Spring Vegetable Planting List

Now is the season to be planting a huge amount of veggie seeds and seedlings.

Here is a handy planting guide for a family of five:

Veggie	How much?	Distance between plants	How often?	Companion Planting	Bad Companions
Beans	1 x 1,5m row	10cm	2-3 weeks	Marigolds, Petunias, Mealies, Sweetcorn, Carrots, Strawberries, Borage, Rosemary, Potatoes, Peas	Tomatoes, Onions, Broccoli
Peas	1 x 3m row	3 – 5cm	3-4 weeks	Borage
Beetroot	2 x 1.5m rows	20cm	3-4 weeks	Borage, Onions, Lettuce, Cabbage
Peppers	4 – 6 plants	40cm	4-6 weeks	Basil, Borage
Carrots	2 x 1.5m rows	5-7 cm	3-4 weeks	Borage, Rosemary, Lettuce, Peas, Leeks, Chives, Onions, Beans, Tomatoes, Wormwood, Sage
Tomatoes	2-4 plants	70cm	4 weeks	Mint, Parsley, Basil, Roses, Peppers, Asparagus, Borage	Potatoes, Cabbage, Rosemary, Peas
Lettuce	4-6 plants	30cm	2-3 weeks	Beans, Carrots, Borage	Celery, Parsley, Cabbage
Radishes	1 x 1.5m row	5cm	2 weeks	Borage
Salad Onion	2 x 1.5m rows	5cm	3-4 weeks	Borage
Parsley	4-6 plants	20cm	6 weeks	Borage
Chillies	4-6 plants	50cm	4-6 weeks	Borage
Courgettes	2-3 plants	1m	6-8 weeks	Borage
Cucumbers	3-5 plants	60cm		Borage
Eggplant	4-6 plants	70cm		Borage
Marrows	1-2 plants	1m		Borage
Mealies	3-4 x 1.5 m rows	15cm		Borage
Melons	1-2 plants	1m		Borage
Potatoes	4-6 plants	30cm		Horsradish, Borage	Sunflowers, Tomatoes
Pumpkin	1-2 plants	1m		Borage
Squash	1-2 plants	1m		Borage
Sweetcorn	3-4 x 1.5m rows	15cm		Borage
Sweet Potatoes	4-6 plants	30cm		Borage
Cauliflower	4-6 plants	75cm	4 weeks	Nasturtiums, Rosemary, Sage, Celery, Borage
Onions	4 x 1,5m rows	30cm	4 weeks	Borage
Artichokes	3-4 plants	75cm		Borage

Convertible greenhouse

With the Bashewa winds, that constant, breezy brother that cools us in summer and blows right through us in winter, it is almost impossible to get your seedlings not to dry out.

But do not despair!

I found this wonderful solution: a convertible greenhouse.

For all those handy people out there, it looks quite straightforward to make.

And how practical. When not in use, simply stack away against a wall.

The other thing I like about it, with my six-foot-three frame, is that when you work in it, you can actually work unhindered without having to bend and stoop and do some sort of gymnastics!

Gotta make me one.

 

Growing rose trimmings in potatoes?

I found this article by chance, and I just had to share it.

Apparently you can successfully grow rose cuttings (and other cuttings) in this way:

1. Cut an 20cm tip piece of healthy rose bush at a 45-degree angle. Be sure to use clean pruning clippers. Use plant pieces immediately or place them in a plastic bag on ice if you are not going to use them immediately.
2. Snip off dead flower heads and hips down to the first set of healthy leaves.
3. Fill a medium-size flower pot with high-quality potting medium. Moisten the soil slightly.
4. Create a 8cm hole in a peeled Irish potato using a clean screwdriver that is the same diameter as your rose clipping.
5. Brush some rooting compound on the cutting and shake off the excess. Place the cutting into the potato hole.
6. Make a hole in the potting medium for the potato with a clean spoon.
7. Place the potato into the hole, allowing only the cutting to be exposed.
8. Cover the cutting with an empty and clean soda bottle to create a mini-greenhouse. Twist the bottle slightly to be sure that it is solid in the soil.
9. Place the pot in a warm and light location away from direct sunlight. Remove the bottle from the cutting for a few minutes daily to allow the cutting to breathe. Do not disturb the cutting until you see new growth forming. Keep the soil moist.
10. Pull lightly on the cutting and if you feel resistance, roots have developed.
11. Relocate the pot, without the bottle, to a sunny location with more direct light and allow the cutting to grow until you will harden it off. Keep the soil moist.
12. Harden off the cutting, by gradually exposing it to outdoor temperatures, starting with a few hours each day in a sheltered location with plenty of light but no direct sun. Keep the soil moist.
13. Transplant into the garden after one week of hardening.

Pruning them prunes

You have most probably never heard of Masanobu Fukuoka. Other than the rather unfortunate western pronunciation of his surname, he will most probably slip out of your short term memory quite quickly.

