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.

Summer Crop Was A Bust

My food garden at the end of November, still struggling along

Happy New Year! This summer growing food was a complete bust. Between the heat, drought and water shortages, my garden is barely surviving.

It would be dangerous to spend any considerable time outdoors in the sun, when temperatures in my area range from late 30s to mid-40 degrees Celsius (around 100 to 113°F). [See the heatwave warning for this week: Temperatures Soar Close to 50°C]

Add that I can't even water the garden and it would just be a waste of time and resources.



It's tough though without my usual summer harvests. I preserved enough produce from last summer and winter harvests that we have some food we grew, but I also increased the proportion of the food we grow. It's a completely different mindset from what I started with and what I want, but for now, it can't be helped.

The impact of the drought on farmers and South Africa's food security is even bigger, of course.  See the footage below. To give some context, the Free State province is one of the country's major food producers. considered South Africa's "bread basket."




I can't and don't want to give up on my plan to grow a large proportion of our food and herbs.  So I'm doing a lot of research on growing food in a semi-desert (what to grow that we would eat, how to grow it etc). The key is growing plants that need minimal water using a method that retains soil moisture as long as possible.

I also need to consider investing in a tunnel or greenhouse for veggies we love but which wouldn't tolerate the heat waves very well. It would have to be fairly large though to accommodate my needs. All of that needs to happen at very little cost, reusing and recycling whatever I can get. The plan will also likely involve grey water and rain water harvesting; two things I've been meaning to do but never got round to. So ja, my whole gardening plan is changing in a big way.

In the short-term, I'll start planting in March, when it cools down and the Weather Service has forecast rain will resume. But I need to be smart about it. I can't keep doing what I've been doing because pretty soon Summer will be back and I'll have to face the same problems I'm dealing with this year.

Anyhoo, I hope you have a better gardening year.

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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