Epic Fail!

Priscilla Bacon Hospice - Planting for Priscilla

Submitted by: Helen Leith

Category: Vegetable patch

Having never before had the time to get into gardening, I thought lockdown would give me the opportunity to have a go at growing some veggies, which I had been wanting to do for a long time. Being a complete novice, I read up on what I needed for a failsafe start. Apparently, it was still too cold to plant anything outside, so I needed to create my own indoor greenhouse. I cleared the windowsill and the top of the chest in the sunny corner of the dining room behind the window overlooking the garden, gathered together all the little pots and containers I could find and, following instructions, lovingly set about gently placing compost and all the seeds that I had been carefully collecting into them. Not too crowded and don’t overwater said the experts. Then a little more compost on top, give them a drink and watch as in a few days they will miraculously burst into green, promising life.

Its been seven weeks now and all I have to show for my efforts is a collection of pots of compost with an ominous looking mould on the top. I expect I overwatered them. One or two have some miserable looking green straggly bits but that’s it. It’s clear I do not have green fingers – more a sort of arsenic white. Mind you, I don’t suppose it helped that most of the seeds I was trying to coax into life were at best five years old and probably doomed from the start. Still, it’s been strangely satisfying even having a go and now that the garden centres are due to open up I will go out and buy some fresh seeds for another crack at it.