And the hope blossoms . . .

I can’t believe it was just a month ago that the garden was so dry and the boxes were empty.  We had 15 mm of rain in March which filled the tanks and so we began planting again – and wow!  The plants are flourishing. It must be all that delicious compost, horse manure, and worm tea – and of course the water.  We are back to fresh beans, spinach, lettuce and some carrots.  The tomatoes are already starting to get fruit and the onions and kale are looking healthy. What a blessing just a little bit of rain can be.  Of course the compost corner has been a great help.  I finally found a lemon sapling and that has been planted and is flourishing.

I decided to have another attempt at growing cucumbers but this time I started spraying the plants with soapy water from the time they were seedlings.  I have had a few aphids trying to colonise the leaves but I check every day and remove the offending creatures. The tiny cucumbers are already beginning to form.  It’s so exciting.

As you will see in the photos below, I have even grown some chrysanthemums in a pot for aesthetics. They are so colourful and a joy to see. My brother and sister-in-law are immigrating and they gave us their lovely water feature which we have set up next to the front door. The sound of water and the warm sunshine on the porch make for a lovely spot to read or knit.  It’s going to be a great retreat for the chilly winter days.  Of course, the sound of the water is a constant reminder of just how much we need this precious source of life to survive.

The last photo is of the two boxes we installed on the side of the house that gets morning sunshine.  It was here that I started experimenting with drip irrigation. I saw a video on YouTube using aquarium tubing and a plastic bottle.  I bought the requirements and hubby took over from there. The result is a cheap and easy drip irrigation system. Now that I know it works we can make more systems for the other boxes.

The drought is not over yet but we are able to keep going and supply the bulk of our fresh vegetables from our garden pantry – and all without chemicals.  I’m feeling blessed.

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Where there is rain there is hope

The devastating drought is still with us here in the Western and Eastern Cape of the country.  Our dams are still critically low and restrictions are firmly in place for the long term. But there is hope.  Over the past few weeks, we have had some coastal rains which, whilst they don’t make much difference to our dams they at least fill the rain tanks. The best music in the world is hearing rain falling steadily.  Without water, there is no life.

Now that we have water in the tanks we are starting to plant seeds again.  The local garden centre is still not stocking seedlings but I have a variety of seeds to plant. We have topped up the boxes with available compost and we are planting beans, spinach, onions, carrots, cucumber and tomatoes. It’s really exciting to watch the tiny plants germinate.

 

We have missed having lovely fresh garden vegetables and we look forward to once again being able to walk outside and pick them from our own patch of garden.

 

As you can see in these pictures the grass is much greener and it is long at the moment.  That will be cut soon and kept to mulch the boxes. This cuts down on evaporation and it another water saving process. The next step for me is to install a simple drip irrigation system. I have been exploring possibilities on YouTube and this one looks suitable for my set up. So, in my next post, I will be reporting back on my progress. In the meantime, we recycle, re-use and pray that the good rains will come this year.

The Dry Times

The southern provinces of South Africa, namely Western and Eastern Cape, have been experiencing a prolonged drought that is having a devastating effect on agriculture and rural and urban life. Sadly, my garden has not escaped the effect of this drought. We have not had significant showers for the past couple of months and our three tanks are dropping fast. I have had to take the difficult decision to stop watering my vegetable boxes and save the little water we have left for emergencies.

We are left with some prolific chili bushes, a few straggly beans which I am going to dig back into the soil to add nitrogen and a couple of undersized eggplants that may not reach maturity. I am trying to keep the herbs going.

But all is not lost. There is always a positive side to any sad story. My silver lining lies in my compost production over the years. We are in the process of digging up the compost in our pile and using it to top up the boxes. This compost has been mixed with horse manure from time to time so it’s a lovely rich mixture that’s going to produce wonderful crops in the future. Of course, the worm farm is still being maintained and that will also be used to feed the crops.

This scruffy looking corner is my hope for the recovery of the vegetable garden when the rains eventually come – and I believe the rains will come. So here’s to the recovery of my garden in God’s time.

The Adventure Continues

I have had a successful year with the vegetable-growing adventures. My family gave me the boxes as a birthday/ retirement gift in June 2016 and it’s been the wonderful gift that just keeps on giving.  There is always something to eat in our garden.

 

We have had lots of tomatoes even though it is the end of winter.  Most of the tomato plants have been self-seeded from the Summer crop and now we are reaping the benefit. We also have chilis and shallots so I have been able to make a spicy Mexican Tomato soup. So delicious!

A new venture was to try strawberries in a smaller box in a very warm spot in the front garden. This has been successful and we’re now enjoying those fruits too.

It gives me such pleasure to harvest our own produce.

Of course, what would a vegetable garden be without feeding?  The composting corner gets all our organic kitchen waste – in the green bin. To that, we add grass clippings and leaves. We eat a lot of eggs and I grind the shells in my food processor and add that to the green bin too along with coffee grounds.  Our worm farm is still producing worm tea – although at a slower rate during the cold months. The garden really loves this liquid manure diluted 1:10.  We have friends who keep horses and occasionally I beg some horse manure off them. I add this to my compost pile in the corner and that also helps build up the soil.  We are going to need every bit of it to top up the boxes soon as the soil has settled over the past 15 months.

On the advice of my teacher friend in New Brighton, I planted some Borage. The leaves are very good for adding to the compost and the pretty blue flowers attract bees. Another bonus.

So, as we enter our second season we are blessed by our food garden.  Spinach, tomatoes, carrots, celery, lettuce, beans, red cabbage, chilis, peppers, squash, shallots, and lots of herbs. Our water tanks are full after the recent coastal rains and everything is looking healthy.  Pests have not been such a problem over the winter.  Now I just have to deal with those weeds!

