As per permaculture standards, I'm trying to reuse what I can and I reckon reusing the containers and left over soil counts.

Our seed collection

I don't really know how long seeds last, some of the packets have dates on them and some don't.

Some are left over from previous tries and some are from Hubby's grandfather's garden, given to us after he passed.

Even though I don't know if I'm planting them at the right time (like now!) I did it anyway. I was already there covered in dirt, figured while I was there...

Seeds from Nono's garden

I'm not sure if some of seeds were first seeded in Sicily, but I know Nono had an amazing thriving garden and for sure some of these are from those plants.

As per usual the Italian selection included tomatoes, lettuce for salads, cabbage and beans for soups. It's a pretty good selection. I can imagine harvesting produce from these plants and making dinner with it.

These are old seeds I've had laying around

Cat grass is pretty much a staple for us.

If hubby gets his tomatoes and I get my eggplants, it's only right our cat gets his cat grass.

We've tried to feed him raw food but he just won't have it. Won't have fish. Won't have kangaroo, just biscuits and grass.

The alfalfa and watercress seemed dummy proof...

It wasn't.. I killed them both.

Those wondering.. The cat grass only grew because that was Hubby's project not mine.

This set is from the time we wanted to make terrariums.

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I bought them on eBay a couple of years ago, they were cheap and I was curious.

A lot of them are ground cover seeds

Plants that just spread out and cover the ground. I thought it'd be a great replacement for grass as well as a nice touch to the terrarium.

If you zoom in you'll see the Creeping Thyme "Purple Rain". That's the one I'm most excited about.

Wether it works with my permaculture plans I don't know.

You'll also see Alyssum. This is meant to be a great garden repeller and suppressor according to one of the videos I've seen. So that was nice to find already in my collection.

And these are from the Bunnings trip

The lettuce because we can't get enough lettuce.

French Marigolds are meant to be the best ones to pair up with tomatoes. Unfortunately they didn't have it at the store, and I got the yellow marigold instead.

You can see the French variety is a bit more fancy.

One of the things I like to think I really understood from everything I've learned is that gardens need pollinators and butterflies are pollinators too.

Sure they go about it differently from bees, but they still do their bit and I'm not so scared of them.

And seriously, who doesn't like the sight of butterflies?

Planting

There's a reason why I named this series "Black Thumb Chronicles" one of them is to be very clear that I'm new and almost clueless about gardening.

With that said, I just sprinkled seeds into the trays I prepared earlier and sprinkled a bit of soil over it.

I did get to the end thinking OHH NO! HOW AM I GOING TO KNOW WHICH IS WHICH! 😱

But that's when I had a moment of genius and decided a few sacrificial clothes pegs are in order and voila!

Sadly, I didn't have enough soil to plant all my seeds in, but I did pick out the ones we wanted to try the most.

The ones that made the cut are:

Nono's Lettuce
Alyssum
Creeping Thyme "Purple Rain"
Nono's Pomodoro
French Marigold
Lettuce
Bee and Butterfly Mix

In tomorrow's Black Thumb Chronicles post I'll show you how the garden looks after 5 days!

And Yes there's been progress and loss as well.

Stay tuned!!

🌻 Arly

PS. Who's been following the BTChronicles and getting inspired to plant a food forest? Come on... I know you want to.. Imagine if we all had food forests. ❤