At the start of the New Year it is helpful to set goals and work out a plan of action for the year. For me the following are important.
 1.To grow as much of your own food as possible, using our precious water to nurture food producing plants (herbs, veggies and fruit trees) and turning the rest of my garden over to plants that will happily grow with only the rainfall that they receive. I emphasize the word happily, as people often tend to associate water wise gardening with torture or suffering, which is ridiculous. I see it as embracing endemic plants which are well adapted to, and happiest in their local conditions. So for me I have a food garden, about 20m x 5m, growing very close to the house, and beyond it I have simply allowed the garden to go wild with veld grass, bulbs, perennials and annuals that have returned very quickly since the lawn mower was put into exile in the shed.
2.I also am going to compost everything that comes my way. Compost making is one of the most rewarding activities. Everyone develops their own way of doing it and that best that suits their specific conditions. It makes an enormous amount of difference to reducing the amount of rubbish you put out each week if you simply compost down everything that can decompose that comes out of your house.
3.To trap and conserve every drop of water and use it wisely. Water is not a right, it is a gift, and must be treated with respect and effort as you would your jewelry! As urban dwellers that may have the use of a borehole, we also have to take responsibility for the use of this, what is often considered ‘free water’ and use it judicially.
4.To embrace and encourage as much insect, bird and mammal life into my garden. Over Christmas I built a log pile at the one end of my vegetable garden and call it the Cobra Hotel. By providing a habitat and refuge for snakes they will happily live there, and most importantly, stay out of your way. Work with them rather than trying to get rid of them as the greater diversity of life in your vegetable garden the happier and more productive it will be..
So with DIVERSITY, WATER USE, COMPOSTING and HOME GROWN GRUB topping the agenda lets look at what is going on in the vegetable garden in late January and February.
1.This mid summer period is a time when there is a lot to HARVEST and so there are TOMATOES, BRINJALS and PEPPERS (the ratatouille brat pack!) taking up most of my time at the moment. Then there are crops such as SQUASH, ZUCHINI, and PATTY PANS and MARROWS which have grown like the clappers and will often be producing more than what you can cope with but also often take up a lot of space and so you can also be ruthless about culling off some of them and adding their wonderful leaves to the compost pile. If you do remove some of these plants you could sow a quick late summer crop of BUSH BEANS or try a salad crop of ROCKET, CORIANDER, LETTUCE or SWEET BASIL.
2.On the HERB front I have a wonderful thick row of COMFREY and one of my next jobs is to cut these leaves down to ground level and pile them into an old metal urn that I have. I will add a little water and then wait about three weeks for this to ferment and then dilute this liquid (about a cup of liquid into a 10litre watering can or bucket of water) and LIQUID FEED my veggie garden with it. Currently I do not have any manure producing animals on the property but will keep my eye out for some cow, chicken or horse manure and do the same thing, as this last half of summer is a good time to use quick acting liquid feeds for those greedy feeders such as your PUMPKINS and BUTTERNUT which mature towards the end of summer.
3.It is also a good time to take CUTTINGS of certain woody herbs such as ROSEMARY,LAVENDER,BAY, ELDERBERRY, PERENNIAL BASILS (I found a lovely Camphor scented one last year) LEMON VERBENA and the one that I am most excited about CAPERS (Capparis spinosa). I am embarrassed to say that I always thought that capers were pickled nasturtium seeds. So it was a complete revelation to discover a rather beautiful shrub covered in white shuttlecock type flowers and learn that it is the flower bud that is picked and turned into the capers we buy in the shops or delis. It hails from the Mediterranean and loves a well drained soil with lots of sun and will tolerate light frosts.
4.Now most importantly is to look ahead to sowing your first crops of WINTER VEGTABLES. My staple winter vegetables are CABBABGE, BROCCOLI, ASIAN GREENS, CAULIFLOWER and this year I will also be doing RADICCIO and CHICORY. However this may be a bit overwhelming for folk who do not have the time to spend looking after these seedlings and you can wait for the seedlings of these to appear in the nurseries in autumn and plant them out from the 6 pack seedling trays, although this is obviously more expensive way of doing it.
5.A handy way to get a ready mix of green salad leaves is to do what is called COME AND CUT AGAIN beds. This involves buying packets of seeds such as LETTUCE (all the different colours), CORIANDER, ROCKET, ASIANS GREENS (go easy on the mustards which are hot) as the basics and then get creative with CARROTS, BEETROOT, CELERY, FENNELL and WATERCRESS. The idea is to mix all the seeds together and then sow them in a line. They will all start to grow and when this ‘ready mix’ of salad leaves is about 10cm high, you clip them down to ground level and slap them straight onto a plate, ready to eat. They will grow back and you will probably be able to repeat this about four or five times before they start to rebel.
So to sum up the next month, it is about harvesting your slower grower summer veggies and pruning back the more rampant ones. The cutting back will give plenty of green fuel to your compost heap which should be happily bubbling away from all the heat and good rains that Gauteng has had. In the gaps I will put in a quick growing salad crop which you can harvest before the first frost appears. Mid summer is the best time to take cuttings and also a good time to liquid feed your veggie garden.
One of the best aspects of this once a month veggie talk is getting response back from people who grow their own food and I would love to see more pictures of 702landers veggie gardens and inventive ways that they have developed to grow veggies. We all can learn from each other and often pictures are a better way of getting ideas across to people, so please send get those cameras clicking and then email to jcw@702.co.za. |
