Failed Horticulturist

I really enjoyed working through thinking about the design of my allotment plot, how it used the square space, how people would interact with it, giving access for harvesting & cultivating while maximizing use of space… Well it has been interesting to see how others have come to their designs, some after a first attempt, and others after careful consideration.

four long beds

There is a reason why mass agriculture uses strait lines to plant things in, you can do it on mass, so the above gives an agronomic approach to the plot. I can imagine rows of mielies, carrots, swiss chard … but all in neat rows.

Kitty's 4 triangles

Kitty’s plot layout was carefully considered, in fact long before they started any digging on the site there were two lines of stones carefully laid out diagonally on the square plot splitting it into 4 triangles, I think the one line was grey stones and the other was yellow stones. Anyway what transpired is the layout above, more on her post digging the foundations.

Jacky's eye of God

The most recent layout is the plot alongside mine, where Jackie has laid out a long ovoid path resulting in one oval central bed and two arch shaped beds, well that is the plan anyway.

For most of the dry Summer months I have been able to take water which was pooled up alongside the old netball courts, well that has now dried up. I make it sound like a natural water source though, it was in fact a leak in the council pipes giving us a pool of water for irrigation and for the frogs to enjoy. I have tried carrying 10 liter cannister of water across about once a week to keep things alive.

So some people are apparently arranging for a tap to be installed so that we can water our plants, but until then it is carrying water or dead plants. My plants have been doing remarkably well with little water, amazing what some dried grass as a mulch can do.

I am a plant person first and foremost, but I cant help being excited that a Chameleon decided to move onto my allotted space.

I usually snap photos with my camera phone when I am working at the allotment, which explains the terrible quality of the pics on my blog, but I could not get a decent pic as you can see below.

Camera phone is not up to the task (can you see it?)

Had to come in with a macro feature but even then it is as it chameleons’ powers of camouflage extend to being photographed!

Family road-trip up the East Coast; Wilderness, Storms River/Tsitsikama, Bathurst, Morgan Bay Pietermaritzburg and then back; Mgazana, PE and finally home to Cape Town.

At some point on the trip I got an email from Sean who has the plot alongside mine:

Hombre-
Since you were away, harvested a few of your beans the other day… So damn delicious cooked in butter and garlic, with a bit of feta stirred in after cooking, served with baby tomatoes and basil.

The plants are looking good.

Help yourself to my baby marrows…

Sean

I was really relieved to find that a friend Bradley had managed to keep things alive while I was away. In fact more than alive, harvestable produce which Sean helped himself to! (his marrows died but I am eyeing those lovely eggplants and chillies)

Anyway plenty to go round as you can see from the produce I picked when I got back in early Jan.

Beans, baby butternut, rocket & chives

Well I suppose it is the nature of organic growing and self harvesting, not that I mind, but I think that if you were eating a home-made hamburger with rocket from Duncan’s allotment that he jabbers about ALL THE TIME, and you happened to bite into a crunchy snail…

The offending snail on beautiful rocket leaf

Nobody got to eat the snail luckily.

Just thought this would be a good time to compare the first photos I took with the current state of the allotment sites:

Hmmm big pile of soil must go back in hole ... tired

I have spared some of the detail on digging but let me tell you it DOES GET DUSTY when the South-Easter is blowing and you are tossing sand in the air. So I have to admit I rushed finishing this bed, soil preparation not nearly as good as first bed.

retaining wall to create gravel path

One problem with lifting asphalt is the compacted layers below, it is hard, but it is also very gravelly. If you plant carrots in either of these first two beds they are going to be skew carrots. You can see my solution below; what is going to be the path between the beds now becomes a way of getting rid of some of the gravel.

But hey it is finished, just got to get something growing there.

So after a fair amount of sweat and hard work I finally have some things growing in my allotment. Sticks are there to ward off docs and cats that might think this is an ideal place to do their business, as much as I like the fertilizer value of that the jolly animals insist on scratching around and uprooting things.

My circular central plot with 2l milk bottles as water reservoirs

The 2 liter milk bottles with their tops cut off are for slow drip irrigation; holes in the bottom of each one allows the water that I pour in there to seep into the soil slowly, and the advantage of water seeping in slowly is that it wets a wider area due to horizontal movement of the water.

Others have also been making progress on getting stuff to grow:

An idea I got really excited about was using the bits of tar I dug up as retaining walls for the beds, of course I could get someone with a bakkie to haul off the stuff but then it just becomes landfill elsewhere. Well there is no chance of doing a no-till garden on an ex-netball tarred surface, but applying some of the permaculture principles I should try and make use of what is on the site.

central circle getting filled in with tar border

You can see above the beginnings of the tar retaining wall. The grass that I cleared from the site and stacked up is far from composted, but goes into this hole layered with the sandy soil that I dug up.

Then I got a tarpaulin and lugged a heavy load of composted garden and kitchen waste to add to the top layer of soil, most important is the biotic component introduced with this compost, lots of earthworms to continue turning over the soil.

Tarbaulin with a heap of well composted stuff from my garden

You can also see the little retaining walls around the bed. It all still looks so harsh, we will get something growing soon.

If it sounds like I am moaning, I really am not, digging up sheets of tar with a pick is lots of fun, and it gave me some time to work on my pick wielding skills. But Yay the tar is all lifted and I can start digging into the soil, such that it is, to start the growing beds.

While digging up tar, and doing a bit of reading, I got to thinking about design. I have often seen the standard door sized rectangular raised beds built with layers of organic matter to get the biotic self fertilising balance going, so my initial plan was to break the 5 x 5m plot into 4 main squares, each being two beds.

Left: First thoughts; Right: Final layout

The idea of the round central garden is that it is more permanent and decorative, elevated above the surrounding beds. I arrived at this layout on my own, but chatting to a friend who grew up in East Germany he thought I was making use of a classic design he had seen many times before, interesting.

starting to dig the central circle

Above you can just make out where I have started to dig the circular central garden, wow that ground is hard!