Visions
of abundant harvests and a lush garden filled me with all kinds of
ideas. Getting those ideas implemented was another story entirely. Hours
of back-breaking, sweaty work. Taking out old trees and shrubs, cutting
back others, composting, removing pesky flower bulbs, working existing
beds over... no one ever said gardening was easy work, I guess! And so
the real work began...
Task 1: Compost, weed and dig over Vegetable Patch
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| Backyard Vegetable Patch/Agterplaas Groentetuin |
The
vegetable patch wasn't as much work as anticipated, as Ouma used it the
year before for her tomato and bean crops. It only needed slight
weeding, a deep digging and composting. A few Marigolds, or Afrikaners,
provided colour and would hopefully deter some pests when the vegetables
are established. The only other plants in the veg patch were Curly-leaf
Parsley, Italian Parsley and peppers/capsicums that we over-wintered.
Next in the range of exotic edibles to be introduced in my garden were Pepino or Melon Pear (Solanum muricatum) and Tree Tomato (Solanum betaceum).
The Pepino has nothing to do with a pear, but tastes like a strange
cross between melon and cucumber and resembles a tiny, fleshy melon with
greenish to yellow skin and purple stripes. I got three plants as a
gift from a kind lady working for the competition hehe. The plants
didn't have any soil on the roots, so I was very worried about it's
chances, but more on that later.
The Tree Tomato
or Tamarillo, isn't a type of tomato but rather an egg-shaped yellow to
orange fruit, borne on a large shrub with big, pungent-smelling
leaves. It tastes like pure passion fruit to me. The taste of summer. I
can't wait for this baby to start bearing fruit! Both the Tree Tomato
and Pepino are natives to Peru, so well suited to my exotic edibles
garden.
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| Out with the old... |
It's
always sad to see a plant go, especially one that is doing well, but if
you're as pressed for space as I am it is a necessary evil. I don't
even know what kind of plant it was, but we always just called it a
"Vlas" or "Flax". Anyone perhaps know the correct botanical or common
name? Luckily the old "Flax" kept the soil friable and moist, so it
wasn't such hard or time-consuming work before my Cherry Guava could go
in:
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| ... in with the new; my very own Cherry Guava/Die Aarbeikoejawel in sy gatjie |
Seeing that winter was upon us, I was already behind on getting some winter crops into the ground. Luckily I read on the Adelaide Gardeners
blog that if you delay your broad bean sowing until mid-winter they
will only start flowering in spring, and therefore set more beans. This
is because the warmer weather would encourage flowers all over the
plant, and not just on its tip. I was banking on that to be true, since I
would have to sow my broad beans well into winter (sometime in July). I
decided on a narrow bed previously filled with Inca Lilies and ferns
for my broad beans:
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| Broad bean bed/Boerboon bedding |
Boy,
oh boy, did that little bed give me problems! Not only did I have to
dig out some sizable roots of the Acer Negundo tree in the one corner of
it, I also had to battle with countless Inca Lily roots and bulbs. The
bloody pests! It seems like the smallest things always give you the most
hassles. Die klein jakkalsies nè! The soil was quite friable, but
needed extensive digging to remove as many of the lily roots as
possible. I also composted heavily, as I wasn't sure to which extent the
Acer tree would've depleted the soil. Practice makes perfect I guess.
Task 4: Removing a Yucca and revitalising an old bed
The
whole Yucca-debacle started when our next-door neighbours complained
about the thorny Yucca near the boundary, before they took matters into
own hands. They cut off all the branches facing their way, thereby
creating a sad, lop-sided tree. My mother did the rest, and cut the
remaining branches off, but now we were faced with the massive task of
removing said stump:
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| Mother helps digging the Yucca out/Ma help om die Yucca recurvifolia uit te grawe |
I
am not kidding when I say the thing must have weighed half a ton! My
brother and I could barely move the stump together, after hours of
digging and wriggling it loose from it's hole. In the end the stump had
to be removed with a car and steel cable. It just had to go! I had huge
plans for this small bed. Something involving a Num-Num perhaps? After two devilishly difficult days this was the end result:
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| Future Num-Num bed? Toekomstige Noem-Noem bedding? |
Task 5: Creating a Tomatillo and Squash bed
The
last sunny position of any note available in my garden was the section
between a big Ice Cream bush and our braai area (divided by a rough
wooden fence). Here I had to do really deep digging, as the bed also
contained a flowering plant propagated by tubers. Tubers I'm fighting to
this day! The big Pelargonium bush was moved out front in the bed where
the Yucca used to be, and the bed was also heavily composted. I was
thinking of doing some companion planting; maybe 3 or 4 tomatillos up
against the wall, a few borage plants in front of them to help along
pollination, and 2 or 3 butternut squashed crawling over the front
section? Is this bed even big enough? We shall see...
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| Tomatillo and butternut bed/Tomatillo en botterskorsie bedding |
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