting mix was probably better than no potting mix at all.

The second problem came when I realised I'd overcatered. There was only a small patch of usable garden, really, and about 50 seedlings to jam in there. The labels had helpful suggestions like "plant 30cms apart" but I thought bugger that and just threw them all in. Looks pretty bloody cosy though. If I'm lucky and if I know my year 12 biology (and I think I do) they'll probably all cross pollinate and I'll end up with one hell of a good veggie that looks like a broccoli had sex with a tomato but tastes like sunshine.

3 comments:

shiny said...

So very jealous. Last time I tried gardening it was two miniature lavender plants. They got pinched. Fuckers. I was on passive aggressive notes the other day and apparently it is a common occurrence and leads to much social disharmony. So it's not just me.

Anonymous said...

ha ha. hilarious.

I'm envisaging plant death en masse, but I'm sure some of those little suckers will pull through.

my name is kate said...

I will raise them in the same way I'd raise children: chuck a bucket of water over them once a week and ignore them the rest of the time.