WEEDS AND OTHER WONDERS

Weeds are friends not foes. A weed is simply a plant that, according to us, is not growing where it belongs. We are so very wrong about this. Go and look at those “weeds” growing in your pathways; they will more than likely have long and deep roots, that means they grow in hard soil to oxygenate and loosen. Where soil is to loose and busy eroding, you will find the opposite, you will find plants with bushy shallow roots, these roots “fill in/holds together” the soil over a period of time.

In nature plants grow at the right place at the right time, the professionals (the ones with Degrees etc) call these pioneer plants and left to their own devices they will totally restore the soil.

Stinging Nettle (this photo was taken at KD)

Stinging nettle, for example, have an extensive root system, (Fibrous roots)  sometimes spreading up to several meters, trying to hold the soil together, this plants also have medicinal value – there are various claims, but it does seem to work rather well  against arthritis. You make a tea from the leaves and drink this, the plant also completely looses the sting once in is cooked and the leaves are edible. Always have some Bulbine growing in your garden as well; when you get stung by the nettle, just break some Bulbine and rub it on, it takes the sting away.

Bulbine

Kakibos

Then there is Kakibos (Khaki Weed), this stuff grows fast and everywhere, but they are also high enough to form a windbreak and provide some shade for your plants and they makes an excellent natural anti insect potion.  You use the whole plant, just not the roots. Throw the plant material in a container with a lid you can close. Fill the container with water and let the lot rot for about a month or until you can smell it. Normally people strain this (to get rid of the small bits of plant material, otherwise they block the nozzle on the sprayer) and then it gets sprayed onto plants against pests like grasshoppers, aphids and more…  I find that soaking the soil around the plants also help, so I mostly just take a bucket and drench the soil. There is a rather interesting story behind how Kakibos got its name –

During the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) the British wore Khaki uniforms, having abandoned their bright red uniforms after the Boers gave them such a hiding during the First Anglo-Boer War (1880-1881). They thus become known as the Khakis.

The British brought their horses to South Africa. On paper, these horses were superior to the Boer ponies - but they required supplemental feeding. The fodder was procured in Argentina and shipped to South Africa. It contained the seeds of tagetes minuta, a member of the marigold family, though it does not produce the showy flowers. Soon is was well-established throughout South Africa in the areas that saw action during the war. It was named khakibos (Afrikaans) after the khaki-clad soldiers who brought it. In English it is known as Khaki Bush or Khaki Weed.

So, before you pull out that weed, think again. I suggest you leave the ones growing around the beds and in the pathways, only remove the ones in between your plants. Here the mulch also works well as prevention, seeing that the mulch blocks the sun, you are less likely to have weeds in between your plants in the first place.

It is obviously necessary to thin them out where needed and if things really get too much, cut their flowers, before they seed, that way there are no new seeds to spread and make millions of new plants. The same, the cut the flowers before they seed, applies to any plant that gets out of hand.

The new beds in the garden are filling up as fast as we can make them. We ran into a bit of a problem with the water, there are 5 taps, but only one and a half working hose pipes and seeing that we are planting more, we were just not keeping up anymore. This problem is now sorted and planting can continue…

Let me share the following before I forget….

Walking up to the garden the other morning and look who comes from the other side….

Cheetah enters the road just in front of me

Eyeballing me from less than 20 meters away... to eat or not to eat....

Lucky me, according to Riaan he (Cheetah) was already very full, he went for a lie-down a little further down the road

This was a very exciting and very scary moment all at the same time, it never really looked like it was feeling like attacking, but this is one of the (it not the) fastest land animal, if it decides to charge from that close you have no chance! I must also add that there is not a single documented case of a Cheetah attacking a fully grown human.

DRY GARDEN

There is a tented camp here, but because there are not always people around, the garden always looks neglected and dry, so we decided to make a Dry garden. What fun! 

We only bought a few Aloes, Impala Lily's and Bulbine, the rest of the plants and rocks and tree trunks where all “harvested’ from the surrounding area.

The canvas

Another thing I got was a big pile of red sand, in the left corner, I needed the sand for the plants because this soil is very sandy, not what Aloes and other succulent like.

Just brainstorming, going with the flow and asking the plants where they want to be...

Getting there.. the red sand also became a feature in some of the beds, it works so well with the greens and other reds from the Aloes

Then there are some darker beds, with Mother-in-law's tongue and mostly Impala Lily's, but the Lily's are still very small, they will make a beautiful  pink and white flower, like in the picture below and they need almost no water.

