BREAKING NEW GROUND, so to speak

There are two ways to get to the garden, you can walk through the lodge area, but this is the long way or you can go sort of round the back, but this is through the bush. When I say bush I mean wild untamed Africa, lions and Rhino and all. I am obviously taking the shortcut. The first week was scary and every movement and sound grabs your attention and then you get blaze, until the reality hits you when a cheetah shows up with just a meager little fence, around the garden, between you and him…. (The electric fence is only switched on at night, to keep the elephants out).

Visitors in and around the garden

This part of the blog will be much more about gardening, specifically a garden where we need to produce for at least 60 people per day. I do have the space, the one garden alone is the size of a soccer field, not that I know exactly how big a soccer field is, but it is big for a garden.

I am blessed in a lot of ways. Firstly it is normally a big problem to teach and old dog new tricks, as they say. In this case the 3 ladies that are currently working in the gardens are already use to organic gogga management. A gogga, by the way is a collective (Afrikaans) word for anything with 6 to 8 legs.

I also have “raw materials” like cow dung, mulch and more by the tons! There is also already a lot happening, but one of my first challenges will be to create more space to produce more food. Currently everything, even the herbs are planted in rows, I get nightmares about rows! This also means there are more pathways than plants. 

So the first step is to turn half the pathways into beds. I do this by “filling in” the pathways between rows, thus making beds. Obviously the soil in these new beds are not the best, because it used to be pathways, so a nice thick layer of dry cow dung is a good start, wet the cow dung well and then lay down a nice thick layer of mulch and wet again. Keep this bed wet for about two weeks and it starts looking like soil you can plant in. While this is happening, I am planting lots of seeds to make seedlings, to plant in the new beds.

  

All in little rows

 

Making new mulch beds

Sabrina having a siesta

I think the only two things we fully supply the kitchen with at the moment are paw paws and lettuce.

Well, at least I broke the ice by writing this, but the timing is quite bad because it is 7 in the morning and I need to get going. 

To be continued…..