Home grown

I knew I was getting old when I started to watch the news, preferred staying in rather than going out and started growing my own vegetable garden.

I grew up on the farm so I am used to seeing giant vegetable patches that produce all of your vegetable needs. When I moved to the city and lived in rented properties I had all but given up on the idea of producing my own vegetables .
Cue TV cooking shows that had chefs growing their own kitchen
gardens. For example, James Martin Digs Deep and
River cottage, which I quickly become addicted too.

Hubby and I were inspired, surely we could grow something in our tiny wee 2 metre square garden. By this time we were living in our own home, so we could dig up what and where we wanted, to create our little slice of vegetable paradise.

We started small and brought in some actual soil and sheep poo thanks to dad (our section was all rocks and clay). Hubby was in control of most of it as I was known to be a bit of a black finger (aka every plant I touched, died). That was until at 7 months pregnant Hubby decided to go and play Grid Iron Football and totally destroy his patella (the thing that holds your knee together). What followed was a few weeks spent in hospital and months of not being able to move from the chair. He gave me strict instructions while in hospital, "I must take care of the garden and NOT let anything die". Crap I thought, how the hell am I going to do that.

Alas the stress of killing his garden made me spend many hours out there taking care of it. Which made me realise something important. In order to be a green finger you actually had to put some time and effort into your garden.

So without realising it Hubby had created a big fat pregga lady who was now obsessed with gardening. Some people get cats or dogs when pregnant. So that they can nurture them and take care of them, its just what pregnant people do. Well my baby was my garden and boy did I go nuts nurturing it. Hubby would quite often look out the lounge window to see a 9 month pregga person pulling out the few remaining shrubs and digging up the garden to create more space for my precious vegetables. He would quite often bang on the window with his crutch yelling at me to get in side and stop doing crazy things, that it was dark outside now. I would religiously water it and fertilise it every week. Yell and squash bugs if they dared to attack my precious wee pants.

All this pregnant green finger craziness created a brilliant productive little vegetable patch that not only provided our vegetable needs but our neighbours as well. Now alas we have moved to a bigger house and have had to start all over again. I will post our successes and failures of dealing with a slightly different environment, our new gardens and crazy looking bugs when I get the chance. In the mean time happy gardening.

PS: All the pictures are actually of my little garden.