Introduction and background

While still very much a self taught amateur, I've been interested in growing things since I was a small child at the Mamathes trading store in Basutoland, helped along by having a botanist as a mother. Apart from a few periods since then, I haven't really had the time or inclination to do gardening systematically. Now that I'm retired, with the support of an understanding and patient wife, I can consciencelessly revert to childood and try, if not to avoid having to eat dog food in my remaining years, to at least supplement it with something interesting.

I live in Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa - an area that lies in the intersection of the winter rainfall region and summer rainfall region. Sometimes we get summer rainfall, some years winter, sometimes both and sometimes neither. The weather here is mild in winter, with frost on a couple of days in mid to late June. Every twenty years or so there's some snow. Summer can be hot, reaching 30 to 40 degrees C in February. The past few years we've had reasonable rains.

My interest has always primarily been "useful" plants - vegetables and fruit and nuts, and only secondarily in flowers, with the exception of bulbs, pelargoniums, orchids and succulents.

Early incantations of the garden survive in the shape of two pecan trees (25+ years old), a macadamia, two mulberries, two plums, a guava, a custard apple, an elderberry and an overwhemed fig and cherry guava under the larger mulberry. Attempts at almonds, peaches, cherry, apricot, walnut, chestnut  and mango came to nothing. A 30 year old olive is the same size as it was when planted out in 1985. A reasonable apple tree, a loquat, and a lemon tree were victims of building extensions.

There's a row along the wrong side of a north facing vibracrete wall of youngberry and booysenberry plants - neglected, in the shade, but prolific despite being twenty or more years old. Strawberries have come and gone. Raspberries survived one season, and blueberries didn't manage even that.

The most recent incarnation of a vegetable garden has been going for about a year and a half, and is geared around containers. It started with a 2013 Christmas present of a few 500mm x 160mm rectangular plastic planters with some packets of chili seeds. When these seemed to work, the collection of planters mushroomed and just about everything was tried in them. Some plants worked - chili peppers and decorative bulbs such as Freesias and Sparaxis; some sort of worked - tomatoes and bush beans; and many didn't work at all, despite a good start - strawberries and Brinjals. Problem is getting the drainage right - things either get waterlogged or frizzle up.

Trying to accomodate these led to building frames and lining up the collection of planters on racks - unfortunately they're against a westerly wall and only get afternoon sun. They have devolved to raising chili peppers and bulbs, and acting as a seedling nursery.

The next phase in the middle of last year involved building trellises from brandring and plastic netting assembled using a saw, electric screwdriver, daughters and a stapler, and growing runner beans and cucumbers in black plastic bags against our sun drenched north facing wall - about a metre away from the youngberries:

Late last year, the north east facing wall of our outside room turned into tomato alley, growing thirteen different varieties out of black plastic bags onto a trellis of horizontal bamboo poles cable tied to strings suspended from the eaves. Some varieties did OK - Little Wonder, others struggled. Maybe this year they'll do better.






Opposite the tomatos, more youngberries - untrellised and less prolific, but they've survived. I need to work out how to support them:




The latest experiment is several double rows of tyres along our southern boundary, an area that gets a reasonable amount of sun. This evolved out of an attempt at growing potatoes in stacks of tyres. It wasn't that successful - I planted about 12 potatoes and harvested about 10 out of one stack and none out of the other two. I think I'll give it another go, as I might have misunderstood the process.

The tyres are obtained free - "Help yourself!" - from Wessons (formerly Kingsley Tyres) and filled with my own compost - fortunately there's plenty, because a filled tyre uses a lot. Unfortunately, it's not all quite broken down so it's full of weed and tomato seeds, so it needs a lot of attention to start off. The "best" tyres are wide rim/low profile types which give a good height and reasonable surface area. I haven't - yet - faced the problem of how to get rid of tyres. With luck, it won't be my problem.

Row #3 - in the foreground - was started on Thursday last week and is a work in progress. It'll be extended this week,given availability of suitable tyres, then left to stand for a while to let the first crop of weeds sprout. It'll be more shaded than the other rows.

Against the neighbours fence are the beginnings of four asparagus beds. I managed to get some Mary Washington seedlings in April and planted them out in the first two small beds - nine of the eighteen seem to have survived, so I'll probably consolidate them into one bed. The two larger ones are waiting for my own seedlings to be ready, probably this time next year. Old leaves and builders sand are busy fermenting in them at present and I'll plant peas or beans a bit later to settle them down..

My intention with this blog is to keep a record of what works, and what doesn't, mainly for my own purposes. Often, Googling for information about the cultivation of certain plants just gives a snapshot in time of a succesful event, or a YouTube video, rather than a progress report of what happened next, if anything. Ideal circumstances for growing things don't always exist, although you might be led to believe this to be the case from browsing the Interwebz.