Well, let me introduce him to you. Born in 1913 in Japan, he is celebrated as a philosopher and creator of many natural farming techniques. He was a simple farmer, but his love of the land and of the way nature works, made him a proponent of no-till farming, no-herbicide cultivation and natural farming. One of his philosophies is called “do-nothing farming”, but is not the sitting-on-the-stoep-drinking-beer kind.

He believed that there is a difference between nature and non-intervention. When he left his citrus trees unpruned, they did exceptionally well in the beginning, as the balance between growth of roots and verge was re-established. However, soon enough, entanglement and insect attacks crippled and eventually killed his trees.

He found that if fruit trees are grown from a seedling and not pruned at all, they grow into a natural shape and maintains this shape, which leads to higher yields as well as healthier trees.

Enter reality.

My fruit trees have not grown into natural shapes and have a tendency to over-extend themselves and to break branches when they bear fruit. For this reason I have to prune.

Pruning boosts the budding process as well as the bearing of good quality fruit. If done well, entanglement is minimised and you can get to the fruit with ease. Furthermore, since I am genetically endowed with a ladder built it (according to my mother I was made on a long weekend), it is not only more comfortable to move under pruned trees, but it also keeps the smaller folk from stripping the trees before I got enough to cook my jam with. (Selfish, but nice).

And then, as I love my mulches and compost, I take these cuttings and put them through the mulcher. Interestingly, one of the best sources of organic food for trees is wood. So sad that the winter batch of poodle puppies chewed off the electrical wire of my mulcher. Ai, the work never stops…

Nature’s sweets

In science and engineering there is a field called bio-mimicry.

This is where some of the models and designs of nature are studied and copied for industrial applications.

Sweating away in the veggie patch, I munched my way through a nice quantity of cape gooseberries, and realised that these are also bio-engineering models in its finest.

Imagine this, a perfect little fruit, all wrapped up in its perfect little wrapper – and absolutely bio-degradable too!

And what an excellent wrapper! It does not touch the fruit, and as it is puffed up, the fruit does not touch the soil. It stays “afloat”, away from the ground and even thwarts insects wanting to get to the succulent little treat.

And how happy we are – the sweet and tart little treat is delicious to just pop into the mouth as you are labouring on the spring veggies.

Saldy, none get to the kitchen to be preserved. But then, life is for the living. Why store everything when you can munch and enjoy them now?

Since winter has never really arrived in Bashewa, it is nice to walk around the garden and enjoy some of the skeleton of the cottage garden that refused to die. (Similar to Pretoria, some of my annuals have become perennials). It is even nicer to have some of the winter fruits to munch on! I am so looking forward to extending the gooseberry patch this spring with all the seedlings that are bound to spring up around the bushes.

Your Summer Fruit starts now!

Now this may be the strangest time to talk about your summer fruit. If you were industrious through the summer, the only summer fruit that you have left is in the jam pantry and the chutney jar.

So why talk about summer fruit in late Autumn?

There are numeeerous reasons, most of them obvious, and one that may be new. It was new to me, I tried it, and as the song goes “I’m a Believer!”

The typical reasons:

1. Mulch you fruit trees to retain the moisture right through winter. Your trees will say “I love you soooo much”.

2. Remember to still water your trees in winter.

3. Pruning season is coming – prepare for it (I will have more on this end of May).

4. You should plant new trees now, and perhaps take out some of the dead or dying.

The interesting bit:

Last year I read a snippet somewhere (sorry, author, can’t remember) about controlling fruit flies. And I tried this strange method. And it worked REALLY well. Out of all my fruit I munched and jammed I had about five fruit (yep, FIVE) out of more than 100 kg of fruit, that had larvae in them.

Now, just how is that possible, you may ask? And this is just the place to find out. As you may have gathered, I hate poisons. So, it will have to be organic? Also, I love recycling, so it has to involve that as well? Yes.

And here is the whole story:

Take an empty 2l cool drink bottle. Keep the cap on, and make a hole on the side, about 10cm from the top of the bottle. The hole is bout the size of a new R5 coin. Careful when you cut it, easy to cut yourself doing this. I use a hole drill, as its a zip-zap process then. (Just because I like recycling does not mean I like drudgery).

Now put in about half a cup of sugar. Fill it with water to about 1l. Tie a string to the top and hang it from your fruit tree, one bottle per tree. (No, this will not stop you dogs from pooing under the trees).

And that’s it!

But how does it work, you may ask?

Apparently, according to Author Unknown, in winter, the randy little male fruit flies come along and put some pheromone trails on the fruit trees. This attracts the females in spring, where they then get a chance to fertilise them and there are your larvae in the fruit.

So, if you get the men in the winter time, or before spring, you stop the cycle? Yep.

Ok, I was a skeptic. But why not? I asked myself.

What I found was that right through winter there were drowned fruit flies in the bottles. (You have to fill them up when they are empty, just with water, the sugar stays. Mine freezes solid, but I chose sunny spots, so they thaw quickly.)

Also, I found a few coddling moths (nasties, those). But, no bees! So, if the bees use my traps, they are too smart to get caught.

So, are you a skeptic? Try it, I challenge you. I am so confident now that I can pick fruit at night and much them without even worrying if I’m getting in some additional “protein”.