The Nutty Butts

On our last trip to the nursery we brought along some watermelon and butternut squash starts that were looking for a new home, along with more compost and bark. We decided to create a bed below the first two beds, where the butternuts are sure to get good sun. We wanted to make this bed different so we decided to make a circle shaped bed to create some visual differentiation.

Mimilu and myself began to clear the  ground after it was picked of stones and unnecessary roots (per usual), however  this time round the roots took  exeptionally long because we discovered thick, tough roots that poised a fight of note. But alas, after tugging, pulling, cutting and chopping we eventually managed to complete and  prepare the ground.

This area of the garden has a slight slope and there where the butternut bed is, the slope sightly steepens, therefore when we mixed the ground together with our compost and levelled out the bed to

prevent any unnecessary run-off. Yay, our butternut patch is ready! We
placed the starts in the circle formation and surrounded the bed with pieces of cut bamboo. We then began to finish off that area by making it a united patch. We completed the stone formation by linking it to the other two beds and placed the other bark pieces onto the path.

Tomatie Party

So the time had come to plant our little tomato starts that have been waiting so patiently to be planted. We once again began to pick away at the oh-so-barren clay ground that we are faced with. But after some vicious picking, we managed to mix in our bags of compost and introduced the tomatoes to their new home. 

Before planting the starts, Yakattack first cut some bamboo poles which we rooted into the ground to act as support posts for when the starts get to the right height. On completion of the bamboo supports and settling the starts we surrounded the new bed with stones and spread some bark as a garnish. As tomatoes grow upward, we decided to put a butternut squash and cucumber in the same bed as they grow along the ground thus making the

tomatie party so much more fun...

Re-use, Re-cycle, Re-new

To make beautiful things, to make things beautiful or simply to create beauty, doesn't always need money. With child-like imagination we can turn any thing or any space into something beautiful - and useful! To create our pathway we didn't have to venture further than our fathers backyard. Discarded pieces of random tiles were stacked awaiting regeneration - a new purpose. Things aren't easily wasted at his house. Now we have a pathway that connects different areas of our garden and turned the dreary clay plains into art!

Our Blog is Carbon Neutral

We are proud to say that we have joined our blog to the Carbon Neutral initiative, which aims to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. They plant a tree for your blog and thereby neutralise your blog’s carbon footprint for the next 50 years! Everyone can make a small contribution to the environment. Every tree counts!

The following was taken from the Mach's grün website to give you some back-ground:

The trees are planted in Plumas National Forest in Northern California by “Arbor Day Foundation” their partner in US for the “My blog is carbon neutral” initiative. The “Arbor Day Foundation” is a non-profit conservation and education organization with the goal helping reforest 5,500 acres of Plumas National Forest with 792,000 trees.

A series of lightning strikes triggered the Antelope Complex Fire on July 5, 2007, which burned nearly 23,000 acres of Plumas’ timber in less than a week. The Moonlight Fire struck just two months later, destroying 65,000 forest acres and requiring more than three weeks to contain.

On September 5, 2007 the Moonlight Fire was advanced by northerly winds through the Plumas National Forest in Northern California. According to reports from the National Forest Service, the fire had grown to 28,000 acres since its start on September 3. This image from the NASA’s Aqua satellite shows the fire spreading smoke over the Sacramento Valley on September 5.

image: NASA earthobservatory

Visit http://www.kaufda.de/umwelt/carbon-neutral/ to add your blog to this great initiative or for more information.

Too much sun!

Saya and Mimilu went to the nursery again today. Despite the fact that all of us were excited to expand a bit more on our newly-found project, the South African sun beating down with all its might left us all rather silent and irritable.

Nonetheless, we arrived home and we started unpacking the new goodies. They had bought a variety of seeds (sunflower, Californian Wonder peppers and a chilli mix-pack), some butternut starts, melon starts, more compost and a two bags of tree bark! Quite a range!

We went straight to our beds to see how the young plants were doing. All of them were looking like they were doing well.. except for one - the lettuce! It was as though the sun had melted it flat onto the ground. The leaves were entirely limp and it was clear that the plant was in need of some serious TLC. Mimilu dug the poor thing out and replanted what was left of it into a small pot. We placed it in the shade and gave it a lot of water and about 20 minutes later it was back to it's perky self. We would definitely have to plant it in a spot that didn't get that much sun. It would stay in the pot for now.

The bags of bark came in handy in adding a bit of a decorative touch. We filled the spot between the two beds with some tree bark and the result was quite pleasing. The rest of the afternoon was spent planting seeds into trays using a mixture of soil and compost.

The First Two Beds

After much of the initial cleaning, raking, hacking and sawing, just to get some sun into our soon-to-be garden, it was time to equip the garden pick and start digging it up. We started digging away with great zest. This was however rather short-lived as we are definitely not very used to manual labour! But we soldiered on. Then the next troubling realisation came to light: The soil was actually very rich in clay!

My sister was the only one who had known this from her previous gardening work in this very spot many years ago. This is where the Gold Dust came into play, which she had luckily bought. Apparently it helps to break down the clay, but there was a lot of hard work ahead before we could actually use it. The next while was spent crushing massive clumps of clay and clearing weeds and arbitrary roots. The rake was actually quite handy for breaking up the clay. Our old hedge-trimmers served in cutting off the fat roots we couldn't pull out. This whole process took quite some time.

Once it started looking like there was some chance of a plant actually growing here, the started mixing in the organic compost we had gotten from the nursery. Planting-time was drawing near!

After much mixing, it was finally time to start planting. My sister and I had gotten quite a few baby-plants from the nursery which included cucumbers, beetroot, rocket, lettuce and eggplant. One by one our two little beds were getting some colour as we started planting them. The beetroot, rocket, eggplant and lettuce were placed in two rows while the cucumbers formed their own single file (apparently they take over and need quite a bit of space!).

Once the planting was done, we sprinkled the Gold Dust around the starts and in the empty areas of the bed. Now all that was left was watering them - and just like that we were on our way. We used our last bit of energy to pull up a few forgotten logs, bricks and stones to make a little rim around the beds.

After all of this, it was quite an amazing feeling just standing back and admiring the finished product. Not a bad first day at all!

Our first two beds

A Beginning

It all began with a trip to the nursery.. Just an impulsive urge to see what lay beyond those walls we had driven past so many times without even thinking twice. I was unaware of all of this, of course. I had merely lent my car to my girlfriend and her sister to go and visit their father and upon arriving home, I noticed a few bags of compost and some trays of starts. This sparked the obsessive raking and hacking away at the jungle in our backyard. So here we are, in the infancy stages of our summer-project. Right now, we have no real idea or plan regarding the details of our mission. All we know is that it is going to be pretty damn awesome!