We are overjoyed that the summer rains seem to have finally come. Eventhough it’s been summer for quite some time, nothing really grows until the rain starts falling. My vegetable garden is no exception.  Tomatoes are only starting to ripen now and the rocket, true to it’s name, is shooting out everywhere. My personal favourite this season is the ‘Balsak’* tomato. I bought the naughty sounding seeds from livingseeds.com and they got the seeds from a farmer in South Africa. The tomatoes are still very green but bigger than my fits. I wonder who‘s  balsak it was named after?

*Balsak translates to balls or scrotum, if you wish.

‘Standing in a slight breeze, pouring seeds from one bowl to another while the chaff blows away, I feel connected to an ancient line of gardeners, all over the planet.’
                                                                     
                                                                                                                   - Jane Griffiths

Jane Griffiths has a wonderful way of describing gardening. While most of her writing is very practical, she also touches on the deep and meaningful relationship between gardener and garden. In her first book ‘Jane’s Delicious Garden’, she shares a lot of information about seed saving.

I love the idea of seed saving because it involves a process. Processes usually involve trial and error, experimentation and final observations, which to me sounds like a real good time. With Jane’s advice, I planned, waited, harvested, sifted, poured and stored a respectable amount of seeds. While I want to plant all my saved seeds immediately, I should probably save some for later. That is the point of this whole exercise.

Each type of seed was carefully collected and stored in little seed packets (available at most stationers). To celebrate my seed saving success, I embellished my seed envelopes with stamps, golden eyelets and twine. A bit of packaging never hurt anyone. 

Spring is here and I’m ready for another gardening marathon. The vegetable garden has expanded and is almost ready for planting.

This year I have much more seed variety. I saved many of seeds from last year, bought some seeds on livingseeds.co.za and got some interesting seeds from Germany and Istanbul. Hopefully all my seeds germinate, grow and produce wonderful vegetables. 

I’m missing my once abundant tomato harvests… I never posted this photo, maybe because I was spoilt for choice and busy eating Panzanella salads. Or a bit of heirloom tomato carpaccio with basil and buffalo mozzarella drizzled with a reduced balsamic vinaigrette. Either way, wat op is, is op.

More winter loving vegetables…

Black Beauty Aubergines

Flat Leaf Parsley

Fine French Beans

Green Sprouting Broccoli 

The peas are enjoying the cold and producing surprising amounts of food. We’ve planted the peas in three different areas; all with varying degrees of shelter and sun but all the plants seem to be thriving. Two of the bushes are proper pea plants (as seen above) while the other lot is the flatter sugar snap variety. 

Last year, around this time, I was anxious to get my garden going. We’ve built the first hok and I’d just completed the raised beds made from 70’s wood panelling. I sowed a lot of seeds but none would grow in the cold.

This time around we have two hokke, lots of plants struggling through the winter and a bunch of chickens. My favourite bed at the moment is the carrot, beetroot and onion mix bed. As you can see in the image above – the beetroot and carrot is happy while the onions are having a hard time. I should have given them more room.

Spacing is something I’m still trying to get to grips with; I don’t want to waste space and so inevitably end up packing in way to many plants. This leads to unproductive plants and more pests. 

The pumpkin harvest was neither here nor there but each pumpkin harvested was riddled with the most amazing array of stretch marks. I feel sorry for the pumpkins because I know what it feels like. Stretch marks are part of growing up (for some people) and there is very little you can do about it. More than the physical scars, it’s others peoples perceptions of stretch marks that hurt the most. Guys especially think you must have been morbidly obese at some point to get stretch marks. Not true ninja face. You get them from growing, be it in your youth, pregnancy or weight gain. Maybe it has to do with skin types or something but regardless, obesity is not the only cause. So leave me and my pumpkins alone.

The once fat coriander plants have turned all stringy and flowery. I tried to stop the flowering, because I remember reading about it somewhere, with no success. I’m quite sure the flowering has caused the funny thin leaves. Not such a problem as I’m the only person within 50KM that likes coriander. Well, me and the ladybirds. 

I’ve always wanted to be the type of girl to keep a diary. It seems like such a civilized thing to do. Like ironing your bedding and wearing matching socks. None of which I’ve been able to master in my 27 years of living.

So, I find it difficult writing down my deep thoughts on gardening. It’s hard to focus on details when fighting the eternal red spider mite scourge. None the less, I try. Here are some pages from the last few months. All about winter gardening, new chickens and Zebra snakes eating eggs.