Progress Report

It's been 50 days since we started our gardening venture. With everything in its place, here is a sneak-peek into how far our plants have come. Please feel free to refer back to earlier posts for comparison of progress.

 

Top left - the mixed veggie patch. Top right - the cucumber patch. Above - the butternut patch.

The three beds with Mimilu watering.

Our tomato plants.

The first baby tomato.

The watermelon patch.

One of many baby watermelons.

Myself - busy harvesting our bok choy and spinach.

Our first harvest!

All the bottom beds.

A Heart-Shaped Bed

Whether you see it as a kind-of-homage to Kurt Cobain's Heart Shaped Box, or an attempt to bring more love into our garden, or simply the most suitable shape to fill a space, a heart-shaped bed was our next addition. We needed to plant six more beetroot- and six more tomato starts - this would be their home. It took a good while to dig the bed out. Between breaking up super-hard clay and cutting away old hard roots, it seemed never-ending - but, after a good while of manual labour, we could start preparing the soil.


Once our usual compost and Gold Dust had been mixed with the clay-rich-soil, the new occupants moved in. We would have to put up some bamboo to support the tomatoes at some point - but that can wait for now. We framed the bed with some white stones we got from the nursery in order to make it stand out. Tree bark and some of our stones were used to join the bed into rest of the garden.

Although the sun had already left us, the finished
product still stood out very well.

Our Melon Patch & Unexpected Visitor

It was an early morning when I decided to carry on with fining the clay ground between our proud bouganvilla & bamboo. My dog was patiently sitting beside me watching the activities of the early morning. It was then I heard a rustle in the bamboo behind me. I thought nothing of it at first as our kitty spends most of her time in the garden. It was upon a second rustle that my very brave, yet confused dog, Trekker, jumped up and looked at me as if calling me with his eyes.
I knew not to take his reaction lightly as it was peculiar behavior. I dropped the spade and peeked around the corner only to discover - eeeeeeeeeek!! - a Boomslang! (Tree-snake - directly translated). 

A Boomslang -
image from http://www.africanreptiles-venom.co.za/boomslang.html

It was slithering away from the bamboo where I stood, had a peek into my sister's bedroom and shot high up into the next patch of bamboo. I must have frightened it with the shoveling. She was a beautiful, fully-grown femail of about 1,2 to 1,3 meters long - better check for eggs!
She did not hang around too long, but long enough for everyone to see her greatness. She cut her visit short by sailing of into the neighbour's yard. What an experience!

Despite the goosebumps that I had for the entire day, we all chipped in and finished our watermelon patch, knowing that the spirit of the snake watches over them. Our watermelons received lots of compost as the ground had many stones which had to be removed. We found some rich top soil beneath some trees further down in our 'jungle', which we also used. The patch was decorated with a big log and bamboo sticks and of course our beautiful tree bark!

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...

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.