Abundance - just not of grass..!

Veg patch :)

This year we have tried something different..we have used the circle/keyhole setup known from the Permaculture Mandala garden.. our designated plot, or rather the bit we have declared as veg patch is not big enough for a traditional mandala garden, so ours is a little un-traditional in shape. Also we don't have all our planned circles working due to other crops, beds which are currently in that space. But we have two operational domes, and these are working great, even though our circles may be smaller than what is the norm as well..

We can grow Pineapple!!

But this year has by and large been more experimental, and we have wanted to try out some "other" types of crop.. so we put in Pineapple crowns., and to our amazement they have actually taken.. I am very excited about the prospects of growing Pineapple!! How awesome is that?? I currently have four, that have taken, but have an extra three crowns which I will place under/around some fruit trees in another place in the garden.

Our tomato/cucumber plants in tyres.

 We have many tomato plants this year, and despite having sown then in situ a little early it seems we may still get some sort of yield from them. Next year we will do a more controlled seedling planting. We have already harvested cucumbers, which were really firm and sweet. So we will try that again next year. 

Our first swale :) or part of it at least

Having made the decision to employ Permaculture techniques to our veg patch has proven to be a tremendous learning experience, but also lots of setup work.. I know Hazel will probably disagree with that, but we are learning as we go, and though its been laborious, it has also been fun. We dug the beginning section of our first swale in the lower orchard part of our garden a couple of weekends back. This swale will catch our bathwater from the second bathroom, and it is our plan to plant strawberries, comfrey and perhaps goosberries on the ridges of the swales.. our plan is to be able to pass the planned fruit tree spots so that they too get fed with the bathwater.. but its early days yet, and much planning still needs to happen. :)

Boysenberry

On the orchard side of the fence we have planted two Boysenberry bushes, these will eventually cover the fence, and also act as a natural barrier/living fence here. On the other orchard fence facing the garden proper, we have lemongrass, and chives, but will also later expand with more comfrey and maybe even horseradish, and perhaps even some more Rosemary. Comfrey is very good chicken feed.. :)

Our lemongrass - still very young.

The living fence is a way of keeping out bugs etc, and that's why one should plant smelly stuff on the perimeter of the garden.. ideally.. :-P Also lemongrass creates a very dense root system which prevents the penetration of stuff like unwanted grass!! Which has really been a huge problem for us since day one... and we are slowly starting to get rid of it.. through manual labour, our own btw.. as we have since found out that moles love grassy areas. So if we can eliminate the grass in our veg patch then maybe just maybe the moles will disappear too.. *sigh*

Two sisters... :)

We ended up doing 2 of the traditional three-sisters (corn, beans and pumpkin), we did corn and beans together.. but will clear an area for the real thing next spring. :) We found that our corn plants were really healthy looking and strong, and our beans growing up the corn are bigger, and sweeter... :)

The Strawberry patch

The strawberry patch will be reclaimed in favour of a circle. And like I mentioned earlier we will be replanting the strawberries on the ridges of the swales. We will still be doing many more swales over the next couple of months, so there will be plenty of space for these little delights.

Raspberry

On our veg patch side of the fence we have a solitary raspberry bush.. we got a few from Carmen and Pierre over the mountain in De Hoop, but sadly out of the five, we have one survivor. We places shade-cloth along the fence which will also help separate the boysenberry bushes from the raspberry bushes in future.. and as the raspberry is of the cane variety it down not need support like the boysenberry will. :) I am very excited about these tow additions to our veg patch as the climate here is perfect for them. :)

Our Tamarillo tree

We have also planted a Tamarillo tree-ling in the one corner of the veg patch. This will eventually become a nice tree with edible fruit, under which we will create a food forest of sorts with more shade-loving things.
It will be interesting to see if it will thrive in our strange valley here.. :) as it was gifted to us by friends of ours near Lanceria up in Gauteng.. But for now it seems eager to grow, and has tripled in size since we planted it.

Brinjal - for the first time!

And last but not least we have our first brinjal plant ever! Yay!! I don't know where is came from as we didn't actually sow any brinjal seeds in any of our circles.. but this one plant has decided that that's where it is going to grow.. and it looks very good, so hopefully we will get a few brinjal from it.. very exciting stuff.. Its always such a pleasure seeing ones garden flourish, even if some if the plants are not in their proper places, or seem coincidental, and this year more than any of the last three years here, have we actually been more excited about planning and developing the veg patch into something glorious!!! at least in our own opinion.. hehehe..

Project mudroom & shade house

The beginning of things to come.. New front door.

Towards the end of January we decided it was time to start on some of the planned projects for 2012. One of them involves building a section of our stoep closed in order to create a mudroom, or utility room actually.

This will be a room where we will have space for extra storage for "stuff" that does not belong in the house proper.. like the washing-machine, the deep freeze, Jan's Biogas things, storage cupboards and shelves for seeds, and that sort of thing... and the dogs!

The inside..

Granted its not going to be a massive room, but with some clever design, and storage it will be an awesome addition to the house. Not only because it will be a nice room for Jan to showcase and demonstrate how the Biogas stuff works, but also because then the dogs will be moved out there to sleep in the evenings.. and much less dirt and hair in the house.. Yay!

We have wanted to do something like this for a long time, and now this year we finally have gotten around to starting this, we have two builders who will be helping on an on/off basis.

