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.

Painting with Sunflowers

Apart from the few baby sunflowers we had planted in our vegetable beds, we still had a small army of ready-to-plant ones waiting in trays. After scanning the unused sunny areas in our garden, it was clear that they would find their new home behind the wall that runs along our watermelon patch. Although the soil was - again - rich in clay, this spot gets a nice amount of sun throughout the day. After the tedious task of digging six holes, each about 30 cm's deep, we started mixing in the Gold Dust and compost. 

Saya getting in there with her fashionable-lady-
gardening-gloves.

Once the soil seemed like something could actually grow in it, we deemed it ready and started removing the babies from the trays. Saya carefully planted them, two in each hole. Once everyone had settled in, we watered the bed and rounded the bed off with some bamboo.

Mimilu added the final touches, which were Teddy-bear sunflower seeds being planted in the remaining open areas of the beds. We were told these don't need to be tray-planted first, and can be planted directly into the soil. So now, all that remains is to wait until we have our own row of sunflowers colouring in the old, blank wall behind the watermelon-patch.

The Zucchini bed.

We had planted some baby-marrow (zucchini) seeds about a week and a half ago into a tray of six. Finally, one breaks through. A day or two passes without any others breaking through the soil. Eventually it became apparent that the others were duds and we were going to have to make due with just one for now and plant some more later.

Building the bed.

The spot we chose for the lone baby-would get great sun, but was neighboured by lots of bamboo, whose roots are very strong and hard to remove. We therefore decided to make a raised bed using a string of small logs, that we got from the nursery (seeing as we couldn't find something in our backyard to do this!). We dug into the ground to mix up some of the clay-ish soil - the soil here was a bit better than that of our first two beds. Then we started mixing in compost and a bit of our garden soil.

Once the empty shape had been filled, we planted one lonely-zucchini into it's new massive bed - although we had been told they do go crazy and cover a lot of ground. We watered the bed and let if settle in.

Trekker and the Zucchini.

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.

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