Impala Lily

Hard at work...

Adding some detail, this bed is right in the front and I decided to keep in simple and low, otherwise you miss the Aloes and other pretty stuff behind it

Looking very different...

The center space. 

Everything in this bed, rocks, trunks and plants, came from the surrounding area, even the sand.

A more completed center area

To the left of the door and on the way to the tents

Looking good and getting there..

Towards the back, we found a perfect trunk to serve as a seat right at the back of the garden

Some details at the back, those bones once belonged to a Giraffe and the Aloe survived an attack from a herd of Elephants, so I though they deserve a special place.

Completion, for now...

Back to the bush....

CULTURE AND CUCUMBER

Cleaning crew and the garden in the background - there is this believe among various rural people that you take a bit of their soul if you take a photo of them, you have to respect this, so only half the crew where willing to have a bit of their souls stolen.

I have realized that rural (mostly black) people have a natural sense of community, where as the (mostly) whites just do not seem to get it right. I might elaborate on this later, but for now that will require some more thinking .

At the moment the lodge is closed for the staff annual holidays, this does not mean everybody goes on holiday. This is the time for maintenance and more.  On the more list is the cleaning and clearing of the whole garden between the 60 Rondawels (see photo), the pool and the Restaurant. The supervision of this undertaking became my job. This does mean that things in the Veggie garden are happening a bit slower than anticipated, but all in good time. 

Rondawels and the garden

The cleaner and clearing crew consist of six Sesotho speaking ladies from the surrounding homelands/trust lands.  They pretty much know what to do and things run a lot smoother once you  find a common language. I speak English and Afrikaans and a strange “workable” mix of Zulu and Xhosa.  Sesotho or Pedi as it is also called is a total different language, but most Sesotho’s also seem to speak or at least understand Zulu and Xhosa. It is rather amazing that these, often illiterate people speak 6 or more languages with ease, but not always English or Afrikaans.  There is Johanna (probably not her real name) and she communicates very well in Afrikaans, so we have a mutual language, halfway there!

You also have to acknowledge the Induna in the group, the Induna is normally one of the older ladies and within their group she is the leader. Now in this case we do not speak/have a language in common, but I have to acknowledge her. I now speak to Johanna, she translates to Maria and the process runs very smooth.

This garden is absolute paradise, it is not a Landscape Architect kind of look, it is after all in the bush, you want that feel and look to be dominant, but it was starting to resemble a jungle. The jungle look also seems to attack the elephants, if you do not clean up, they will, and they have a rather rough and indiscriminate style, so it is better we do it…

Pool and garden

I am planning on using the group of ladies for one day in the Vegetable garden, just to make as many mulch beds as possible. The beds we made are all full of seedlings now.  The more beds I can get ready, the quicker I can increase variety and volume. I explained how to make these beds in the previous article http://chasethegreendragon.blogspot.com/2013/06/breaking-new-ground-so-to-speak_12.html

I did manage to plant various herbs and some Gooseberries. The purpose being companion plants and also as an extra dash of flavor for the kitchen to create with.

We will also need a lot more seedlings, while we wait for the beds. Some people say you can plant inside these beds immediately, I prefer to just wet it daily for about two weeks, just to let it all soak through. (these new bed where used as pathway over the last couple of years). In my experience, if you plant immediately the plants are a bit slow in getting started, your second planting in that bed will probably be much better.

The Marigold barrier. (note the little Duiker on the other side of the fence)

This is a very good idea, a barrier of Marigolds right around the garden, it keeps all the crawlers out, but it does not work so well for flying things...

There is also a lot of experimenting going on. I would like to harvest as many seeds as possible; the problem is that a lot of the goodies in the garden are from packets from the co-op and somehow related to Monsanto. I now harvest the seeds, and then I plant a sample tray (6 – 12 or them) to see if they will actually grow. Some do and some don’t. There is no point is savings seeds that will not grow. I harvested some Chilly seeds and they did not even look like seeds, it is just this “empty little pocket”. We are gradually moving toward buying organic seeds, but that is not as easy as it might sound. Admittedly we are a bit late in the season and a lot of suppliers are low on stock, but with the wonderful weather we have, I am trying everything, even got a few cucumbers going, in the middle of winter...

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…..

