12 day Permaculture Design Course nr East London 28 April

News: there is a 12 day Permaculture Design Course being offered near East London by Permaculture South Africa (see this link for more info) starting 28 April. 

March moves on and winter is coming

We managed to rescue a lot of hardy plants from our big veg garden - plenty of oregano, rosemary, sage...

Carrots are coming!  So are the spring onions and the oregano we planted seems to be a roaming ground cover oregano rather than the more common tall bushy variety

Basil is loving this new spot.  Yum pesto...

Anyway, that's all we have to report for now with regards to our own little garden.  There's still the space at the back of the house:

(stay tuned) 

AND **** the landlord's garden **** woohoooo!!!! which he has graciously allowed us to look at for a new design YAY:

 Until the next post here is some lovely meme stuff and posters - artivism to keep you sharp:

"just the way the world works, my girl..." Yeah but it doesn't have to be anymore.  Never really should have been in the first place.  But hey, now we've got the technology and the information to give a shit again

Now what?

We have moved.  Larger cottage.  Tinier garden space.  The Ultimate Permaculture Challenge: 

The Tiny Suburban Garden

looking left...

very Zen, yes.  But how do we make it productive and not just decorative?

Start with a few carrots, spring onions, tomato plants, oregano, basil, pineapple sage and plain sage, a spekboom and a rosemary...

An awkward project: a tiered...thing that was built to have a water feature but abandoned.  There are a large number of succulents and a lot of bulbonella in the very shallow soil.  Yes, very shallow, and no drainage.  Great

Someone once had a garden here...possible compost spot?  Way too much shade in here for growing what with the giant Natal wild bananas hogging all the sunshine...

Compost Vol. 6

Turning our 2nd compost heap, once again: an arrangement of sticks and branches at the bottom for aeration and drainage, then alternating layers of dry grass/straw, food scraps from the kitchen, cow dung, brown, dried leaves from garden as well as green leaves and other green material from the garden e.g. "weeds" as well as prunings from plants and flowers grown right there in the garden for their composting properties e.g. borage, chickweed and comfrey...

...remembering the hose-, conduit- or other found pipe placed to stick out of the heap to release hot air...

...and building the heap up in a definite shape at least one metre high by one meter wide to ensure that the organisms and organic processes that will break down this material have adequate space and bulk to do their thing...   Cover it all up with a large piece of plastic, allowing the 'chimney' to stick out

New beds and terraces

Spraying our tomatoes with a chili/water mixture to deter monkeys.  Well, it's an experiment...

Construction on new terraced beds

Old planks sunk into a hollow (the soil removed to form the hollow is turned into the bed itself) make a solid pathway leading between two beds...

...and these planks are then covered with saw dust.  This bottom bed is being made to incorporate the two wild tomatoes that seeded themselves

...and into this tomato bed we planted basil seedlings in a ring at the base of the tomatoes, as well as peppadews, pineapple sage, and oregano plants, and then planted coriander, lettuce, rocket and spinach in between

Head gardener Steph walking through her pride and glory

Beans are loving the summer!!

Making a stairway down through the garden by levelling off squares, filling in with saw dust and old tiles

To date we have still not spent a cent on our garden, except on seed.  Everything we've done with our own hands and hard work, borrowed tools, and raw materials found in our area and donated by friends and neighbours.  Even the new terraced beds were put together using pruned branches from the main garden's coral tree.  Sales from surplus herbs over the Xmas season were enough to buy seed for the next 2 - 3 years.  We have already begun to rehabilitate the soil, and we have not used a single drop of artificial (chemical) fertilizer or pesticide.  The garden is populated by loads of different bugs and birds, including a kingfisher who has made a nest in a hole in the boundary wall to the one side of our compost heap

Produce!!

Busy Season

Surplus herbs freshly picked and getting ready to go to the local restaurants:
Lemongrass, oregano, marjoram, garlic chives, swiss chard, parsley, rocket, rosemary, coriander, mint and basil!!

Many of the visitors to our garden do not know what plants they are looking at, so labels help

Lunch, fresh from the garden!

 growtest.org