Instant Vegetable Garden

Following the success of last year's vegetables supplied by Rocket Gardens (see my blog post "Plants by Post"), I leafed through the spring catalogue back in early April, looking for my next purchase.  When I reached the patio container garden, I left the catalogue open on my desk at that page, as a reminder to place my order.  If I had only turned the page over, I would have spotted a photo of my garden last year.  I had submitted to photo to Rocket Garden's Facebook page, as they had asked to see customer gardens.

I was completely unaware the photo was in the catalogue until I received an email from Rocket Gardens thanking me for the use of the photo.  As a thank you they were offering me a garden of my choice, a free wooden planter worth £30 plus two bags of potatoes worth £8 and free delivery.  Who was I to say no?  Thrilled didn't even begin to cover it!

As I had already decided on the patio container garden, that is the one I chose.  Priced at a very reasonable £36.99, it consisted of:

5 x rainbow chard
20 x wild rocket
12 x garden peas
6 x strawberries
10 x spinach
5 x tomatoes
4 x courgettes
30 x mixed lettuce (3 varieties)
10 x dwarf French beans
5 x runner beans
20 x mizuna (an Oriental salad leaf)

Partly due to the weather, lack of time to prepare and going on holiday, I finally arranged for my delivery to be made a couple of weeks ago.  The plants and wooden crate arrived 7pm on a Friday evening by courier.  As usual the plants were packed with care in a large cardboard box in layers of straw and more cardboard.  Each set of plants was clearly labelled and planting instructions were also included.  To be honest, you can't go wrong really.

I had a frantic Friday evening and then Saturday morning madly planting all of my new arrivals.  After a quick trip to the garden centre for canes and compost, I had a healthy looking, instant vegetable plot.  That's definitely my kind of gardening!

Two weeks on, the plants are all thriving, the peas are flowering and already have some pea pods and the strawberries are also fruiting.  I plan to cut my first lettuce tomorrow as they have really shot up over the last week.  I am really pleased with the wooden crate too, it makes a perfect home for the lettuces and looks quite attractive too.


What more can I say apart from thank you very much Rocket Gardens!