ANTS AND ART

Paintings by Wilfred, a local (Hoedspruit) artist, I love the colors

How do you know the food you buy is really food? By that I mean how you know it is not genetically modified, just for starters. There is quite an easy test for your veggies. Let’s say you have a butternut and you want to know, you simply plant some of the seeds and see if they grow and if they do grow, they are not gm and you are now growing your own butternuts.

I am sharing my kitchen with at least two nests of small black ants, they are complete sugar addicts. Besides from the ants there is a squirrel that comes for the bread and a mouse or maybe two and the monkeys are starting to take a closer look. It is time for lockdown!

Let us get one thing very straight, I like little crawly things, I find them fascinating and sometimes infuriating, when they take over. I have learned that if you keep you space clean there is no problem; it is when you leave stuff to eat lying around when the problems start. I refuse to use poisons because I simply do not like the stuff near me. I will rather live with the ants and things.

I also find where they enter the kitchen, and then I leave some food for them, just outside or sometimes just inside, but out of the way. They then eat this and don’t come running all over the kitchen looking for stuff, but again if there are thing lying around, they will come for it, they will go invite their cousins on the neighbors property to come help if there is enough.

 It is really interesting to watch and see what they consider food. They obviously cannot resist honey, or sugar, if you leave tea bags (from a cup with sugar in) they will suck the teabags dry!, maybe they just like the tea, either way here is a quick way to dry teabags, which you can soak in paraffin or something and use as firelighters, leave it for the ants.

They do not recognize concentrated Oros type cool drinks as “food”, although it is very sweet. They completely ignore it. I always considered margarine to be more plastic than food; I do not think that anymore, the ants love the margarine, so it must have something they recognize as food, like seed oils?

Hostile take-over! Forgot to put the margarine away…

Then there are the raisons, now this has me wondering! I have this bag full of “commercial” raisins. They taste good and I left a few out for the ants, they won’t eat it, they do not recognize it as food! By all rhyme and reason they should love it! Now I am scrutinizing this packet, reading the labels. There is nothing strange there accept for a preservative called sulphur dioxide. So I Google this and sulpher dioxide (SO2) is another by product from the petro chemical industry, to be precise, it is a colorless gas, released from burning fossil fuels like coal and oil. This gas is sprayed onto the fruit as a preservative. That gas that smells like rotten eggs, that is sculpture dioxide.

 If you Google some more you get, as usual, too much information and facts and fiction of all kinds. There are the normal rumors about it causing cancer and then there was some studies done and it was found that contact with SO2 effects the respiratory system and can cause bronchitis and induce asthma  and things like that, but I am no scientist, so I will just listen to the ants.

I am well aware that I might sound like a crazy old coon carrying on about the ants and all, but doesn’t the bible say something about watching the ants and becoming wise (not exactly those words but something like that)?

The packed (with the raisons) also does not say anything about genetically modified or not, I was under the impression it is now law in South Africa for this information (gm or not) to be in the packaging, so much for law, or rather the implementation thereof.

I do not think I will eat these raison either, maybe feed it to the monkeys, definitely not, but then again, it will be interesting to see if they will eat it….. I suppose once won’t kill them.

Not Fya, another Orb Web Spider

Then the sad story, my spider is dead. Joyce killed her! There was this awesome Fennel Orb living on my veranda, she spun her web under the roof. We had a few run ins in the beginning, but she wizened up very quickly and just moved her web a bit higher. I was great watching her grow and eat and grow and surprise! She was not getting fat, she was pregnant. I saw her cocoon the eggs and she was her slim and slender self again.

Then doom stuck. Joyce, the lady that works for Dieter and Monica as Domestic decides to sweep and clean my veranda, why I do not know! Okay so she obviously meant well, but in the process she killed Fya with a broom! at least it was not Doom! (The poison people stray on insects). Death was instant.

Now I feel like a surrogate mother, I have (I have no idea how many) baby spiders/eggs to look after. I will protect Fya’s offspring with my life!

My cottage and me, halfway up this tree. Monkeys and more, never a bore….

I have been wondering about something. When I write by hand, I use my left hand, but when I use a computer I do it with the mouse in the right hand. I can do both, but somehow the right hand takes over. Now I have been wondering if this can affect your creative process and how you think and perceive things. Different parts of the brain are at work here, so I might be onto something. I am going to write things by hand first, let the ideas flow by hand and then copy to computer and see if there is any notable difference in style etc.     

 To be continued