I am not known for my green thumb. Usually when I buy pot plants or they are given to me, they either get eaten up by doggies because I leave it too long to replant them into the garden, or I replant them and they die. For various reasons – lack of water, lack of sunshine, lack of air… it’s not like I’m smothering them with a pillow for goodness sake, what is wrong with these plants??

Earlier this year a colleague was selling bulbs for a fundraiser and I thought I’d give them a go. At least then if I manage to kill them, the money has gone to a good cause.

There is a garden outside our back door where the previous owners had lots and lots of potted plants, sitting on top of the soil, and by the time I was ready to do anything with the space, the weeds were up to my belly button! So I sepnt a long time weeding, and then preparing the soil. I bought a tonne of compost soil from a local supplier and mixed that in with the existing soil.

Blank Canvas - Starting from scratch

Working in the soil

With the sleepers in place for the garden edging (the area behind it will be a cat run)

I then bought some pavers from bunnings which featured 9 smaller stone pavers connected together with mesh. This made it really easy to pay them and they look cute, being a smaller sized stone. I laid sand underneath where my path was going, laid the pavers on top and then brushed riversand in between the gaps of the pavers.

Pavers from Bunnings

Laying the pavers

Brushing sand into the gaps

Once my path was laid I could start planting. I bought 10 punnets of Pansys to brighten up the little garden before the bulbs came up, and planted these along the sides of the path. I also had 3 leftover English Box hedge plants from doing the hedge in our front yard, so I planted them along the edge closest to the lawn.

I used a multitude of different bulbs and seeds, including Sweet Peas, Daffodils, Jonquils, Grape Hyacinths, and some others I can’t even remember the names of! I will find out what they were and update this entry. To give them a fighting chance I mixed some bulb food into the soil beforehand and also watered them with Seasol once planted.

It was very exciting when the little sprouts started coming through!

Little Sprouts

More Little Sprouts

It was less exciting when I worked out 70% of the sprouts were actually grass weeds and I had to pull them all out!

Lots of weeds

Now they have really come up and are just starting to bloom. I will be adding photos to the “Daily Photo” section as more come out.

Can you identify this leafy flower (with no flower yet)?

With some mulch

Improvements for next time:

• Clump bulbs families closer together so they can support each other in growth
• keep the fence up the whole time so the dogs don’t lie on the plants and squish them!
• keeps tags of what I’ve planted so I can work out if it’s a weed or not
• plant Sweet Peas in front of cat run fence (to hide the fence)

Have you had success (or failure) with bulbs? What was your secret (or demise)? Please share =)

I ♥ comments! =)