Choosing The Right Season To Plant: It Looks Like Winter Is My Best Food Growing Season

I knew that a region's climate is very important when gardening. But at the back of my mind, there was also this conventional wisdom that said my bumper crops would come from Spring and Summer plantings. I've been chasing that rainbow for too long.

Looking back at my gardening experiences and output over the years, I can see that the garden performed best in Winter. Most days range from teens to mid-twenties, except when we have the periodic cold snaps, the soil retains water better and is soft and rich and my seedlings' growth reflect this happiness with their environment.




The seedlings don't grow as fast as they would, theoretically, in Spring. But they are not in danger of drying out or burning to a crisp due to the scorching Summer heat either. This is major lesson for me and my garden planning.

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.

Monthly Planting Plan: What To Grow In The North West Province This January

I found a vegetable and her planting plan online, developed by Organic Seeds and I like it. The plan is appropriate for Summer Rainfall areas, of which the North West province is one of them.

Most of the are vegetables that we like and I want to grow, so I'm going to follow it very closely this January. Here are some of the vegetables I'm going to grow:

5 Tips For Successful Succession Planting To Keep You Well-Fed Throughout The Year

Today's beetroot and carrot harvest

Vegetables and herbs from the garden have slowly become a regular part of our meal, to the extent that we have now started to take for granted that "of course, some things we just pick!"

It's so nice to just walk outside to pick fresh parsley, basil, thyme, chilli, chives and mint when I cook.

It's almost like going into the pantry or opening the fridge to take out some ingredient, not a big deal at all.

Yet it IS a big deal, because I used to spend a lot of money on these herbs every month.


This week I also picked a lot of cucumber, spinach (sold most of it), carrots and beetroots (preserving most of it for future use).

We're also planting more carrots, spring onions, beetroot, spinach and turnips. This is part of our monthly succeession planting, so we always have food growing and ready to harvest at any given time.

Here are some the things I keep in mind when I do succession planting:

Succession Planting: Harvesting Beetroot, Chilli, Carrots and Cucumber & Planting More

This week I’ve been very busy in the garden. I harvested a 10-litre container of cucumber, around 1kg of chilli peppers, a 10 litre container of carrots, another of beetroot and a enough green beans for two family meals.

We also continue to sell bags of spinach. I also planted more cucumbers, baby marrows(zucchini), spinach, onions, beetroot, chives and three packs of flower mixes. I plan to do more planting in the next couple of weeks.

My main aim in starting a garden is to produce almost 80% of our food supply. The biggest challenge making sure that we have a good supply of vegetables every week, all year.

I notice that our supply is not consistent, and we tend to go through a feast or famine situation, and I’m unhappy about that. So I’m going to plant more often/every month, so I always have things growing/ready for harvest.

Last night it rained, so today was cool enough for vegetable soup. The soup was easy to make. I used 8 whole potatoes, 2 herbed onions and 2 packs of herbed carrots from my frozen stash from the Spring crop, a teaspoon or garlic and ginger mix, dried parsley (from last summer’s crop), 1 pack of tomato paste and 2 packs of cream of mushroom soup, all boiling in 2 litres of water until the vegetables were soft, the water reduced and the mixture thickened. I added paprika for seasoning.  I used a big pot, so I had enough for lunch for everyone and I'm goin

Why Autumn Is My Favourite Season To Garden

I've decided that Autumn is my favourite season.

• It's warm enough to be outside and enjoy mostly blue skies and a nice breeze and to work in the garden at all hours of the day.
• The debilitating heat of summer has cooled down a bit. So I no longer feel permanently exhausted. In Summer, we have temperatures regularly climbing up to 39 degrees Celcius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit)
• The weeds have slowed down a bit, so I can actually see the progress of my hoeing. So the garden looks really nice.
• Yet, it's still warm enough to grow a whole slew of root and leafy vegetables.
• It's a good time to clear out a lot of rubble in the yard, trim the trees and start creating compost.
• It's a good time to plan for and plant Spring flowering plants.

Mid-Autumn Progress Report

My back is sore. spent most of the day hoeing the paths between the beds and weeding old garden beds so we can start growing in them soon.

We also planted more spinach, cabbage, carrots, turnips and beetroot. Here are pics  of how some of the beds look. Most of my focus was on newly planted/germinated seeds, not old summer beds that are on their last legs.

The day's harvest. Lots of chilli to preserve. Beans for tomorrow.

Start Small

You don't have to be a passionate gardener who wants to grow all your family's fresh consumption to grow your own food.

You can start small,  growing a salad or herb patch, or maybe even include a soup garden.

Or you could grow one or two fruit trees, as did my friend Lynn, who has little interest in growing the bulk of her food and loves to buy her vegetables from Fruit & Veg City and The Food Lover's Market.

Still, she was very proud of her very first lemon.

Inching Our Way To Mid-Season

We are now approaching the end of the first month of Autumn, inching our way towards mid-season. We are still harvesting plenty of spinach, onions, parsley, basil, thyme and chilli, with the occassional green peppers and roma tomatoes.

But I can see that I will need to stagger my plantings much more effectively to allow the vegetable harvests to be staggered throughout summer and autumn, and not have one big batch at a time and little left for the rest of the season.

Kelebogile, the part-timer gardener who helps me with the heavy lifting, prepares the soil for me to transplant seedlings

Preparations for Autumn/Winter planting are underway. So far, the following seeds have sprouted:

• Peas
• White beans
• Broad beans
• Carrots
• Spinach
• Beetroot
• Swiss Chard
• Roma tomatoes
• Onions (3 types)
• Potatoes
• Sweet potatoes
• Butternut
• Cucumber
• Coriander
• Cabbage
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Nasturtiums
• Sweet peas (climber and bush)
• Wildflowers
• Allysium

We've begun transplanting tomatoes and cabbages, and will transplant or thin the rest as and when needed. I still have more seeds to plant - some for later crops of the vegetables named above, and some for new vegetables we have never planted before.

I am very happy with our progress though, and I feel that the food we harvested in summer and early autumn is contributing heavily towards my family's food security.

Then there are the unexpected bonuses: like today I was in the garden, picking some red jalapeno chilli to bottle for future use and street food vendor who regularly buys chicken from us came by and found me in the garden. On impulse, she decided to buy a whole bundle of jalapeno chilli to use on her food. It wasn't a big sale, but i've enjoyed some regular sales even though i don't advertise at all, as i don't view my gardening as a business. But  the money goes into my seeds funds and at the rate it's growing, it should buy me some nice seeds for Spring planting. The garden being able to pay for seeds would be very nice.

P.S Food Police: For the past week, I've been very consistent with meals, eating when I needed to, even when I didn't feel like it. Today's dinner sucked though: I was in the mood for lasagne, and SIL was going to town to do her own family's grocery shopping. So she volunteered to bring me a pre-packaged meat lasagne frrom Checkers Hyper.  To say it was bad is a kindness:   the mince tasted like bad soya and there was very little of it. There were two sheets of lasagne in that one boxed serving. MAYBE! The rest was the sauce, which kinda tried to make up for the lack of substance in the meal. Someone remind me why i bought this pre-packaged stuff, when I could have made my own lasagne/ or at least, bribed SIL into cooking it for me?

Month-By-Month Gardening Tips: Planting In October



Melons make lovely breakfast meals and anytime snacks.



Found an old month-by-month gardener’s guide in my bookshelf.  Here are some of the things I learnt about planting in October: