Before and After

Today we find ourselves 99% of the way done with the last area of our garden. Here are some before and after shots.

From our front gate before we started....

During....

Today from the gate...

Looking towards to the gate...before...

Today looking towards the gate....

There are a few odds and sods to sort out and the last 2 trees to plant but for now we are resting.

Growing ginger

I love ginger for many reasons. This season I have decided to grow my own...I mean - if not why not? I also plan to grow garlic later in the autum, but ginger can be planted now.

Ginger is great for my curries and Thai cooking that I love, but is also good for any sort of digestive complaint from nausea to indigestion. Add to that list that it is good for fungal infections and intestinal parasites! Ginger is a super healing food when it comes to colds and flu too.

I bought a nice root of it from the grocery store and then snapped it off at the necks. Keeping it out on the counter for a couple of days dries the open ends and also stimulates the growth of buds. You can see the pinky green one in this photo.

Later today I will dig in lots of compost in the chosen spot and plant the root (tuber). As ginger is a tropical plant it needs lots of moisture and filtered light. I have just the spot.

Then it should take about 8 - 10 months before harvesting. I will gauge this by the foliage which should die back towards harvest time. I can't wait :-)

Here we go again!

Today we made a start on the last area of our garden that we are going to convert to veggies and fruit trees.

On Thursday we will be getting some labourers in to dig the trench beds (I will explain what we are doing in another post this week) so we have to get the trees out before they get here.

Today the Plumbago and Hibiscus were marked for removal. Superman bought a new toy for the job!


We placed all the smaller branches through the shredder for mulch.

The mulch is part of my "save water this summer" campaign. As we chop the rest of the trees out (3 more to go) we will store wood for winter, use leaves for the trenches and the branches for mulch so that the whole garden will have a good layer on top of the soil.

It all started with a salad!

Way back in June 2008 we started this food growing adventure.

The first thing I produced, given that it was winter, was a salad. See below. I remember feeling so proud that I had grown this myself and that I was able to serve my family this side dish.

The first salad (note the date!)

We eat salad every night and for me it was a huge thing!

Watercress, nasturtium, lettuce, spinach and fresh peas

Ever since then our salads come from our garden.

Spinach, haloumi cheese, baby tomatoes and chickpeas

Our herb tower is now producing the most yummy mustard greens, rocket and water cress. Our chard forms a huge part of our meals, but I like to serve the small leaves in salads as it is packed full of nourishment.

Assorted leaves, snap peas, radishes

So, yes, it did indeed "all start with a salad."

Busy garden day

This morning we were going to go to see the Namaqualand Daisies up the West Coast. However the drive is only worth it if the sun is out. Daisies are sun lovers and stay closed unless the sun shines. As the day dawned it went pretty quickly from clear to overcast.

Depsite feeling a cold coming on I rounded up the troops and we hit the garden at 9. Superman & Son hit the compost heap with a vengeance. They sifted out all the stones and twigs and handed over the most gorgeous compost teaming with worms.

A lot of it went into a awkward little space that was created when we changed our pathway a couple of months ago. I was busy clearing out an area that we had left to the nasturtiums and borage and found a whole lot of gooseberry plants. I uprooted them and after giving them a good trim, they were planted into this newly composted area.

More compost went under the A-frames and into the other two beds that have been lying fallow. Buddy boy, my youngest, acts as a go-fer on these days. He doesn't have the physical strength to do much heavy work so he fetches and carries. Today I asked him to mark out what we were planting.



In the bed that we cleared out (nasturtiums and borage) we planted courgettes in the centre. Against the A-frame at the fence I planted watermelon. Alongside the pathway fence I planted butternut. The A-frame against the wall has gem squash. I hope I have them all in earlier enough to avoid the milddew that hits in late summer.

Potatoes went in about 1 month ago in the first two beds. Behind them the A-frames have Hubbard Squash planted at their bases. The next two A-frames will have cucumbers. The next three stay empty until the broad beans, carrots and spinach are done. Then I will do a planting of beans, I think.

We also trimmed and transplanted the chili bushes to where the rhubarb was. This opens the bed at the front of the house up where I will plant tomatoes as soon as we have chicken proofed that area.

I am feeling more hopeful that we have enough time as two more days of work and we should get everything done that can be done before I leave on the 16th.

Herein lies the rub...permaculture possibility?

Superman and I have been talking about our last piece of garden. This is an area of lawn with a border of trees. It is the part of the garden where Big White Dog romps widly as he chases cars that come around our corner (even if he can't see them, silly thing!)

