Site sponsored and hosted by PepperWeb Monique’s helpful gardening tips and secrets   Eight-year-old Monique Theunissen shares her tips and secrets for a successful vegetable garden. • Water your garden every day. Monique waters her plants every morning before school. Her sister Storm says, "There is not one day she forgets to water her plants." • Make sure that your plants are protected from extreme weather. Monique’s grandfather helped her to put up shade cloth above her plants, after the first hail storm nearly destroyed her crop. It was that shade cloth that protected her plants from the large hailstones that was responsible for denting many Roodepoort residents’ cars earlier in October. • Earth worms are your plants’ friends. Monique explains that earth worms are very good for your plants, because they aerate the soil. • Make sure you have decent soil. If you don’t have decent soil, Monique suggest you make planter boxes and fill them with a mixture of soil and compost. • Homemade compost. Monique believes that homemade compost is the best type, and the reason why she grows such happy vegetables. • Lots of love and care. This future horticulturist believes that spending time with your plants and looking after them makes all the difference. • Spinach and lettuce. Spinach and lettuce are the vegetables of the season. They are the easiest to grow and perfect for beginners.   Monique’s recipe for great homemade compost Homemade compost is one of the elements that eight-year-old Monique Theunissen attributes to her successful vegetable garden. First, Monique suggests you build or dig an area for the compost, then put in all your leaves, fallen fruit, or any wasted vegetable materials. With the hail storm that Roodepoort residents experienced earlier this month, a lot of leaves and fruit fell off their trees. Monique added these to her compost heap. Monique and her ouma have gone and collected leaves that were lying on the ground at Florida Lake, so they not only collected some more compost ingredients, but cleaned up the grounds. Leave the compost for one to two months, wetting it and turning it over every now and then. Earth or composting worms are also very important, says Monique, because they help break down the materials quicker. You will know when it’s ready when all the materials have broken down and it all looks the same colour. "It will be soft like grass," she explains. Homemade compost was very helpful in preparing the soil for Monique’s vegetable garden, especially since they have such poor quality soil with lots of stones.   More tips on gardening from Monique coming soon. Watch this space for more tips on gardening from Monique very soon. If you want to help Monique fund her garden and upkeep you can help by donating garden tools you are not using anymore or you can help by making a donation into her bank account which would be more than welcome. we thank the Roodepoort Northsider and Kristen Wohlberg for this lovely article they did for us. God bless.