Permaculture in a pot

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.

Permaculture food gardening guide for schools

The Imagine Durban project has recently published a permaculture guide for schools, freely available through the Municipality.  Written by Bev Ainslie, the book covers all aspects of permaculture gardening with information on soil, water and seeds.  There are also chapters on garden design, composting and natural pest control.

Hopefully it’ll soon be available in electronic format!

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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!

Who said veggies are green?

First off, apologies for this comes off looking like an amateur mess.I am a rank amateur.   Came across a Saffer company , www.soughtafterseedlings.co.za, marketing some unique looking veggies.I mean purple cauliflower-weird, round carrots and my favourite lollipop-like white and red beetroots!(The rag name is Simply Green, May June 2010 ed p48)   The veggies are not genetically modified, I repeat Monsanto herbicides will kill them.The seeds are produced by Franchi Sementi Seeds(see attachment , hopefully) in Italy.  

I reckon that Messrs Ferrari and Bugatti and their friends at Lamborghini and Alfa must have found inspiration in the the technicolour fields in uberstylish Tuscany.   So….since I do not like tomaytoes,here’s hinting (not so subtly one might add )that more folk might be inspired to grow sweeter( and Heaps More Colourful) veggies.  

Khalid

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.