Planting season - Luna's indoor market garden launched again

For reasons which will become clear in the fullness of time, I only wanted to plant short things this year, in our gardening workshop. Things we can carry without having to cut down a supporting lattice of canes, netting etc. Last year's tomatoes were amazingly tall, productive and resilient - one still giving us fruit until Jim had to chop it down to make space for water-damaged materials from our sodden storeroom last week.

A very willing bunch of short people came along this afternoon to get their hands dirty - but first we needed to d
ocument the seeds (get our hands on them and investigate size, shape, colour etc. We drew pictures of them and had a guess at what they might grow into. Some very interesting ideas such as 'cream', 'ants', 'daikon' & mushrooms...and I can't tell you what they actually were because the packets got mixed up in the rush to prepare this morning! Some seeds were big & round, others so tiny we couldn't pick them up; some long & thin, or prickly-shaped, or like pepper-corns.

 Damian is playing in Tokyo this weekend, so we hijacked his classroom and filled 9 planters with a different set of seeds each - we recycled the soil although Jim did prep with nutrients, water, and a good stir beforehand. Some we drilled holes for, others we sprinkled in a line. In one, we found a bulb which had just started making roots/shoots & quickly re-planted as an extra surprise - was it an avocado maybe, or a tulip bulb? Let's hope we didn't disturb it too much!

The next few weeks will be an exciting wait for shoots to appear - but might be a longer wait than usual as our winter is very cold & snowy this year. Watch this space!

Thank you mums & dads for lending a hand; great to see Susumu back from his London adventures. Thank you Eleanor for big sister job, and to Masa, Sakura, Kai, Minii for your green fingers :)