We have tried very hard to get lawn to grow here, even buying two sets of roll on lawn over 2 years. Last year we sowed a special type of lawn seed which was doing OK until BWD flattened it and compacted the soil.

This is looking at the area towards the gate.



It is in full sun in Winter until about 3pm when the house shadows it. In summer it is half in shade from the towering Stinkwood in the front yard.

This is the area from the gate to where the previous photo was taken.



Superman wants to pull up the lawn and plant corn and potatoes. I had another plan in mind. I thought of building a raised bed around the wall where I could plant my fruit trees. I would then plant the asparagus in between the trees.

But my brain has been working over this area for quite sometime and I am wondering whether a circular "permaculture" garden wouldn't be better. I am thinking that the fence which you can see on the left of BWD could be completely closed off with a gate and we could make a chook dome and circular beds for our veggies.

This way I can have the raised bed along the wall and we can have more harmonious round pathways wandering through the garden.

The only other problem I have is my clinging to this silly colonial "must-have-lawn" thing in my head. My children are bigger now and don't really play in the garden and the dogs (and children) have ample place to run on the paths and with walks out.

So, here I am thinking aloud....if any of the readers on my little blog have experience with permaculture gardens, then please leave me your comments.

So far I have found these two resources to read through:

Small Farm Permaculture

Permaculture Principals

The Winter Garden

I know we are very fortunate to be able to grow veggies all year round. Last winter I wasn't too equipped with winter veggie growing and had lots of bare patches. This season only one bed has stood empty.

We finished school up early today and headed into the garden. We are having unseasonal weather with long hot dry spells and none of the wild wet days normally experienced at this time of year.

We dug up some sweet potatoes. Tomorrow I am going to make baked sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping!

Here are some views of the garden...





My broad beans are delighting me...first time I am growing them and they stand as tall as me. We staked them today by using 6 stakes and tying some chord around them. At the base of the stems, the first ones are almost ready.

We also have carrots a plenty, cabbage, spinach and turnips all ready to eat. A much more successful winter this season.

Our garden today

Last December I took my readers on a virtual tour of each section - granted, at that stage there were only two areas in production. This year we have 4. So here goes:

Area 1 is the oldest and most established in terms of being more organised as we used raised beds and gravel pathways here. We have 4 beds with potatoes, 4 with corn, 1 with beans and lots of wall baskets with strawberries. We also have 4 granadilla vines, but only 2 are doing well. Down the side are more baskets with strawberries hanging from the pergola and all my herbs. The grapevine trails along the fence. Right in the back corner are sunflowers which Incredible Hulk has planted. They stand taller than our corn.



Area 2 was started about 6 months after area one. This year we mounded up sections and place boards in between the beds. Here I have beans, gems, pumpkin, cucumber, tomatoes, corn, loofahs and baby marrows growing.







Area 3 was started this year in a desperate attempt to reclaim our garden from Big White Dog who was running a rut to the front gate. He now has his run on a gravel pathway. Here I have borage, rhubarb, chillies, tomatoes and sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes have been dug up so many times by the chickens that I hope they will recover.



Round at our driveway we have our compost area which now houses two good looking pumpkin plants but I think I may have planted them a little late...ah well, one has to try. We also have 4 stacks of potatoes in tyres (one not pictured) which need to be filled up with more soil.



That's pretty much it...next year we want to sort out the last area which will mean taking out non-indigenous trees and building up beds for fruit trees and of course a permanent spot for my 18 asparagus plants.

In the words of ABBA....

Here I go again...my my!

In April 2008 we started on our first area. This remains the main all year round production garden with planned raised beds and gravel pathways. This is also where we house our 6 chickens.

That same December we cleared another area down the side of our house which is a summer patch as in winter it gets very little sun.

This past week we started working on the 3rd area. Below is a picture of what our front garden looked like when we started the first area...but as the White Stinkwood grew to more lofty heights, this towering giant of a tree and the shade it casts gradually killed the lawn. Add to that "big white dog" and children with their bikes it started to turn into more of a desert.



Superman and I have been pondering this problem for a while. How to make sure that our front garden looks neat but where we can have some flowers as well as use it for more food production.

The result is more raised beds for flowers with veggies planted in between.

We will plant our permanent vegetables like rhubarb and asparagus here too.

So Superman, Robin and the Incredible Hulk got stuck in on Monday with digging up the root mat, loosening the soil, sieving all the earth, making wooden borders and creating gravel pathways. We did get a labourer friend in to help us too.

Now we need to add lots of manure, compost and topsoil to make it a viable option.



Thereafter we have one last job to tackle...removing of the non-indigenous trees along the wall of our property and replacing them with fruit trees.