Hello,

When I asked my fiancé what I should write a blog post about, he said gardening, which is actually a semi-sensible suggestion – he said I should talk about my gardening goals, I said I was better at ‘house planting’ (obviously a real word) and he said ‘yeah, house planting and gardening goals’.

Then he suggested the title should be #plantybois and I knew everything was okay, because there’s no way he could make a sensible suggestion without saying something unquestionably weird.

But I’ll go with it regardless!

I really wanted to have a garden full of homegrown veggies this year – tomatoes, courgettes, carrots, peppers, maybe even some herbs like thyme, rosemary and oregano.

That didn’t happen…

I had plans of digging up the existing plants around the border of the garden and replacing them with more manageable bedding plants and finding some cute garden furniture to put all my pots on so my garden was pretty. What happened is the astroturf managed to grow weeds and I spent £70 on two garden loungers for the decking.

I’m much better at house plants! My Monstera plant is flourishing and my fiancé is mildly concerned about the amount of new leaf tentacles it’s growing and I’ve got a bunch of plants that I bought when they were in teeny tiny pots and now they’re triple the size and I really need to pot them on but I haven’t got round to it yet.

Conclusion: inside plants – thriving, outside plants… alternating to between burning to a crisp and drowning thanks to the Great British Summer!

So here’s what I want to work on to prepare for the vegetable garden of dreams I’m going to have next summer (I’m manifesting, okay?).

• Dig out the plants around the border of the garden – there’s a big old tree that’s try to grow that isn’t meant to be there so I don’t want it to knock out the wall (the wise words of my gardener Dad). I think I’ll wait till next summer to replace the bedding plants or I might see if I can get some slate or gravel to match the existing slate around the property.
• Sort out the weeds – I really need to spray them with the weed killer and pull them all out but it sounds like a really boring job and I’m lazy. I have no other excuse.
• Collect old plastic containers to start my vegetable collection next year – my dad always starts his tomatoes in his old milk cartons so if I’m using plastic containers I might as well find ways to repurpose them!
• Find some furniture or beds to display or store my potted plants next summer – currently I just have an array of pots on the floor. Outdoor furniture is really expensive so it’s figuring out whether I can weather proof some indoor shelving, find something second hand on Facebook Marketplace or buy a drill and repurpose some old pallets or something.
• More garden furniture – whilst our two loungers are lovely, it would be wonderful to have friends round and be able to spend time outside when the weather’s nice. I’d love to have a rattan sofa with a little table for summer evenings with ciders and card games (maybe even plugging in a lamp and staying out after dark!).

I like to think I’m a bit of a gardener but I’m still learning – the fact I got even a little tomato that didn’t grow to full size this year is very exciting for me, so I’m definitely going to try and do what I can in the Autumn to be ready for a more bountiful crop next summer!

All gardening tips and tricks are much appreciated.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx