1 day until Spring!

We managed to get most of the work done this weekend with the exception of planting the squashes and preparing the buckets for tomatoes. While I was busy with my to-do list the children and Superman did some other tasks.

Superman's side kick, Robyn, repaired the chicken coop...



And together they built a little retaining wall for some more herbs outside my kitchen.



The two supergirls planted up 12 window boxes of flowers, radishes and herbs which go along the fence of the first veggie garden.



The Incredible Hulk prepared his area for sunflowers. Last year he grew 5 and they did so well that this year he has a whole section to grow sunflowers in. We will save some seed and feed the rest to the chickens. This was a big job for a little kid.



The winter veggie garden has been weeded and is now ready with A-frames for squashes and the last hanging baskets were hung for a few more strawberry plants.



We also took all the ready compost that has been brewing for the last few months and it was delicious stuff full of earthworms. We dug this into empty beds ready to accept our corn seeds.

All in all a good productive weekend, I think we will all sleep well tonight!

Job completion check in

Shjoe, I am tired....but there is not lots to show for it. However I did manage to get half of the seeds we want planted. Alot of them have to be sown direct.

I used old milk bottles cut up and a permanent marker to label them and we used old seedling trays from nurseries to plant in.






This is what I planted - all of them are open pollinated heirloom seeds which I got from The Gravel Garden and from www.livingseeds.co.za

Purple Calabash Tomato - 18
Purple Beauty Pepper - 17
Rosa Bianca Eggplant - 18
Ping Tung Egplant (18" long ones!) - 18
Golden Monarch Tomato - 18
Yellow Pear Tomato - 20
Ashley Cucumber - 24
Carbon Tomato - 20
Black Cherry Tomato - 20
Asparagus - 18
Bright Light Spinach (hybrid) - 24
White and pink beet - 36
Kale - 18
Loofahs - 9



So the hotbox is half full. We will monitor the germination to see if it actually does help.

Weekend plans

I have this long list of things to do in the garden swimming around in my head and I need to write it down somewhere...so this is the place...




1. Plant up the bed underneath bathroom window - Done



2. Prepare buckets for tomato plants - buckets bought. (this is for our upside down tomatoes we are trying this year.)



3. Mount bird nesting log



4. Weed winter veggie patch



5. Plant up seedlings for hotbox - this is the big job so the seedling mix is prepared and the seeds are ready...but we have space for 74 trays inside here...oh boy!

With Spring Day on Tuesday I am feeling like we need to get moving with seedlings.



6. My seed potatoes arrived last week too and we need to prepare them (chitting)

We have also decided to get another two chickens so I must go and fetch them sometime this weekend, then the pecking order needs to be established in the coop, which I am not looking forward to!

So the question is why am I sitting writing this blogpost instead of getting on with the job...I am out of here!

Can-O-Worms

My mom bought us a Can-O-Worms about 18 months ago. It has done well over this time. We can empty 2 litres of worm juice every 2 - 3 weeks.

There is not much work involved with it and they do take care of some organic waste as well as producing lovely compost for us.

During winter we moved it out near the coop but there was too much sun there so we have now moved it back to a shady area outside my kitchen. This also makes sense to have it here as it's closer for daily peelings.

The great unveiling

Before you see the picture of what follows I want to share a little story. When I first tried to grow vegetables about 13.5 years ago Superman was not interested. This was in the first house we lived in after we had been married for 5 years. It was hard going then as I had a six month old babe who needed my time and a huge oak tree which cast shade. We call this the year of feeding snails!

Thereafter we moved to a smaller home but the back garden had a huge established granadila creeper, a massive guava tree and a lovely lemon tree. The soil here was oily sand and this was a time when our family leapt from 1 babe to 3! We will call this the desert years.

Then we headed to JHB for 2 years and bought a large property but it had an established garden that we didn't want to pull up as we were uncertain as to how long we would remain there. However outside the bedroom windows was a large concrete area where we built 4 large raised beds. We grew easy veggies here - herbs aswell. Just as we started to get a yield (small, but still something) we moved back to CT. We will call these years the seeding years. Superman was great and suported me in the endeavour, but didn't get his hands dirty.

And the rest is history. After 5 years of living in this home we pulled up the flower beds and grass and started growing veggies in all sincerity. With this Superman has been my champion, my hero and my inventor.

He has been looking at my hot box which I use to force germination for sometime...it is just a cardboard box with a light and lined with aliminium foil...but it works:



The negatives are that it can only take 6 seedling trays and the bottom is all soggy from watering.

Superman has been pondering this dilema and look what he has made for me over the last couple of days....



So this is like trading in the rusted old Fiat for a Mercedes...This seedling starter will hold up to 70 trays. They will drip from the top to the bottom and then out as the bottom is slatted. There is a permanent light source!

Isn't he wonderful?

What are they up too?

This is the scene in my kitchen tonight...7.36 according to my computer clock.....



I am not privvy to what Superman and Robyn are doing...but I am told it is for me and my garden.....oh boy!

Small practicalities

There are so many things that can stop me getting into my garden like not being able to find the weeding tool, or a tangled hosepipe...YKWIM? And one of the things about having worked in the garden is dirty hands.

I don't like to wear gloves - I may regret this later in life - but I prefer to feel the soil with my hands! But then I have these really grubby hands when done and it's always been an issue for me having to wash them inside...I don't want to block our drain with the soil on my hands.

Jane (from Jane's Delicious Garden) comes up with a novel idea....

Soap on a rope! Remember those father's day gifts we alll bought long suffering dad...along with ties and socks? Well here is soap-on-a-rope-with-a-difference....



Simply put a bar of soap iinto an old veggie bag and tie to your outside tap...voila!