The Pregnant Gardener...

It is becoming increasingly difficult for me to reach the back of my garden beds! I have found that due to my over cautious awareness of a baby bump, despite its small size, I am shifting my body to accommodate the little growth. This in turn causes me to activate unused muscles and therefore feel like I have completed a 24hr Pump marathon at the gym after only a short time of weeding and harvesting...

Harvesting, such a beautiful word. I am sure I have used it before in this blog. It conjures a sense of exclusivity. Originally reserved for farmers there are a number of us now, yuppie kitchen gardeners that is, who can bore coworkers with details of the weekend harvest (which really only consists of an hour or two in total). So that is what I have been up to... Unfortunately my harvest has involved pulling out a number of past the date, easy to grow veggies and placing them back into the compost bin. Sad. Unavoidable. My lovable broccoli caterpillars monopolised not only the broccoli but crossed the footpath and found my Asian greens. My HM is probably pleased about this as it would have meant an endless amount of green chicken curries. My other fault was leaving them in the garden when they had reached their prime while we had a family holiday for a week. Silly mistake probably, but I thought they would be better in there than in the fridge. Yep silly mistake.

However sitting on my kitchen bench is a clothes basket full of spinach, some holy leaf Asian greens and lettuce (can't get the caterpillars to attack my endless amount of lettuce). Next to the clothes basket is BB's sand pit bucket packed to the rim with golden potatoes. These have to be my pride and joy. My inspiration for this garden and renowned chef, Stephanie Alexander wrote about the joy digging for potatoes brings to children, secret garden tip for today... you don't need to be a kid to find this joy. And, finally on the bench are some more, unique (that's a euphemism for ugly) carrots.

Produce

I have given away my first lot of produce to a friend. Admittedly it consisted of three different types of lettuce and a bunch of chinese greens, but hey maybe after spring there will be some more variety...

So I have tried carrots, peas and lettuce from my kitchen garden. It was joyful to pull out a carrot which resembled, a carrot (I did pick the best one first as I was concerned that they would all turn out twisted and with a number of shoots due to the lack of depth in my soil). There is a tip, don't be sparse with the garden goodness when creating a no dig garden, some of the vegies just don't appreciate it so they try to grow sideways.

I now have to make sure the caterpillars which seem to love my broccoli are collected daily and squished into the ground so I can add some high folate produce to my diet.

Speaking of folate, trimester 1 of pregnancy two is coming to a close which is quiet welcome! I still have some off days but I don't feel like I need to sleep for 18 hours a day, which is nice - from a productive point of view. Maybe I will be able to write another entry in the next month or so!

Kicker

I don't know where to start...

I could say that I was humbled into silence after some lovely feedback at launching my blog,
but really three weeks of not adding a thing is simply self sabotage for a blogger (even a new blogger like me knows this!).
So what's my excuse, we went through a round of the flu in the house, things got busy at home/ work... but this isn't new for anyone else. So here comes the kicker, literally...I got a wee little kicker growing rapidly inside me and giving me hell at the same time. Yep here comes round two and even though I know I will love he/she more then life, I think round two for us means the final round!

Needless to say the last thing I have felt like doing is getting out there and playing with compost and bending over at strange angles dealing with seeds. All I want to do is lay in the bath drinking flavoured water snacking on crackers, and well home grown vegies don't grow this way. I have faith this mood will pass and I will once again derive pleasure out of finding worms in my soil, and I hope it comes soon. It won't be long until I will be able to harvest my carrots, peas and potatoes and I do want to be able to enjoy them, not worry if they will reverse their travel route shortly after eating them!

In the mean time it will just have to Kai enjoying some strawberries.

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The time has come

As I still question the purpose of this blog, I am going live... The murmurings of another person are available for you to read!

So welcome and read from the earliest posts if you care, otherwise check in when you can.

Would you like carrots, peas and potatoes with your chicken?

It is all coming along very nicely.

My no-dig kitchen garden is up and running. I did kickstart my collections of vegies with buying seedlings, but my peas and beans are doing well from seed. BB even has a little sandpit it the patch, but most of the time he is more interested in the dirt! I can't wait for him to want to help me plant our produce.

Gardening with Grandma

Now I water and wait, while I try to cultivate more plants from seed.

The other side to this little adventure, being this blog, has suffered but we will get back on track. HM is pushing for me to write more and launch the site. I suppose this is inevitable, but there is something so peaceful about people not knowing about it just yet. My private world is still safe with me, though I am meant to be conquering or at least coinciding with technology.

What is also very exciting is that we are getting chickens! We are looking into purchasing (or building, if HM gets his way) a 'Chicken Tractor'.  Two dallies + two bantams in the backyard = interesting times! Throw in a toddler and away we go. Talking of BB he is waking now, talking in his language that only he understands. It is such a beautiful sound that I will miss when he is moulded in to communicating in English.

Anyway back to Motherdom, I think we will go and check on the vegies. It is such a lovely winters day.

The space is set.

My no dig garden has been erected in the middle of my backyard, the whole 4.8m x 4.8m and 1.2m high, and it is all thanks to my wonderful husband and his very helpful parents. It is beautiful! I never thought I would say that about some wood and wire but it is.

My two dallies who previously dominated the backyard have come to terms with once again being placed at the bottom of the pecking order (first it was off the couch, then out of the house and now a quarter of their play and pooing area has been removed).  However they have enjoyed trying to get their little noses through the holes in the wire to grab a mouthful of hay or two.

The most surprising aspect to this new little adventure is that I love going to the local co-op to get my hay, manure and compost. It is  a whole new world of shopping I am discovering - including baby chickens which my 13mth BB old called 'duckz' on sight. I would not have found this joy if my own compost worked! (I suppose that my own compost not working is not as surprising in this adventure). My quick banner batch bin that consists of a bin with a lid, occy straps and a few drilled holes will need a little more then the recommended two weeks because, after some reading, I think I have overloaded the bin with too much kitchen waste unsettling the nitrogen vs carbon equilibrium). I also had to purchase 'well rotted' manure as the fresh manure I collected at a friends farm needs to age before being put directly onto a garden. It seems I do have a lot to learn.

As I am still deliberating the internal design of my patch I have only laid two layers for my no-dig garden, newspapers and lucerne hay. However in anticipation I have started to sow some seeds that are winter welcoming and it was meditative (it could be the case that BB's long sleep contributed to this state).  Anyway time will tell if I should continue with living blue ideals or use the pen to breed Dalmatians... fingers crossed.