Stunning Sunflowers

The happy, smiley faces of sunflowers just make one feel so good! We had a row of 5 or 6 really tall ones, way over 2m in height! Sadly, the rose beetles got hold of them, although we managed to salvage a few heads full of seeds.

Visitors from Norway

Vanessa and Torbjon made a special visit to see the gardens in real life, after watching it grow on this blog in Norway. They have been keen supporters of this project from the beginning and we are grateful to them for their encouragement, support and kindness.

Youth Group Volunteers

Several youth from the Mountainview Baptist Church volunteered to help in the Food garden one Saturday. There was lots of laughter and learning. They will NEVER forget the smell of rotten kitchen waste used to make compost!

Food Garden now

A recent picture of the food garden in full bloom.

TOMATOES... EVERYWHERE!

We've harvested tons of tomatoes this summer. This picture was taken of a tray of cherry tomatoes which we tried drying on the dashboard of our car outside in the sun. It was a nice idea (thanks to the internet!), but we underestimated our January heat... the tomatoes ended up being roasted and even burnt :-(

Harvest for all!

The Chillies that we planted months ago have finally borne fruit!

The veggies have been growing at a terrific rate and each morning they look like they have grown double in size! We have been doing so much harvesting it seems that there is an unending stream of ever growing vegetables rejoicing in our African sunshine!

Here are some of the vegetables that we harvested during December and January. We have had many eggfruit (brinjals or aubergines) and spring onions and almost every day we pick a full basket of ripe tomatoes that we have shared with the community, and now are experimenting with sun-drying them in our hot car parked outside! We also made tomato jam.

The eggfruit came in many different, interesting shapes and sizes. We even had one that looked like it had a thumb and first finger which pointed out of it!

In December we installed an irrigation system which has saved us a lots of time in the morning and evening that would of been spent manually watering the garden.

Community Garden Of The Year 2010!

We were shocked and surprised when SOIL FOR LIFE presented us with this award in December!

They have undergirded us from the beginning, and the success of the Food Garden is largely due to the training we received from them.

Thank You, Pat and Sandi and the Soil For Life Team for this acknowledgement. It means a lot to us!

The Circle is 1 year old!

On Saturday, 25th September we celebrated the first anniversary of the birth of the Woodwind Circle Community Gardens. A special birthday cake was made in honour of the occasion!

Cape Town's Mayor visits us

We were pleasantly surprised by a fleeting visit from the Mayor and Mr Morkel during the week. With newspaper reporters in tow, they quickly visited the gardens, had their photos taken, and left. Pity we didn't get a chance to talk or give him a proper guided tour (which we're getting quite good at, considering all the foreign visitors we've had over the past months). We would have loved to pull and present him with some fresh carrots or a lovely lettuce from the food garden. Oh well, maybe next time...


The flowers are in bloom everywhere. The lavender is looking particulary beautiful at the moment, and so are all the gazanias which were planted to hide the tyres a year ago. I think they've done a spendid job, don't you?

Spring is here!

We've enjoyed tasting kohlrabi for the first time, and we were pleasantly surprised at the delicious taste. We had them stuffed and baked... yum!

The seed beds are being sowed with the summer crops' seeds every 3 weeks in rotation. There are 3 of them, so hopefully they'll keep all the other beds well stocked.

Carrots are doing really well now, and it's so exciting to pull them and see how huge they are. It's important that we have at least 2 rows of carrots in each bed at all times, to ensure a steady harvest.

The peas on the tripod frame are ready for picking and we included some in a butterbean curry last week, which was really tasty.















We've planted herbs in tyres in every available spot. There are also four 1-metre square potato patches, a pumpkin patch, strawberries patch and 2 hills for squashes and melons. This is the first time we're growing all of these!







The fennel has been a great hit! Not that anyone around here (besides us) eats it, but because they such hardy plants and seem to tolerate all types of weather too! We made the most delicious fennel risotto, which we've been bragging about to all our friends, gladly pulling some fennel for them and passing on the recipe to try. We enjoy the risotto so much, we laughingly said last week that we're going to make it every week!

Garden gets a Spring Clean

The caretaker, Jeffrey takes pride in keeping the gardens looking great! The old winter growth has been removed to make room for the new shoots of Spring.

Food Garden update... months later

Sadly, it has not gone as we anticipated in the food garden. The community are not getting involved, as we had hoped. Back in March, we offered a plot to anyone willing to come and work it, and reap their own harvest as reward. A few came forward and showed interest, but never returned. We don't know why and haven't had the time or energy to find out either. The result? The bulk of the work rests on two of us, to plant, weed, water, sow, transplant, plan ahead for 40 food plots. The task is daunting. It beats me how able-bodied men can sit around and watch women carting wheelbarrows, hauling huge bags and digging hard ground, without offering to help. But it happens, often.

The children are more enthusiastic about it than the adults. Recently, we were blessed to have the voluntary services of two dear friends Jeff & Rosalind, who offered their Saturday mornings to help us prepare the garden for the summer crops. Rosalind is an ex-gardening teacher from a Waldorf school, and the children love her gentle manner and huge amount of patience, as she teaches them about gardening.

Next time I'll tell you about all the things we've planted, and hopefully have some pics to show too!

The Tar is Done!

Doesn't it look amazing? We are so thankful to the City Council, Gerald Morkel, Asanda, Basil and all the others who made this possible! They even gave us Basketball nets with stands just in time for the looong school holidays coming up...

Any volunteers willing to organise some games?

Food Garden Update

View of the food garden from the roof of our house

One of the children proudly posing with his first turnip from his own vegetable plot!

We finally planted "Rooti", who is an avocado tree, grown lovingly from a seed started by Ruth a year ago on our kitchen windowsill!

One of the residents admires his lovely turnips just pulled from his vegetable plot.

Look at me now... 6 months later!

We began planting in September 2009 and these photos were taken in March 2010. Amazing, isn't it!?

Medicinal Herb Garden

Near the Food Garden, is a fairly large piece of land, which has been dedicated as the Medicinal Herb Garden. Our idea is to revive the age-old use of plants for common ailments in the community. Without our knowing it, we already have many medicinal plants growing all around the Circle! Slowly we are taking cuttings, transplanting and sowing seeds to add to this immensely important part of the Garden.

Donations - Thank You!

We were blessed by The Garden Shop in Constantia, who gave us loads of seedlings, plants and even proteas and trees!

Through FreeCycle we were able to get this shadecloth for the Food Garden.

Thank you!!!

Easter... and Sarah is back!

The children enjoy playing on the grass near the swings.

Lining up to receive their easter egg parcels, kindly made by Aunty Valerie.

Searching for chocolate eggs in the garden. The clue for this one was: "What recycled material was used to make the pathways?"

Sarah White gathered all the children on the Circle. The clue to find some of the chocolate eggs was: "What do we do with rubbish on the Circle?" The answer was to throw it in the green Council bins, where we had taped some eggs underneath.

While others were hiding the eggs around the Circle gardens, Sarah entertained the kids with a colouring-in contest.

The Food Garden Begins...

All the residents were invited to have a vegetable plot in the food garden for a nominal fee of R20 to cover running costs. At the end of the digging, we had over 30 plots. 15 Adults and 14 children have taken plots. The remaining plots will be taken care of communally by the food garden group.

Children planting seedlings in their own vegetable plot.

The children were excited at the idea of having their own vegetable plot. They enthusiastically helped to fill the trenches.

Final addition of soil and compost being added to one of the residents' vegetable plots.

The trenches are filled with layers of 'dry brown' and 'green wet' and topped with soil and compost.