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March 10

With the bag garden at capacity and the urgency to replant them very real, Saturday morning saw us heading down the mountain to a bigger Bunnings store right after the biggest big breakfast ever placed in front of me.

Extremely aware of the amount of space we had to work with, we mainly concentrated on buying the right soil and mulch for our garden, exhibiting hero like restraint, we walked out with just soil, mulch and a couple of gardening tools. NO plants.

In yesterday's post I added a couple of technical details to this series just in case people find it later on and want to refer to it I would like to expand on it and add the type of soil and mulch I used, for my reference and for anyone else wildly curious.

Garden Details

Climate: Cool Mountain
Seasons: End of Summer/Start of Autumm
Soil: Hortico 25L All Purpose Potting Mix & Brunnings 25L Tomato & Veg Growig Mix
Mulch: Sweet Garden 18m² Organic Sugar Cane Mulch

Bag Garden

Hortico 25L All Purpose Potting Mix

Organic-based potting mix suitable for a wide variety of indoor and outdoor plants. This potting mix has been certified by Australian Standards as a Regular Potting Mix which is suitable for general purpose potting.
Balanced mix that provides good drainage
Ideal for indoor/outdoor plants, hanging baskets and window boxes.

I found this soil to be amazing. I mean, come on, see how fast everything grew in 2 weeks? I'm largely crediting the soil quality but I feel I need to point out, there's about 20 orgonites on the grass just a couple of steps away that may have had something to do with the incredible growth of my plants.

Veggie Garden

Brunnings 25L Tomato and Vegetables Growing Mix

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Ideal as a food for established plants.
Specially developed to encourage vigorous growth
Encourages bigger, juicer tomatoes

The keyword on this bag is "Tomato". Hubby is Australian Sicilian and we go through a lot of tomatoes, like A LOT. We already have 4 tomato plants but seems we are going to be collecting tomato plants from here on in so this soil was the obvious choice for us.

Mulch

Sweet Garden 18m² Organic Sugar Cane Mulch

Sweet Garden Sugar Cane Mulch is produced from 100% Certified Organic dried sugar cane leaves and tops, that are screened to eliminate dirt and dust.
Sweet Garden is the largest bale, and cleanest sugar cane mulch on the market, offering the benefit of added nutrition, soil insulation and moisture retention for healthy garden beds.
Each bale covers 9m² at 50mm depth and up to 18m² at 25mm depth, when replenishing.
Insulates soil surface, retains moisture and suppresses weeds
Provides an attractive finish to garden beds
Encourages soil organisms and earthworm activity
100% BFA Certified Organic
100% Australian Owned & Made

We didn't feel it was necessary to mulch the bag garden, as it was I suspected I had drainage issues, but it's important we mulch the garden bed once everything has been planted in.

As much care as we took to make sure there were no gaps between the cardboards on the lasagna, we are beginning to see stray blades of grass poking through some spots. We can't have that happening on the veggie patch so we definitely need to mulch to stop the sunlight from getting through.

Everyone raves about their mulch. One guy on YouTube even said he can't get enough of it. Not only does it prevent the weeds from coming through, but over time it will increase your soil quality.

Sugar cane mulch is apparently the best mulch to use (we'll find out soon of it's as awesome as everyone says), my keyword on this product is "Organic", it even has the Australian certified organic stamp on the bag. I know cos it's the same stamp on my essential oil bottles.

Here we go!!!

By the time we got home it was much later in the afternoon than we had wanted and we had to work double time to catch daylight so I didn't get to take as many progress shots.

First I poured a couple of soil bags on to top of the lasagna to fill in gaps, even the ground up a bit and to provide additional soil for the plants.

Then we moved the bags from their spot and placed them along the side to get an idea of how much lasagna space we'll need.

Having all the companions together in each bag made the planting part a lot easier as it was only a matter of making sure each bag had a section for itself and a couple of plants (beans and pepper) were away from each other.

We also figured out that it was easier to plant when there's a defined border, so here's hubby on the job.

Moving the bags alongside the garden bed we realised we might not have enough room to plant everything we had, so I had to plant as Hubby built, what he dubbed, "The Great Wall", to see exactly how much room we had.

