The Garden Evolution

The last time I touched on the issue of gardening was when I was in Form 3 and Agriculture Science was one of the main subject in my class.

I recall the time when we formed a line from our classroom and walked towards the end of the school football field when we do our “gardening” – planting flowers and vegetables. We are given a pair of black “Pua Chu Kang” type boots and a small hoe to plow the garden. The Agriculture Science class teacher, Mr Low was a kind and helpful man on the field, always can be counted on to give sound ideas and advice on ensuring on plants to grow big and healthy.

When I left Form 3, I lost touch on the gardening until now. With a small patch of land at my new house courtyard, the interest of doing a small gardening is back in my mind. However, before I can plant the first plant on the said land, some preparations need to be done.

The patch of land was full of debris, rocks and plastics – unsuitable for plants to grow except for maybe some wild plants. It was time for some minor excavation. I needed to clean up the debris, clear way the top layer of the soil and add a new layer of healthy black soil on the top. It probably took us some 2 hours to complete the “excavation” but me and my brother managed to clear away the debris and cleared the mud like soil. Next to come was the black soil which we purchased from Tesco Puchong for 99 cents for each bag. Rain drop areas was reconstructed with large rocks to ensure that the top layer of soil was not washed away during heavy rain (it helped but not much – there was some layer washed away). By the time we finished, it looked rather a bit ugly but was much better than the earlier state:-

Next the final touches – the plants and the grass. After seeing the garden at my friend’s house, I decided to add carpet grass (also known as Philippines grass) to most of the area, surrounded by pots of flowery plants, pebbles and fine rocks. The adding the grass was the easy part (as easy as “cut and paste”) but taking care of it and removing any unwanted weeds was the difficult part. From what I understand from my friend, it will take about a month before the grass is well grown and is ready for its first “hair cut”. As at todate, it has been 2 weeks since we first laid the grass and that’s means it will be another 2 weeks to go before I can start to trim the grass. This is what my garden looks like for now but it is still not finished.

In the next weeks, I wanted to add more of the white pebble stones and add more pots to fill the space around the patch of land. There are still things and experiment to do on the garden.

Perhaps it’s time to recall what Mr Low had taught me during the Agriculture Science class time – its feel great to be doing gardening.

More picture in BJ Photos

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