Garden Bears' World - Part One

We bears were hoping to have a day in the garden today, helping Polar to sow some vegetable seeds, but it was so wet and cold that none of us wanted to go outdoors and get our fur all soggy and mud on our paws.

 'Don't worry, little bears,' said Polar.  'We can get to work in the kitchen, if I bring in a big bowl of compost.  But first, let's make some recycled planters for the broad beans.'

Polar fetched a big bag full of kitchen roll middles, and showed us how she wanted them cut in half.  We set to work cutting up the tubes, while she fetched the seeds and the compost, and some plastic mushroom boxes she had saved.

'We need to put six tubes into each box,' she explained.  'We're going to plant broad beans in them so, when it's time to plant them outdoors, we can plant the cardboard tubes too and not disturb their roots.'

We started putting tubes in the mushroom boxes, but it was difficult to fit them all in.  Then  Hanley Bear had a clever idea.

'If we squash the tubes to make them square-shaped, they fit together better,' he said, showing Polar how this would work.

'What a clever little bear!' she said.  Hanley was very proud of himself!

The smaller bears jumped on the tubes to squash them, so they could be made square-shaped, then I put them in the mushroom boxes.  When I had a box ready, Polar half-filled each of the pots with peat-free compost, and gave us a packet of broad bean seeds to check.

'These are last year's left-over seeds,' she said.  'We won't plant any that are cracked or split, so it would be very helpful if you little bears could take those out, then put one good one in each of the tubes.'

We found most of the old beans were still good, so planted those.  Polar gave us a pack of new beans to put in the last few tubes, then she carefully covered them all over with extra compost and pressed it down firmly.

 'The cardboard will take lots of moisture out of the compost,' Polar explained.  'So we need to put some water in the trays.  Not too much, though - we don't want the compost to get too soggy, or the beans will go rotten.'

Polar fetched some more plastic packaging she had saved, this time clear fruit boxes, and put them over the bean tubes. 

'That will help to keep them warm when they go back into the greenhouse,' said Polar.  'And it will keep any mice out that sneak in looking for a little snack!'

We were very pleased with our work.  We liked being able to reuse things that most people would throw away.  Polar says it's important to use less plastic but, if you have plastic things, you should get lots of use out of them, and recycle them when they are worn out.

We are already looking forward to warmer spring days when we can plant our beans out in the garden or on the allotment, but there was more planting work for us to do that afternoon!