Circle's 3rd Birthday this Saturday!

We'll be celebrating the Garden's birthday this coming Saturday, 1 October from 10am until 1pm with music, games and food!  All welcome, bring a platter to share if you can.

New fence for court

New 3m length poles were cemented into the ground around the centre Court this past week.  The idea is to surround the Court with extra-strong net to stop soccer balls being kicked into the garden and destroying the plants. We thank Mr. Petersen, who patiently housed the poles in his garage at home since December 2010!  Dinesh Isaacs, our new Project Manager in the City Council, who managed to get the job done and Basil, the Foreman who came personally to see that it was done properly!

September Food Garden update

We've been busy preparing trellises for tomatoes and beans.

 Laid a 'firewall' of eggshells to try and stop snails from entering the food garden from the big garden outside.

 During the winter months, there seems to be nothing to harvest, and suddenly everything starts to bloom in spring.  There's lots of spinach, lettuce, onions, leeks, parsley and we're waiting for 'spitzkop' cabbages to form heads.  We're giving them one more month.  If nothing, then out they go to make room for the peppers and chillies.  We need lots of old stockings to stake the tomatoes, so please send us some if you have :-)  Thanks!

Spring is here!!!

 We were so happy this week to see all the flowers blooming around the Circle.  After the Spring rains, it can only get better!

Soccer stars

In the centre of our community garden is the tarred court, which is most often used as a soccer pitch.

Most afternoons you will find school-aged kids having a game, but after 5 is the 'big boys' time. These are the young men of the community who come to play after working hours, sometimes until late at night, especially during summer when it stays light until almost 9pm!

Part of the vision for the community garden is that the court could help the young people, possibly by learning new games and skills along with good team spirit and self-discipline.

Winter garden

We've been having amazing weather all through July and August, when it should be raining and cold! It feels more like Spring and the poor plants don't know what to do - some are bolting and putting out seed heads, while others seem to be dormant! We did quite a lot today, but most importantly, sowed some summer crop seeds! The kohlrabi are looking good now, and so are one or two cabbages that somehow survived the snail attacks. Harvested a bunch of carrots and another of spring onions.

A Hippo in our Garden!

Ha, that caught your attention! What a shock one morning this week to find what looked like two huge hippo feet lying on top of the veggie beds! My mind squealed silently, remembering all the hard work it took to layer the trench beds, and Sandi's words: 'Don't ever put a foot in the garden bed, as you'll compact the soil!!!'

The Council had made an uplanned delivery the day before and unintentionally dumped the concrete seats together with a load of bark chips in the garden! They were very apologetic about it afterwards though.

Brinjals for Africa!

From January until late March, we harvested brinjals, almost daily, and sometimes as many as a garbage sack full!

Many were given away, some were sold, and quite a few were eaten in our house! We had them stuffed, baked, stewed and sauced. The last recipe we tried was served as an appetiser:

Slice brinal into rings, about 1.5cm thick. Rub with a little olive oil and bake at 180C for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle each slice with crushed garlic, fresh chopped herbs and grated cheese. Return to oven and bake for another 5 - 10 minutes and enjoy! Really yummy!

Rosalind... our faithful helper

Ros comes to the garden every Tuesday afternoon to teach gardening to the young ones of the community. They love her patient, gentle manner and the special time they have together. For many children, it is the highlight of their week. Thank you, Ros!

Food Garden 1 Year Old!

It's hard to believe that this is how the Food Garden looked a year ago!

Who would have thought that all these beautiful veggies would come out of a desert like that?

A meal from the garden! Stuffed brinjal and fresh salads!

Our hard work has been truly blessed.

We made ...

Basil Pesto, tomato jam!

... And enjoyed eating the sweetcorn, just like that!

Calendula Oil... excellent for massage!

We even tried sun-drying our own tomatoes, but in our excessive heat, they got burnt black instead!

... and all the produce came from the Food Garden.

103 year old visits the garden!

Aunty Annie, a legend in her own lifetime, made a special effort to come and see the gardens before she turns 104 later this year!

February flowers

Just a few photos of the stunning flowers seen in the garden during February 2011.

See the blanket of clouds on the mountain? That's a sign that the South-easter is blowing in the Cape.

School group visits the gardens

A group of about 12 youngsters came to see and learn. They helped with the compost-makings, and transplanted tomato seedlings.

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.