Abundance in a time of drought

Tomatoes! I am delighted with the dozens of tomatoes that we are about to harvest.  I planted Beefsteak GMO-free tomatoes and they have come up well.  They have been relatively pest-free and we have been harvesting a few at a time. Our biggest problem is keeping the birds off them.

On Christmas day I was able to use some of our own tomatoes in our salad, along with our own lettuce and some young carrots. I now anticipate dealing with a glut of ripe tomatoes in the near future.  I am planning tomato sauce and some puree for recipes.  Of course we will be enjoying them fresh with every meal too.

Our boxes are full.  We have carrots, beetroot, spring onions, leeks, squash, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, lettuce, celery and of course tomatoes.  We even have a butternut vine creeping out of one of the boxes and bearing fruit.  I’ve planted another crop of cucumber and I’m hoping they won’t wilt or get attacked by aphids. I also have some rhubarb and I’m plucking up courage to make a rhubarb dessert.  I haven’t had rhubarb since my granny used to grow it and make a crumble served with custard.

I remember once hearing a quote at an IT conference that went like this: “Whatever you do today prepares you for something better tomorrow.”  That has been true for many aspects of my life since I first heard it in 2000 and it’s true for my garden today.  About eight years ago hubby installed our first rain harvest tank. A few years later he decided we need another one so that was installed in the front garden. It was a bit of an eyesore until a creeper covered it.

Earlier this year he decided we need an even bigger tank! That has also been installed in the front garden and it has yet to pull on a disguise in the form of a creeper so it looks rather naked and ugly.  Having three tanks has meant that we have been able to keep the vegetables going during this crippling drought that has affected the whole country.  Our main municipal supply dam is very low and households have been asked to limit daily usage to 400 litres.  We have been able to supplement the household water with tank water and we are managing to keep our consumption down by catching shower water and carting buckets around.  Anyone in the rain harvesting tank business is doing great business right now – but of course until it rains there will be no filling of the tanks so we are very aware of every drop.

This is some of my rhubarb.  Most of it died of dehydration because it was in the full sun all day and the temperatures have been very high.  I also have a good crop of lettuces growing in a gutter.

So, yes we are in a crisis as far as water supply goes. The grass is brown and starting to turn to a dust bowl, the days are hot, the wind is relentless but thanks to hubby’s planning ahead we are able to eat our own affordable vegetables for now.  We pray there will be some good rainfall soon and until then our tanks will hold out.

Water is precious. Save every drop.

Alien Aphid Invasion

In a post on 25 September I had a picture of a ladybird on a bean leaf.  Just below that is a photo of a luxuriant nasturtium plant with red flowers blazing.  That nasturtium was still blooming two days ago.  

This afternoon I went out on my usual daily inspection and to my horror I found that the aliens had landed on the nasturtium plant.  The photo below is what it looks like now. If you look very carefully you will see thousands of the dreaded aliens had killed it off, overnight.  What a sad state it is in.  I pulled the whole thing up and took it out to the garden refuse bin outside.  I then threw some diatomaceous earth over the area.  I later went out and threw some bicarbonate of soda over the area.  The aphids are becoming my daily nightmare.

Yesterday I found tiny white creatures on my tomato plant. It’s a beefsteak tomato and it is setting some very healthy looking fruit. It would be a great disappointment to lose it at this stage.  Some of the lower leaves have already turned brown.  I made up a solution with liquid soap, bicarb and some oil.  I then sprayed it on the plant, on top and underneath the leaves.  I then still had to manually remove all the aphids from the leaves.  I really hope it will survive.  The nasty little beasts have also affected my bean plants but I think they will survive.  We are getting so many beans at the moment.

I have some gooseberries growing in the full sun in the front of the garden.  They are full of fruit and we expect a good harvest from them soon.  I’m not sure about gooseberries for myself.  I haven’t had one since I was five years old.  My Dad and a friend of his took a bunch of children out for a treat at a roadhouse on the Mmgeni River in Durban, called The Doll’s House.  I had a gooseberry tart. Within a very short time I was violently sick all over the car on the way home and I have never had a gooseberry since.  Hopefully if I still have an aversion to them my family will enjoy them.

We are still having lots of wind which is affecting my corn.  Most of the time it’s leaning over at a precarious angle.  We need less wind, more heat now.

 

Worm Farm Maintenance

Today is worm farm maintenance day.  There is very little wind after two weeks of solid blowing.  What a relief.

The top left shows the worm farm boxes.  They are kept cool in the shade of the tree.  The top box has a damp towelling cover over the worms. They like to keep cool. This is where the fresh stuff gets put.The material is then munched down and sinks through small holes in each level.  The third layer is the worm casts which form a rich compost and the bottom layer is where the worm tea or liquid fertilizer collects.  This is the stuff my plants love.

The photo top right shows a bottle with this morning’s worm tea harvest.  I collect about a litre a week.  It is mixed 1:10 with water and that is poured on my vegetables.  They are looking good.

The other photos show the successive layers.  The hardest part is separating worms out of the bottom layers. I have overcome my squeamishness but I do wear gloves. I am amazed how quickly they have multiplied and I am now at a stage where I can share some of my worms with a friend who is just starting out.

A worm farm is such a painless way of recycling organic waste and benefitting the garden at the same time. This is the model my husband copied to make ours.

We are eating our carrots, beans, kale, lettuce and herbs.  The radishes are finished and they were delicious.  I have lots more planted and now we wait for them to be ready to harvest.  Very satisfying and very therapeutic.