Braving the hounds

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

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 …

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

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

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.

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