Water Shortage Forces Local Food Garden Project For The Elderly To Give Me Their Seedlings. It Sucks!

Seedlings in my storage, ready for transplanting

Last week the leader of Tshufi Hill Project For The Aged, a food gardening project run by retired women at a nearby village, called to offer me seedlings from their garden as they are unable to care for them until maturity due to water shortages in the area.

Unfortunately they don't have large water tanks to harvest rain water and/to store.

On Friday I went with one of my nephews to pick them up. I was happy that they offered me the seedlings, but also very sad that their food source is being decimated.

In the absence of a full garden crop, they will have to buy most of their produce. Unfortunately, with the rising food costs, they'll have to scale down on what they can buy.

Here are some of the photos I took from their garden:

Their garden is as large as mine, which is about the size of small suburban plot. The garden soil is cared for and they do feed it, but it's very sandy and dry. It needs a lot of more compost and mulching to help it retain water.

This space is around a third of their garden.

   Their seedlings are beautiful and long overdue for transplanting.

Digging out cabbage seedlings with one of the project members

This is the kind of water tank that they need.

My tank also serves as a water source for some community members.

One of my friends has offered to start knocking doors asking for someone to donate a 10 000 water tank or the money to buy one. So ja, I'm asking: if you can help them in any way to buy the Jojo tank, the irrigation tools would really help keep them fed and make a difference in their lives.

Also note that registered no-profit organisation, Tshufi Hill are vetted by the Department of Social Development and the Royal Bafokeng NGO Forum, a local umbrella body with almost 90 member organisations. So there are governance structures in place.

X Is For Xeriscaping

Xeriscaping is a water-wise/water-efficient gardening technique. As we are in a semi-arid area and recently went through a severe drought, this technique has become a very important factor in my gardening plans.

 Here are some of the lessons I've learnt so far:

The xeriscaping process begins right at the planning stages of the garden.

31/12/13/mid-summer back garden I created wild

I didn't take water-efficiency into consideration when planning my first garden in Phokeng and I paid the price through dying plants and heavily reduced harvests.

My challenge was that I had a big patch of land that had been neglected for over 10 years and the weeds were displacing us out of the yard. So I needed to do something and since I was already planning to grow our food, I decided to grow as much as I could.

I do have a designated garden which has structure. But there were also areas I needed to cover with something until I could properly plan for them time and resources allowing. The above patch is one of them.

After some of the vegetables I planted became crispy critters mid-season, I had two options: give up and do a lot of hard landcaping or try to work with the land and climate to get the results I want. I opted for the latter. Hopefully xeriscaping can help me do it.

Select a site that allows the efficient use of water 

Grave vine. Planning to build arbour here

My main garden site was allocated and fenced by generations before me. 

So for me it was not so much about selecting a suitable site, as it was about making the availabe site suitable for water-efficient gardening. It's a work in progress, with many issues I've yet to resolve.


Planting fruit trees allows me to meet several objectives at once: access to a consistent supply of free fruit and providing shade in my garden.  

I am keeping in mind that many vegetable plants need 6-8 hours of sunlight. However, it doesn't have to be direct sunlight all the time, so while we already had a number of trees in that garden, they are not enough to offset the problem of extreme heat.


My challenge is making sure I don't plant too many trees and create too much shade. Then there is also the fact that fruit trees need water AND they will compete with the vegetables and herbs for water.  

It's a conundrum. But I figure, if this solution doesn't work as advertised, the fenced vegetable garden will be designated as an orchard and I'll make the backyard space as my vegetable new vegetable  garden (the space is bigger than the current garden and what you see in pic 1 around an 8th of the space, so I'd be OK with that)


In addition to the main fences, our whole yard is surrounded by trees which create a natural privacy wall. So the protection from strong winds is already in place.

Ensure that the soil has plenty of organic matter, such as manure, compost and mulch and that it is very well-drained.

The marrows did very well despite the heat. Surplus frozen for winter soups

That's just smart gardening, even when you don't have to deal with drought. But as I'm learning from gardening friends, mulching heavily and regularly is the key to retaining moisture in your garden.

