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.

Gardening During The Drought

South Africa has been going through a bad drought and there are huge water shortages in Phokeng in the North West province where I live. A lot of articles in the media talk about the water crisis, its impact on farmers and communities and what government is doing to help alleviate the problem.

Sometimes I find myself laughing hard at what people say, not because it’s funny, but because I want to cry and laughing stops the tears. On the one hand we are encouraged to grow as much of our own food as we can to help reduce the spiraling food costs, yet the water shortages make it extremely hard to do so. How do I grow my own food when drinking water is limited?

The kids come to collect their daily water ration

I’ve tried to be as prepared as I can for the extreme heat and semi-arid climate of Phokeng (located just outside Rustenburg), where every year mid-summer temperatures skate close to 40 degrees Celcius and the water shortages are becoming a norm, even when nationally nobody talks about drought.

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Improving Our Water Storage Capacity

I finally managed to save up to set up a stand for this 10 000 litre tank, which has been waiting for me for weeks to put it to use. The crusher sand arrived today and the builders are scheduled to come this weekend.

The tank will serve as our secondary storage facility, supporting this baby below, and will (soonish) be linked up to the borehole. Unlike our current tank, this one will only service the garden and animals.

It will be such a relief to have another water reservoir! My plan is that through the end of Spring and Summer, we attach two smaller tanks to our gutter system to harvest rainwater, maybe later add a grey water system. Once that's done I can relax knowing that we and our garden and animals will be fine through the dry patches/drought that our semi-arid region is prone to.

The rain-harvesting/grey water system that I'll put in will also mean that we increase our water capacity without increasing our operating costs, something that our borehole unfortunately  doesn't do, as it relies on electricity to run. It will also add to our growing self-reliance. So it's very important to me that I get to it sooner rather later.

W Is For Water

Water tanks linked to our borehole

April is not a good time to plant watermelon and I have no plans to grow watercress, watercelery or waterchestnuts, so I'd rather focus on access to water, a critical aspect of growing your own food in any month.

Most urban gardeners have to rely on municipal water, so they are limited in how much they can grow unless they don't mind having an exhorbitant water bill.

In South Africa, we have a limited number of litres we get free, then a capped amount to use at a specified rate. If you exceed that cap, the municipality charge you an exhorbitant rate. The objective is no longer just to charge you for your usage, but to punish discourage you from exceeding the cap.

Even if you live in a rural area or municipal by-laws allow you to have a borehole, there is still a cost to install the borehole and water tank infrastuctures, but to run them, whether they run on gas/petrol or electricity. Then there are the maintanence costs...

The third potential source of garden water is rain water.Unfortunately, the tanks are not cheap either.  The fourth source is grey water, waste water from baths, showers, laundry and hand basins which you can recycle to water your garden.

As for us, we use the first three water sources: the borehole, municipal water and rainwater.  Unfortunately we don't have tanks to capture rainwater yet, so my strategy so far is watching the seasons and planting extensively in rainy seasons and scaling back a bit during dry seasons.

The major hiccup with that plan is that we've been going through drought the past couple of years, and it was only earlier this year that it started to rain enough to make a difference in the soil. As for redirecting our grey water, that too is still in my wishlist.

My water-saving tips for the garden

1. Mix in lots of manure and compost to improve your soil
Have you ever gardened in heavy clay soil? It doesn't retain water well, and when it's dry, it's like a brick. Hard enough to kill your poor plants. When it's wet, it's heavy. So I'm working hard to add organic matter to it, mixing in manure and compost in it, and then throwing in grass clippings whenever we or our neighbours mow our lawns (yes, we do ask for neighbours' grass clippings:)

2. Include water crystals in your soil
I admit that so far I've only read about this from my fellow food gardeners at the Down To Earth forums, but they had good things to say about it. The way they work is that you mix them with the soil and when you water your garden, they hold onto the water for an extended period of time, slowly letting it out into the soil by transpiration. That means that when you water your garden, the water evaporates from the soil more slowly when the soil has the crystals, giving your plants' roots a bigger opportunity to drink it up.

3. Plant drought-resistant and/ water-wise plants
Unfortunately, this is one principle I didn't think of when I first started my garden here. I'd been living in Johannesburg for more than 20 years and well... we had rain throughout the year. The region is also slightly cooler. So while I knew in theory that this region was much hotter and drier, I didn't understand the implications until I lived here day in and out.

The climate has completely changed my gardening strategy. I am now conscious of whether a plant is water wise and /drought resistant and I'm very cautious of thirsty plants. Water from the borehole means that I do have a bit of leeway, but there have been times when water from the borehole is better saved for household use, especially when the municipality starts rationing water during drought periods.

4. Mulch as much as you can
Mulch protects the garden bed from the sun and helps the soil retain water. Unfortunately, I've only recently started doing it on a large scale, now that I managed to buy a mulcher. Before, I was limited in the quantities of mulch I could get as I was unwilling/unable to spend too much money on the gardening venture.

5. Collect rain water for your garden
Earlier this year while it was raining heavily and non-stop, I wished that I had water tanks to collect water for future use in the garden. Unfortunately, I don't have the resources to make that investment yet. But in time, it will happen.


6. Water your garden wisely

• Where possible, water your garden in the  evening so that the water can have a chance to seep into the soil without the sun evaporating it.
•  Be aware of the watering needs of your plants. Some plants need more water than others; others need to be watered frequently while others need a deep soak every now and then. Giving your plants what they need means you won't waste watering plants that don't need it.
•  Make sure that your watering system is very targeted, so that there is very little water that hits non-planted areas of your garden/beds. 
•  When you water your garden, aim for the base of the plant, so that water can easily seep into the soil and into the roots, instead of giving your plant leaves a shower.
•  Remove the weeds so they don't drink your plants' water. When you have less weeds in your garden beds, your plants have access to more water, as there is less competition for it.

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!