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Veggie garden

Aaron has been busy making me a garden in the backyard. We don’t have a big yard, but I still want to be able to plant vegetables/fruit/herbs. We also want to have room for the kids to run around and play. So Aaron made me a garden bed that takes minimal space, but is still enough for me to plant a few things:

The garden bed is almost finished. A shed will eventually go on top of the cement tiles in the top left corner. There is a water access point that can’t be covered or blocked, between the future shed and edge of the garden, otherwise we had planned to have the garden go all the way to the fence. A potted plant will go between the shed and the garden so there isn’t a bare patch.

Aaron has been building the garden bed in stages since it took a whole lot of digging, followed by bricking. There will be one more row of bricks on top of the ones that are sunken in the ground, and then it will be all finished. Oh, and I’m going to nail boards across the beams that hold up the clothesline so that heavy things like pumpkins can grow up instead of out.

This is the first section of garden that Aaron made. I planted two types of heirloom beans, heirloom corn, and a marigold (helps keep pests away). In the corner in the pot is a grapefruit tree, surrounded by thyme, oregano, and mizuna. In the next pot is a macadamia tree (which needs a bigger pot and will be moved to the front since one macadamia can kill a 10kg dog) surrounded by rosemary, and next to that is my stevia plant, which also won’t actually stay there.

My heirloom beans are thriving. Behind them is a row of corn, which is also thriving, and there is a marigold in front of them, and it’s mulched with sugarcane.

I love growing my own food. I know what has been put on it (nothing), that it’s not GMO, it’s fun, and best of all, the kids love helping in the garden and eating straight from the plants. It’s good for kids to know how plants grow and see it happen right in front of them.

Vegetable gardening isn’t as easy as popping some seeds in the ground and then reaping the rewards though. Different plants like different conditions, different soils etc. Some fix nitrogen, some don’t. Some plants don’t prosper when planted near other kinds of plants. Some plants make other plants taste better and/or grow better. Some plants attract beneficial insects, others repel bad insects. They have to be planted at different depths and with different spacings. You could spend a whole lifetime learning about gardening.

But to make it easy, there’s the UrbMat. The UrbMat has holes the correct distance from each other, close enough to maximise space, but far enough apart so that the 10 different edible plants grow properly. Weeds are suppressed under the mat. The types of plants have been carefully chosen and placed for compatibility and even pest control plants are included. So you don’t have to stand outside for ages watering everything, there is even an inbuilt irrigation system. The UrbMat shows you what to plant where, making it great for beginning gardeners and kids. Best of all though, for every UrbMat sold, two meals are donated to kids in need.

The UrbMat. Making gardening easy.

As a Mommy Adventures reader, you get 15% off by entering the code MOMMYADVENTURE at checkout. To buy your very own UrbMat, click here.

More about the UrbMat

The UrbMat in action

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