Choose plants that are drought-resistant/can live for very long without water

See watermelon thrive midsummer. Photo date 31/12/2013

I've found that sweet potatoes, pepper, peas, watermelon, spinach, onion and beetroot are very drought-resistant.

This past summer, during which we went through a scorching summer with temperatures averaging late 30 degree Celsius (over 100 degrees Fahrenheit), the vegetables I mention above did well enough.

The watermelon and butternut leaves were drooped a lot, and some leaves were even burnt to a crisp, but they survived well enough.

Look at my little basil fight to live

Herbs like coriander (cilantro), rosemary, marjoram, thyme, bee balm, oregano and sage  also didnt show much distress, even in the midst of summer.

By the time the summer heat came, the greens were hardy

We didn't expect the cauliflower and broccoli to fruit. However, it did though the heads bolted, as it does better in cool weather.

As you can see, the plants themselves lived through the heat and they were a great source of greens, which we cooked in a similar style as we would cabbage leaves. They are now green afresh and ready to start fruiting again.
 
Position your plants strategically so that plants with the same watering needs are together. 

I'm still learning on this one and have killed a number of plants in the process. But that's fine... I will keep trying.

Water your plants for maximum impact
Check out my post on W is for Water for some watering tips.

For me, xeriscaping is a work in progress. So please share your water-efficient gardening tips so we can all benefit from your knowledge and experience.

My January Garden Wrap-Up

My little peach tree survived

January was a very tough month for the garden. More difficult than I antiticipated or planned for.

Part of it was the heat and the water shortage. What the sun didn't scorch directly, died/shriveled/slowed down in growth  even though we were watering as much as we could. A shade cover over the food gardens is desperately needed.

The sun also made it difficult to be out there doing physical labour. It was very debilitating.

But this morning as I walked through the garden, I could see that most of the garden will survived. Crispy around the edges, but Ok.

Despite all the troubles, we are still getting some of our food from the garden. Not as much as I would have liked, but enough to make a difference.

Today I harvested watermelon, green tomatoes to let ripe on the window sill, basil to make pesto and parsley to dry for winter use.

Are Watersaver Gardens Part Of An Answer To My Dry Garden/ Watering Problem?

I decided to start by sharing what I'm listening to as I write this blog. It's not the kind of music I usually listen to, and most of you won't even understand the words.

I don't, because though I'm South African, I'm not Zulu, but I love her voice, the instruments and the emotion that the song conveys. Enjoy!

Rethinking The Garden Plan To Better Accomodate Dry Summer Periods And Intense Heat

2 minutes b4 I went 2 tour veggie garden 2day

We're still suffering through the heat wave, even though the weather service had initially mentioned it would end around the 19th (last Sunday).

My garden looks really sad. Still alive. But not looking as lush and crisp as it used to.

So I decided to walk the main garden this afternoon, not just to see how the plants are doing, but also to get visuals to help me reconsider the way I garden.

As you may have seen in the pictures in my gallery, my garden in Phokeng is fairly big.

Basically, I have the main vegetable garden, which is enclosed, that's around 50 metres by 30 metres.

That's just the vegetable "patch." Then I have two other gardening spaces that are each slightly smaller than the main garden, and two courtyards where I can do some container gardening.

That excludes the ornamental/lawn garden area (where I'm standing in the photo. And no, I'm not short; the photographer is a giant. That's my story and I'm sticking with it!)

But I digress. The issues I'm having to consider, possibly to be implemented when we approach Autumn are:

• Optimal use of the land I have. Right now, I'm not making judicious use of the space.
• Watering regularly but needing to use less water overall
• A food garden that requires less maintenance
• Use of long-lived (is it perennial) plants that produce food for long periods, may be even more than one season. Not that we have properly demarcated seasons here. Basically we know when it's supposed to be winter, and some days it's cold then, but for people from really cold area, it might feel like a crisp Autumn day.
• Plants that are less sensitive to intense sunlight
• Ways to shade most of the vegetable garden area
• Working on the soil to make it less clay-like, for it to retain more water.

 And yet, these have to be plants that can provide food for the family, and not just any food, but the stuff we can eat. It's no use my growing egg plant knowing quite well that the family doesn't like it (we've already done that experiment).

Anyhoo, your input would be very helpful. Thank you for reading.