Earlier this year, my father-in-law (FIL) visited while Ryan and I were finishing up putting the new metal-framed raised beds in our garden. He said, rather wistfully, that he missed having a vegetable garden. Although he and my mother-in-law (MIL) have quite a large garden, it’s all given over to ornamentals as my MIL is a highly skilled florist. (She did the flowers for our wedding.)
It wasn’t the first time he’d made a similar comment, so – as a family – we hatched a plan. For Father’s Day we bought him a table top garden that could sit on the patio. It holds 150 litres, and we bought enough peat-free compost to fill it. And to top it all off we bought him some vegetable plants – dwarf peas, short-rooted carrots and a beautiful red oak leaf lettuce.
The garden comes flat-packed, but my FIL is an engineer by trade and it didn’t take him long to put it together. (In fact, it took him almost as long to find the instructions, which had got hidden between the pieces.)
We delivered everything before lunch. By mid-afternoon, the garden was assembled, filled and planted! A month later, it was really flourishing:
I approached the project with a little trepidation, as I wasn’t sure my FIL would take to it. But he loves it! He’s out there every day tending it (and the tomato tower we bought him a few years ago). They’ve been enjoying the lettuce, he’s just starting to harvest the peas and when my MIL bought him some seeds he started radish as a follow-on crop.
He’s even taken some leftover polycarbonate glazing from my greenhouse, and some spare timber, and fashioned a cold frame to go over the top to protect winter crops and spring sowings.
It’s our turn to look after is this week, as they’re away helping with holiday care for my
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