The replanting process was as easy and straight forward as I imagined it would be. I had always seen myself digging my hands in the soil, scooping up soil and root system and placing it in a hole. It went down exactly like that as the soil moved and loosened up when we moved the bags, making it so easy to transplant.

That said, I did still lose one of my capsicums, on account of the branch holding it snapping ~ I wanted to cry.

The 5 bags of the tomato and veg soil, plus the 4 bags of potting mix we already had, luckily, was enough to complete the section we needed. I even had enough room to plant the seedlings right down the end.

March 11

The morning after.

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As my custom these few weeks, I rushed out to the garden to see how everything went over night and was quite relieved and happy to see plants happy, alive and flourishing.


Marigolds ready to bloom.	A new leaf on one of the lettuce seedlings.


New flowers on a tomato plant.	The bees and butterfly seedlings all upright and seeking the sun.

The thing about replanting is I worry that I'm taking plants from their happy place. I mean, shit, they were growing fine in the bag, a little crowded yes but they were still growing really well. Taking them out of their spots and moving them somewhere else..... Eh... I worry.

I have been very conscientious about my garden. Making sure to note temperatures and watering them extra in the morning of extremely hot days, skip watering on rainy days just in case it got too much water in the bags. I have loved and looked after our garden for weeks and to lose it all at this stage of the game.....

You guys wont see me for weeks. I'd be rolled up in a ball somewhere, crying.

Time to mulch it and mulch it good!

It was meant to get up to 28 degrees celsius on Sunday and I was keen to water everything and get the mulch on before it got too hot.

I decided to cut a section off at the top of the mulch bag instead of emptying it all out on the garden. This ended up being a brilliant idea as we didn't even use half of the bag. This way the bag is very easy to tape up and store for later use. Sugar Cane mulch apparently breaks down in about 6 months and requires top ups regularly so I'm glad I still have quite a bit of it left.

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Here's me in my pajamas on to the mulch situation stat.

I have never used mulch before and to be honest I kinda wanted to get those red bark mulch because I thought it would contrast great against our grey/black house. But then Hubby said he spoke to a few people and a few have highly recommended he use sugar cane mulch, and from memory I vaguely remember one of the YouTubers mention sugar cane as well.

In terms of size and weight, you just cant compare it to a mulch bag. The sugar cane is more hay-ish, is light and comes in a cube while the others are more like wood chips in a heavy oversized bag. In terms of usability, its fabulous and easy to spread around, the bag seems bottomless and to top it off, it's organic!


The tomatoes before and after mulching.	The eggplants before and after mulching.

You'd think we would have stopped there.

One of the reasons we pushed to get the garden sorted on Saturday was so we could spend some time together and have some relax time, but we needed more gas for the barbie so off we went to Bunnings.

It took all my restraint on Saturday to walk out with just soil and mulch. It's very rare that I'm down the mountain and in a big Bunnings no less... Big Bunnings has EVERYTHING. All the herbs, the fruit trees, veggies, times 3. But we weren't sure about space. We didn't have that problem this time around.

To cut a long story short...

(Basil, Rosemary, Rocket, Asparagus, Brocolli, Snow Peas, Strawberries!!)

The Perennials vs Annuals research came in really handy. In fact I referred to my table several times while we were shopping, making sure we bought asparagus because everyone says if you plant asparagus once you'll always have asparagus.

Do you know how expensive a bunch of asparagus is?! And it's that easy to grow? Are you kidding me?

In so many ways this is a huge experiment. There's so many things going on here from the lasagna not having enough time to marinate before we planted on top, to the companion planting ~ did I doubt right?

There's also the full sun/partial shade thing to consider, which I haven't really. This new set up is full sun all the way. The old set up, ala soil pallet style, was so close together the plant provided each other with shade and helpers.

Right now I am back on the drawing board with plant selection and companions. I need to compile a list of plants I have, don't have but want - basically like the lists in the perennials vs annuals post, but more in depth with companion & foe info and a new sketch of the garden bed and a mock sketch of the garden bed with the plants I want with their companions.

I'm hoping I can get that posted tomorrow.

In the meantime... Do you have a favourite perennial plant? If so, why is it your fave? I would love to know!

🌼 Arly

All pictures taken on my Samsung Note 8 | Soil info credits to Bunnings