The front with a nice big window

 The builder himself is a Rastafarian, and his helper is just an ordinary guy. But I tell you what.. our house is not perfect, and by no means square, or straight, so that alone has been a challenge for them. We don't mind though, cause at least some of the originality of the house gets preserved... hehehe.. And usually after lunch break things seem to go a little off kilter... I will not say why, as you can probably imagine.. lol. But it matters not, because it has been a pleasure having them here for the two weeks it took them to build up to roof level.

Up to the roof

We opted to build in two doors - one onto the stoep itself which will be the new front door, and one going into the garden, and down to the washing line, which will serve as the back door. we will also not plaster the outside, but rather lime-wash the brickwork. We will also have to build a parapet-wall on each end of the room to accommodate for difference in roof/ceiling heights.. I did say that nothing in this house was straight or standard by any means..and once we are done with the new roof, then we can actually paint the which plaster, which is in dire need of a fresh coat of "GOOD" outdoor paint... :)

The seed tray shelf

Another project which we have started is the new shade-house. This is one part of the Permaculture principles which we are slowly incorporating into our small-holding.. Its a place where we can propagate seeds, and sow seedlings for planting out once the season comes around.

We started by building a long shelf of sorts along the kitchen wall. This will hold all the seedling trays, which can be moved along as we make new trays, and as the seedlings start to develop. We already have shade-cloth in place here, and for that reason Hazel suggested that we make the shade house here, also because it is our access point to the veggie patch.. so it could not be more perfect or practical!

The whole seedling shelf

So in future we will start sowing seeds in the trays, and then nurture them under here, slowly moving them into the sun, so that by the time they are big enough to plant out, then they will be strong enough to survive. :) The problem we have in our valley, is that our spring/summer seasons start very late, sometimes as late as January, so we have a very short season in which to grow stuff, and sowing directly into the ground is risky, because we have frost, and very cold conditions very late in the year.. Like last year our good weather only started halfway through December! By them most people in the rest of the country already have good plants, and might even be harvesting crops!! So maybe by changing the way we sow seeds, to accommodate the micro-climate in our valley, we might have a better chance of getting a better yield. But hey.. that's how we learn, and given that we have only been here for three full years, I don't think we are doing too badly. :)

Developing the veg patch from scratch - literally!

Mr. Rooster crowing for his breakfast

Time sure does fly sometimes.. it just struck me that we are in December!!! The photos for this post were taken in November... ahh well... been busy. *blink blink*..

Coming along

One circle planted/sown, the dome on the second circle. We have moved that now to a new location, and the second circle is also planted/sown and mulched.. also we have made two raised beds, the one has Mielies (corn) and beans, and the other has Raspberries. We have positioned them such that in time as the veg patch develops then we can extend them and maybe even join them somehow.. Father time will help us decide what is best, and how. :)

Nuther raised bed - for Raspberries... Yum!!

For now though we are enjoying seeing the lettuces coming up, we have some onions in and sweetcorn, and pumpkin (self sowers from last season which we are going to allow to finish before we put a dome on that spot), some tomatoes and cucumbers in tyres, some pineapple plants (exciting!), lots of strawberries (which we don't want to move just yet either), some beetroot, potatoes, horseradish, radish, comfrey, some herbs and a few other things. 

We are at this stage still exprimenting which we develop the new permaculture layout, but are already very excited to see the potential which is unfolding as we go along.. we will be turning the shadehouse, and extending a small section to excorporate a small fruit orchard for which we have some peaches and a plum. We also have some old apple trees, which we need to thin out, and then only keep one of two which we will help along a little.. Our Biogas reactor is now producing gas, and the effluent water from that we are starting to use on the trees and shrubs in our garden.. we also have a worm-bin going. The way things are now we produce very little waste, basically all of our organic waste goes either to the worms, the chickens or the digester. What ends up in the bin is packaging etc. We recycle all newspaper, and most of the plastic bottles.. so here's to going green! <3 I hope that in 2012 we will be able to reduce our waste even more.. :)

October 2011 - Getting our groove on with Permaculture

The infant stage of our new veg patch

Quite a lot has happened since the actual date of the last post.. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we had gone on a Permaculture course over a weekend in September at the Outeniqua Trout Lodge which was hosted by Permaculture South Africa's Hazel Mugford. And she has a reputation of note, and comes highly recommended!! So we went to gain insight into what we were doing wrong, and what we could do to create the change we wanted to see in the veg garden.

Our first circle with it's keyhole

We had the previous year failed miserably to plant/sow anything, and had a huge mole problem.

We have since found out that the stones we used to create nice raised beds etc, were actually attracting the moles, so that was change No 1 - getting rid of all the stones in the veg patch. Having done this where we started with the new layout, we have seen that the new part is now mole-free. Yay!! 

Jan digging the keyhole

Problem No 2 - creating a layout that would work not only with the domes, but also for us, and still be kind of pretty. So we decided on a kind of S-curve in our patch to accommodate the septic tank and run-off, as well as a tree that we had planted last season. 

We will also be doing the raised beds that we were shown, using sheet mulching, cardboard and manure. So we have a very infantile start at this time, but hopefully in time and as we progress with the moving of the dome the structure will come into its own, and we will end up having a fabulous veg patch with good yields, and diversity. :)

Our permaculture adventure has just started, and it is indeed one which we will continue on in more ways than one. Having done the course has been a true eye-opener for us. We are still very keen to do a mushroom course with Hazel as well at a later date, seeing as we have quite a few wild mushrooms here around Autumn and would like to know more about them, as well as how to maintain a mushroom yield, and perhaps even develop that into a supply. Making the changes we want will take time and dedication to the cause, we are prepared and well equipped now to make them, and I for one am really excited to see and document how our veg patch and garden develop in time. :)