Following on from my diy thrifty childrens garden earlier in the week I’ve been at it again, this time creating a tower of lettuces out of recycled bottles.  It’s all thanks to joining this amazing  on facebook where someone posted their bottle tower.  I used the guide on the container gardening website to make mine but only went up 5 bottles high so it was a bit more child size.
Don’t those lettuce leaves look good? I just love the red tinged edges, I can’t wait for them to start growing bigger.  I find it quite amazing myself so I’m sure Nye will be intrigued.  The lettuce seedlings have grown fantastically well from seed, I used ‘Mortons Secret Mix’.

To make your own recycled container garden you need:

• 5 plastic bottles
• Scissors
• String
• Compost
• Salad Leaves / Herb Seedlings

Then watch this .

In other news I am also so thrilled to say that my first seedlings planted directly into the ground have made their appearance.  I was just about to plant some more peas, thinking they’d failed when I saw their little heads poking proudly from the soil. I literally can’t tell you how out of this world excited I was to see them.  It made me feel like a proper gardener.
And then I turned my attention to the rest of my seed packets to find that there were more things to plant so I’ve sown some green headed calabrese, white strawberries (wishful thinking I reakon) hollyhocks, and then thought I’d be brave and sow my carott seeds in drills straight into the soil.  As a  precaution I have planted a row of onions next to them to try and deter the dreaded carott fly that everyone seems to go on about!Then there’s all those other exciting things, blueberries starting to flower, sweet peas getting bushy, that black hyacinth emerging, and having a go at regrowing celery from the root.

p.s I started painting the veg patch wall black, and I’m kind of in love!  Can’t you just imagine all that fresh green vegetation against that slick black backdrop. It is all kinds of awesome and amazingly a complete flook that I picked up some black masonry paint at the scrapstore. P.s concrete blocks are a real pain to paint, all those nooks and crannys. Total transformation though, it changes everything from drab to fabulous.