South African Gardening Blog » Niall

Cape Town in bloom

Niall — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:49:12 +0000

I’m down in Cape Town this week, visiting family and having a break from Durban and work. And I think I’ve timed it perfectly! I took a stroll along the Pipe Trail on Table Mountain and the fynbos is in bloom. Such beautiful, interesting flowers. I didn’t have my camera with me, but snapped a shot of this fascinating plant with my phone.

Cape Town flora

Another use for sardines

Niall — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:47:49 +0000

The sardine run has recently hit Durban and people have been pulling sardines out of the sea in bucket loads. If you’ve ended up with a fridge full of the little fish, and can’t face another sardine meal, then you can use them ‘as fertiliser like them Pilgrim fathers’, according to regular commenter and occasional blogger Khalid. Anyone tried this?

Permaculture in a pot

Niall — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:02:21 +0000

After visiting the recent Sustainable City’s exhibition, and seeing the Giba Organics display, I was inspired to set up a permaculture vege patch in a series of containers, with a helping hand from Mr Wooden Spoon. It doesn’t look like it from the pics, but it was a hella windy day and topsoil, kraal manure and leaves were flying everywhere!

Check out our step by step photo-guide at our Flickr group or in the gallery below.

‘misunderstood little gardeners’

Niall — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:04:19 +0000

Here is a pic, as requested by Pi, of one of the ‘over-enthusiastic and misunderstood little gardeners’ , looking cute and innocent (see evidence of her active side here).

Scout

SA Blog Awards 2010

Niall — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:30:13 +0000

You may have notice a new button on the right of our blog. We’ve decided to enter this year’s blog awards and need your help to nominate us. Click on the button, then fill in your email address and wait for the confirmation email to come through. Please let us know if the confirmation email doesn’t reach you – Pi is still waiting for it to arrive!

Braving the hounds

Niall — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:36:33 +0000

A few months back the dogs devastated my patch of garden. It was heart-breaking … so I focused on gardening in pots and my permaculture beds. Since then, the dogs have lost interest and the garden has bounced back. I’ve decided to give it another shot and am loading the garden with spiky aloes, hardy succulents and quick-growing ground-cover – will I be spared the canine onslaught?

A friend thinks that they only destroyed the garden because I was paying too much attention to it. When I left it alone, so did they. But I like to think they aren’t as manipulative as that …

Tree in a pot

Niall — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:13:48 +0000

My mom recently won an indigenous tree in a competition (cool prize, hey?). Its a Milletia grandis or umSimbithi in Zulu. Its endemic to KwaZulu-Natal and grows near the coast, flowering at Christmas with a mass of purple flowers. Unfortunately, it has now become quite rare in the wild as its wood is very hard and prized for walking and fighting sticks as well as agricultural implements.

As luck would have it, there was a baby tree growing in the bag which I quickly appropriated and am now growing in a pot. Hopefully it will be happy and I’ll move it to a larger pot as the tree matures.

Something for the weekend …

Niall — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:46:37 +0000

I think a gardening blog’s best friend is a cooking blog. Once you’ve grown your veges and herbs, you need some guidance as to what to do with them. Two new cooking blogs have recently taken my fancy, both local.

At Still Life with Wooden Spoon, Chris documents his favourite recipes and the food he makes. This is fine-dining at home – using good-quality, fresh ingredients – and the results look delectable.

Over at Gibberlicious, Rike’s approach is more rustic. She documents the vegetarian food she makes, occasionally using produce from her own garden. Healthy and delicious!

Mauritian Tomatoes

Niall — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 08:53:59 +0000

My neighbour is Mauritian and his dad recently visited from the island with the best tasting tomatoes in the world. They planted the seeds which germinated and he generously handed some seedlings over the fence. They look like healthy, happy tomato plants but I guess the real test is when we get to munch down on the fruit. Will keep you posted on their progress and invite those of you lucky enough to live in Durban around for the taste test.

Rocket in your pocket

Niall — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 10:20:14 +0000

Or at least in a pocket-sized tray in your garden.

A couple of months back, a friend dropped off some cupcakes in a broken catering tray, which he said I should just throw away. Being incredibly thrifty, and sure that I’d have a use for it later, I kept the tray in my garage. My mom always has a steady stream of rocket from her permaculture garden and, inspired by this and the ridiculous prices they charge for rocket at the supermarket, I set about creating a mini-rocket farm. Firstly, I fixed the tray with some gaffer tape then hammered some drainage holes into the base of it. I added soil, made some furrows, dropped the rocket seeds into them, covered and watered. Within a week the seeds had sprouted and we’ve been eating fresh rocket in our salads ever since!

The beauty of this experiment is that we could have grown the rocket in a space as big as the tray. This is the ideal sort of food gardening for people living in flats or duplexes and you get such enjoying from eating the food you grow.