An optimistic day of planting.

With much excitement, this morning I filled the tray of my ute with as many plants as I could. Have I mentioned that I've spent a good deal of time propagating herbs and vegetables in anticipation of this very day! We arrived in the morning ready to plant like crazy. 

My optimistically full ute

We set to work, Steve digging up the raised beds and me adding mushroom compost, planting and mulching. First I planted cabbages, the most advanced of all the seedlings, they definitely could not wait any longer. I have to admit that as I planted into that hard, dry, rocky 'soil' I started to seriously doubt whether anything would ever grow...




But we kept on planting.

The digging and the planting

The cabbage seedlings and oh, the soil...

The cabages were interplanted with fennel and chervil. For every four seedlings, I added a bucket of mushroom compost. No manure yet, but only because I didn't have any, future plantings will definitely get manure. I used the dried grass and weed clippings from October to mulch around the plants. This will help to keep the soil cool and moist while suppressing weed growth.

One and half rows planted

Once all the cabbages were in it was time for the zucchinis, also pretty advanced and in need of planting. We planted the zucchinis quite differently, instead of rows they are in mounds of soil and mushroom compost covered in coffee bags as mulch.

The coffee bags come from a coffee factory in Melbourne who throw away up to 500 coffee bags every week! This is so wasteful. I have lots of ideas of how we can use this waste product in the garden.

Zucchinis and coffee bags

By the end of the day, we had planted out three and half trays, which made barely a dint in the collection of plants I so optimistically loaded into the ute in the morning. Oh well, now I know what kind of pace I can expect.