If Jemima's patch is to be successful, I must get over my arachnophobia ...

I've been lax I know.  I'm sorry.  But where were you all?  Where were the pestering texts?  The heavy hints?  The tellings off?  I blame you lot entirely.  ;o)

Well regardless of blame I've finally done it.  We have seeds IN mud.  I feel proud.  I dusted off the seed trays I'd bought last year, brought them into the house to clean them up a bit, had a mini panic at the couple of spiders that jumped out of the crevices (they had menace in their eyes), and got on with the job in hand.

I hate how scared I am of spiders.  I know it's completely irrational, I know the worst I'll come away with is a little bite not even as bad as an ant bite, I know they are more scared of me than I am of them, but I'm SO scared of them.  When Jemima was only about 3 weeks old I was alone in the house with her, Tommer was working away and I decided to give her a bath.  We had a baby bath that you place in the normal bath.  I filled it up, got her undressed, everything was ready to go and this humongous house spider ran out from under it.  I FREAKED.  Apparently you're supposed to go all lioness when you've just had a baby.  You're supposed to develop this calm, protective instinct that can deal with any situation and ensure your children are safe.  I've never seen a lioness running in circles, cursing her lion mate for leaving her in such a dangerous environment and crying all over her offspring at the mere sight of an arachnid.  Spiders are stupid.  They move weird, they are unpredictable and they love playing this sick game of hide and seek with people who don't want to play.  Sod off spiders, I don't want to play.

 I digress.  I now have four lovely seed trays filled with special mud for seeds, I've planted carrots, strawberries, tomatoes, asparagus, naga chillies and - just because I love them - some sunflowers and sweet peas.  All of this I managed to do in the small window of glorious sunshine today, you know, the bit before the monsoon and after the hail storm.

My next job is to make a bit of a diary documenting when I need to do what.  This is where I've gone wrong all the other times, I've planted loads then I have no idea when to plant them out, when to fertilise, how to tend to them etc.  I think I need a little vegetable diary.  This is my next mission.

Over and sprout.

I don't even know how to hoe.

Lettuce begin!  We're starting out, there aren't even any seeds in the ground yet and I have NO IDEA what I'm doing.  This afternoon, while Jemima was having a 30 minute nap, I donned my wellies and gardening gloves, strapped the baby monitor to my waist and headed to the deepest, darkest depths of my garden.  In that time I dodged the thousands of dog poo land mines, moved the compost bin so we can start again with it, turned over a 5x5' piece of mud (to me, it's still mud, I currently don't know the difference between mud, soil, pete and compost) and hoed the turned over "mud".   Well, when I say I hoed the mud, I kind of stabbed at the big chunks to break them up, in a Hitchcock shower scene type of way.  How the blinkin' stinkin' do you hoe?

So first things first, the compost bin.  What do I add?  Do I need to start it off with a load of newspaper?  sand?  egg shells?  reindeer faeces? or just go ahead and add my vegetable-based kitchen waste?  I'm pretty sure we shouldn't add too much grass cuttings (when we start cutting the grass again) and no cooked foods (that's where I went wrong last time).  I'm going to research this funny little peelings-into-fertiliser phenomenon now, but if you have any top composting tips please do comment below.

I've heard the phrase "well drained soil" banded around a lot.  Let me tell you that this mud is not well drained soil.  But it's January.  Is it okay that it's quite wet?  I mean everything is quite wet at the moment, isn't it?  I do know that you need to know your acids from your alkalis to produce successful crops, but I've just learnt that it's acids and 'alkalis' and not 'alkalines' - I clearly have a very large mountain of knowledge to climb.  I'm going to pop to the garden centre to get a testing kit tomorrow (I assume mud testing kits exist?!) then we can decide what to plant.  A couple of grow bags would be handy too I think then we can start with some conservatory seeding trays.

Work in progress ...

Happy Thursday!

What a mess!

I've taken some pictures of said patch.  It's not a pretty sight at the moment.  Tommer and I attempted to build it together a couple of years ago when Jemima was just a twinkle in our black eye beans (I'm going to apologise in advance for the terrible horticultural puns that are no-doubt going to feature in this blog and also promise that they will continue long after the fruit has been harvested).  Anyway, so we're trying to build a patch, I - being an optimist - have insisted on it being as big as possible when realist Tommer advises that we should start small and see how we go.  We together try and construct the frame but ultimately end up locking horns as we both know best.  Tom tells me that it's getting dark and we should carry on with it tomorrow.  Little did I know the scheming little imp has a plan.  He gets up mega smega early the next morning and builds me a gloriously massive vegetable patch all on his own, very successfully, without my meddling.  He is a good eggplant.

With all the best intentions I planted onions, broccoli, pumpkins, raspberries, peas, carrots and courgettes.  I watered them every day (for about two weeks) then the weather turned bad, I lost interest and the rest is rotten vegetable history.

Here is what the patch looks like now, two years on.

So, this is what we have to work with.  It's a project and hopefully an ongoing one.  We'd like it to be as interactive as possible, if you have any requests or general gardening tips please do feel free to hosepipe up - man, they are getting worse.  Subscribe to the blog if you wish and please do comment to just say hi every now and again, if only to keep me motivated.

My first task is to move the poor compost bin and start again with it.  It's been very badly treated and has been filled with all kitchen food waste, including raw and cooked meats (I didn't really know what I was doing at first) so we need to revive that and get some good quality compost on the go.  So come on composters, what do I put in it?  Peelings and carrot tops I'm sure, untreated grass cuttings?  Egg shells? Newspaper?? What's good, what's bad?  Better do some research.

The seed of an idea ...

A little background about me, my name is Kate, I live in Somerset with my Tommer, my big, ginger dog, Benson, two cats, Stab and Kebab and five months ago I gave birth to the newest family member, our daughter, Jemima. So far so good, she's an awesome little character and a brilliant kick up the arse to do nice things with my life. 

We have a large vegetable patch in our garden, well, when I say 'vegetable patch' what I mean is 'potential vegetable patch'. At the moment it's a large rectangle of railway sleepers filled with some mud and lots of weeds. But man, the potential! The purpose of this blog is mainly as a motivational tool to plant, nurture and harvest my knowledge as well as some fruit and veg and make sure I don't lose interest and give up. Jemima isn't old enough to know about growing produce yet but I have a couple of years to hone my skills before I can start passing my wisdom on to her. 

I've put the feelers out to a couple of friends who are keen to help out and to share both the graft and the yield with us. With them and this blog in place I think we're destined for certain success.