Growing Plants

 HELLO!!! Last Sunday was a very productive day in GPUFG at Priory Street. Do you remember the oriental lettuce, cabbage and parsley planted by David, Paul and me? So here they are! They're growing. David is a professional gardener but for Paul and a garden-ignorant like me, the simple task of re-planting something in a bigger pot and all the compost mix thing can be tricky. I've never done anything like this before and I am very glad I joined the project. Once I saw how much the lettuce grew in only three weeks I realised the work, hard or not, is worth it. 

Here you can see how much a cabbage grows in about 3 weeks. 

So, last Sunday we had to separate the cabbages and lettuce so that they can have more space to grow and for that, we had to use bigger pots (this is getting exciting). First of all David needed to explain that we use :
1. coir (coconut fibre), which has no nutrients but provides drainage
2. topsoil with mushroom compost. The mushroom makes drainage and nutrients acquisition better
and 3. Multipurpose compost, that can be use mixed with the other two to provide drainage and nutrients that the newborn lettuce need. This third kind of compost is used alone for tomatoes or zucchinis because they need extra water and nutrients. However, this is too technical right now for me, so in the next weeks David will explain more about this. And I thought to grow food required only water and just simple and plain compost...   So, yes, my hands ended up brown instead of green and, as a result, and with the help of Gary and David we could improvise a new spot for the plants, see photo above, a bit far away from the highway. (to prevent our babies to get too much pollution)