And so it begins....

 A Blog: usually one writes a blog on something they are knowledgeable about. When it comes to gardening, I am not! But I am trying to learn!

In theory I should have fingers greener than the hulk; my grandparents were market gardeners/ farmers and my mum is also a gardener. And herein lies the problem, I've never NEEDED to garden as the people around me do it for me! My Mum rescues my house plants every time she comes to visit and well timed visits to my grandparents’ house are bound to result in being sent home with a bag of broad beans, a punnet of greengages or a basket of apples. However, with my 30^th birthday fast approaching I feel I should be learning to do these things for myself. I am also a vegetarian with two fruit-crazy children to feed and the things I want to grow are the things that make up the bulk of my weekly shop – the more I can grow the less I have to buy! Also, when I was growing up I remember the sheer joy in picking blackberries to squash into an apple that had fallen from the tree, in trying to eat my lunch having spent a morning gorging myself on strawberries when no-one was looking, daring each other to eat sour gooseberries and watching my Grampy bent over his veg, lovingly weeding, thinning and picking the fruits of his labour. Although my garden is a postage stamp compared to what my grandparents had, I strive to recreate just a little bit of this for my children.

When I say I'm clueless I know a few things – I can identify a few herbs. I know what a blackberry bush looks like but when it comes to how to grow them I'm in uncharted territory! I did attempt this growing malarkey last year. The pepper plants I kept in the house did well, although the fruits had a very odd bitter and not overly nice flavour but they looked pretty. The girls got a few berries from the raspberry and red currant bushes and the strawberry plants that were inherited with the garden. The inherited rhubarb was very successful (how ironic that this is the one fruit my children do not like, maybe it’s because rhubarb is actually a vegetable!) and I also grew 3 potatoes, one carrot (which I stuck the fork through while trying to dig it up), 7 peas (and yes, that’s 7 individual peas, not pea pods) a few courgettes and a few parsnips. That doesn't sound too bad written down, but with the plethora of seeds planted there should have been MUCH more! The slugs had a feast on my kale and purple sprouting broccoli, things rotted in the strange weather patterns, my children trampled seedlings... in short, I spent way more on seeds than on saved money in Tesco.

So this year, I have a new mantra – Keep. It. Simple!

I am also going to stick with quality seeds – the seeds that grew last year were mainly Mr Fothergill seeds so this year the gray-moustached gardener is (hopefully) going to be my ally in gardening success! My gardening book also recommends you work out what sort of soil you have – is it clay or sand? Well after a thorough prodding I had ascertained that my soil is of the brown muddy variety. I also refuse to spend money on soil testing kits to check the nitrate levels and all that jazz. That doesn't agree with my KIS mantra!

So yesterday I started digging through the soil with the ‘assistance’ of a 3 year old and an 18 month old which made it slow going! There were also a multitude of sticks and small branches to remove. Next door has a large tree up against out fence so the ground always has an abundance of sticks knocked down by the idiot pigeons who refuse to acknowledge that they are heavier than their sparrow counterparts and try to land on the spindliest little branches which inevitable snap under their bulk.  I was also stalked by a robin. When the kids were out of range he would sit in on the fence and chirrup at me incessantly and puff out his chest until I found and threw him a worm. I'm going to have to buy him some meal worms if he keeps this up or there’ll be no worms left in my soil! The aforementioned tree also has a squirrel living in it so it’ll be interesting to see if he decides to steal anything from the garden. I don’t think he’ll take seeds – he doesn't seem interested in bird seed anyway, but time will tell.

Still, half the patch is dug and awaiting compost. I have a compost bin (also inherited) but I have never turned it or done anything to it so it’ll be interesting to see what is in it when I take that little door off the bottom later today!

I did learn one important lesson yesterday though. I need some decent gardening gloves, having spent yesterday evening digging splinters from the palms of my hands I shall be visiting the garden centre this morning before work resumes!

Well that’s me signing off for now! Sorry the first post is a bit long, I will endeavour to waffle less in future (although I'm promising nothing!).