Country Living Versus Suburban

I’ve been weighing up the pros and cons of country living versus suburban of late.

Last year I tried my hand at growing an organic vege garden. I took great satisfaction in growing plants from seed and subsequently giving away the produce we couldn’t keep up with. Such was my pride, almost every poor visitor who came through our gates got dragged down to my patch on a “garden safari”.

And then we moved to town and the warm glow of garden-growing merriment diminished along with my plants.

It turned out it was nothing to do with my prowess but everything to do with the rich, volcanic Maungatapere soil and the content predators who were far too well-fed to bother themselves with the likes of my vege patch. (Come to think of it, the fussy birds never did eat the bread we fed them).

Now no sooner have my seedlings sprouted than they disappear overnight. According to the internet, it could be birds diving down swiping away the original corn seed and the rest of the plant with it. As for the courgette, broccoli, cauliflower and pea plants, well that is a mystery. But if it is slugs, I can’t be a***ed going out after dark with a bucket of soapy water and catching 100 an hour as some keen gardeners do. I’d much rather sit inside and watch The X Factor.

So after months of agonising, trialing different techniques and running inside to look up Google I’ve resorted to growing everything indoors for now.

While these grow I have formed a plan. As most of my Google answers seemed to be coming from the Yahoo site, I signed up and according to the feedback from my many ignorant questions I need to: scoop away the top soil and replace it with quality soil in case the broken egg shells I’d placed around my plants are trapping snail and slug eggs which are subsequently hatching; cover plants in netting and make a scarecrow. Another suggestion was feeding the birds but I’m not feeling very generous towards them at the moment so that’s not an option.

I also had a rather rude response to “Look it up yourself geek.” (I may be a gardening geek but I “reported” them for rudeness and their days of Yahoo are gone.)

So what does this have to do with kids and chaos? Well nothing, although Master Six takes great delight in sending his siblings and any other small visitors through the gates of mum’s garden while he races off to turn on the sprinkler system. Garden safari anyone?

Tune in next week for more country living versus suburban.