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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Jumping up and down in muddy puddles

“FLOWER!” Daniel exclaimed as we entered the nursery (the flower kind, not the baby kind.)  He loves flowers. But I’m sure I’ve mentioned that before. We walked along, both kids pointed and poking all the flowers as we went.

“Puddles!!!!!” Hannah yelled excitedly as we walked through the outdoor paths. They ran to big puddle, giggling as they went.

Jump, jump jump. Giggle giggle.  Hannah was jumping as high as she could, splashing water everywhere, her feet covered in water and splotches of dirt.  Daniel picked up one foot, then the other, back and forth, back and forth. He can’t quite jump yet, but stomping with one foot at a time, at a very rapid rate creates the desired splash effect.  Everyone who walked past either looked at us like we’d gone mad, or smiled at the delight on the kids’ faces. We don’t mind them jumping in puddles, they love it. I er…may have jumped a little bit myself. Maybe.

They both played in the puddle, giggling and shrieking in delight for quite a while, a la Peppa Pig.

It was hard dragging them away from the puddle, but we had a rose to buy. We had to stop at about  more puddles before we finally got to the roses.

Both Hannah and Daniel love going to the nursery, and they both love helping me garden.

Heirloom purple peas from our vegetable garden

Gardening is actually very good for kids. They learn about where food comes from, the environment, they love digging and pulling up weeds, teaches them responsibility, and best of all, they are far more likely to eat their vegetables if they grow them themselves. Every time we go to Grandma’s house, both Hannah and Daniel run to our vegetable patch to see what is ripe for them to eat. When we had broccoli, Hannah used to walk up to the plant and eat it without even picking it first. At home, she won’t even let broccoli onto her plate, and if I do put it there, she takes it straight off as if it’s some radioactive contaminant that is going to spoil the rest of her food.

Heirloom carrots from our vegetable garden. The purple ones are the most delicious.

Unfortunately, our local nursery doesn’t have any sort of kids activities, but if you live in the UK, Hayes Garden World has a Budding Young Gardeners Club.  They have planned activities, downloads, and a free membership pack.

Hayes Garden World sells plants, outdoor furniture, garden tools, and even pond accessories.

*This post was brought to you by Hayes Garden World.

If you enjoyed reading this, please vote for my blog. All you have to do is click the link below. That’s it… Clicking the link brings you to the Top Mommy Blogs home page. You don’t have to do anything else. Any clicks from my site to theirs is a vote.  THANKS!

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Copyright 2012 Sheri Thomson

Backyard heirloom vegetable garden

I’ve wanted to grow my own vegetable garden for a while.  I used to have one when we lived across the road (yeah, we used to live across the road from where we live now because we are just awesome like that.  When we lived in the city, the apartment we were living in was being sold so we moved just one floor down.  In the same building.), but we moved just as all the vegetables were ripening.  I never actually got to eat any of them.  Humph.

My friend has a giant vegetable garden and is forever telling me about the Diggers Club and heirloom vegetables.  That same friend and her soon to be husband, helped Aaron make two raised vegetable beds. I ordered a load of garden soil, and then Aaron and Hannah put all the dirt in the garden.  Why didn’t I help, you ask?  Heavy lifting/shovelling, and such things are not exactly good for a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy to be doing.

Hannah and the dirt pile

Hannah LOVED digging in the giant dirt mound, helping Daddy move dirt from the mound to the wheelbarrow, and then putting dirt on top of all the seeds that I planted in styrofoam cups with holes in the bottom (we had some lying around, so why not use them?).

oh so helpful

Aaron and Hannah set up a worm farm to give us wonderful “worm tea” to help the plants grow.  Every time we go outside now, Hannah wants to see the worms.  I did take photos of the making of the worm farm, but I can’t find them.  Humph.

In one of the beds, I planted all the things that needed to be sown directly into the ground (colourful heirloom carrots, purple garlic, 5 colour silverbeet, perpetual spinach, long red onions, stuff like that).  The other, was awaiting transplant from the seedling cups (crispmint lettuce, red lettuce, endive, broccoli, purple broccoli).

the straight in the ground garden bed

the seedling garden bed

When the sprouts from the cups were big enough, I transplanted them.  Sounds easy enough, but at 31 weeks pregnant, was actually quite a difficult job.  Lots of bending and getting up and down frequently.  Sigh.

Flame lettuce

I was pretty buggered by the end.  But, it’s all done now and soon we will have a nice variety of healthy, back to the way they are supposed to be vegetables, rather than flavorless, not very nutritious supermarket varieties.

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The Stubborn Grandma

Grandma: “Look at this stinging nettle I got out of the back yard.”

Me: “That’s a thistle.”

Grandma (grumpily): “No, it’s a stinging nettle.  I’m just trying to help you so Hannah doesn’t get stung.”

Me: “Regardless of what it’s called, I know Hannah shouldn’t touch it.”

Grandma (getting increasingly annoyed): “It’s a stinging nettle. I’ve lived my whole life in the bush, I know what a stinging nettle is!”

Me: “Well growing up, my Mom told me that those were thistles.  Stinging nettles are the ones that don’t look like they’d hurt you, they don’t have spikes on them, but then  you touch them and they sting.”

Grandma: “They both sting.  Touch this.  Come on, touch it, I promise it will sting you.”

Me: “I know it would hurt if I touch it, it’s spiky! That doesn’t mean it’s a stinging nettle.  It’s a thistle.  Maybe I’m wrong, maybe my Mom was wrong, I’m just going on what my Mom told me.  Maybe you’re wrong.”

Grandma: “It’s a stinging nettle.”

Grandma went outside and then came back, bearing non prickly, leafy, harmless plant.

Grandma: “This is a thistle.”

Me: “That’s not a thistle.  I don’t know what that is, but it’s not a thistle.”

Grandma: “How do all the rabbits eat thistle then?”

Me: “They don’t.”  I don’t know if they do or not, but I can’t imagine that they’d want to eat something that would likely poke their eyes out while giving them a lip piercing.

Me: “I’m going to look it up.”

Grandma (thoroughly annoyed): “Fine, but this is a thistle”

A few hours later (I hadn’t told Grandma that I looked it up hours ago):

Grandma, bearing a large spiky plant: “Look at this big…we’ll just call it Thing…that I found in the side yard.”

Me: “It’s a thistle.  We looked it up.”

Grandma (stubbornly): “Whatever.”

Then there was silence.  I wonder if Grandma will ever speak of said plants to me ever again, if she will still call them stinging nettles, or if she will now call them thistles???????????  Only time will tell….

UPADATE: Over a year later and she still refuses to call them thistles. She gets all flustered and says “You know, those stinging things…” HA!

This is a stinging nettle

This is a thistle