Growing up, my Ouma always had fruit and vegetables growing in our garden. Fond memories of strawberries and gooseberries lovingly picked and stored while we were away for Christmas holidays. Arriving home from school to fresh tomatoes and beans with lunch.
There was always a recycling program happening in the kitchen (this used to drive my Dad mad as it was a space consuming exercise!) and a compost bucket next to the sink where food was prepared... While this seemed like an abolute mission, my mom was always very proud of the fact that there was only one bin bag leaving the house every week (for a family of 5 this is pretty impressive!) with the compost going into a heap in the garden and the recycleable materials being rinsed and sent to an organisation in our neighbourhood that sorts, processes and sells the materials, keeping a large group of mentally disabled people employed and cared for. Mom's recycling program is a lot more organised and tidy now - three different coloured bins in the front driveway for glass, paper and plastic get cleared out every other month or whenever they're full and there's no more 'junk' in the kitchen! The organic material from the kitchen now goes towards feeding the chickens outside the back door (there are about 15 of them at the moment) that provide a constant stream of lovely eggs which Ouma still uses in her regular baking and there's a new tradition of an omlette day once a week when the eggs are adding up!
In my own house, I have struggled with the recycling principles my mom instilled in us from a young age (two of us fill an entire black wheelie bin every week!) and am very aware that this is something we need to work on and improve. In the meantime, I've purchased a worm farm (it sounds really awful but you get over it quickly!) which takes care of the organic waste (you chuck all of your raw food scraps into it and the worms turn it into natural fertilizer (which comes out of the tap at the bottom) and vermicompost (worm poops - they don't smell a bit and are completely sterile no matter what the worms eat!). The by products of the worm process lead to me getting really excited about my garden! I started by putting the liquid fertilizer on my roses and other flowers and these all started growing like wild-fire... Then I heard an interview on sustainable food gardening and decided to do a little research on a food gardens. Within a day I'd rushed out to buy seeds and cleared space in my courtyard pots! I added compost and planted gem squash, tomatoes, beans, basil, mint and parsley. I am proud to say that everything I planted not only made my courtyard look and smell wonderful, but also provided crunchy, fresh vegetables all summer long! I have gotten even more ambitious and planted bunching onions, chives and lettuce as well as a pot of Thyme which I see as a long term investment (it's perennial and as I remember from Ouma's garden they are hardy and last forever!). I also followed a successive planting scheme so there will be a constant stream of veggies for a while still! I have planted more beans, tomatoes and squashes every 3 weeks or so and the last ones are just coming up now... I feed them with worm juice regularly (possibly more than I need to but once you get excited you tend to do more than necessary!) and make sure they have water every morning - once you get into a routine it's easy... and the day you harvest your first crop (no matter how big or small) you'll suddenly realise it's all definately worthwhile - in fact, it was so exhilirating picking tomaotes to go into a salad when I was having friends over for dinner I couldn't help telling everyone!!! I picked the gemsquash very young and and steamed them - the skins were soft and they were wonderfully fresh and tasty...
I'm not brave enough to have chickens yet (well, my boyfriend isn't ready to have managery in his garden but I'm working on him!) and I'm more keen on ducks anyway! In the meantime though, my rottweiler (Billy) wouldn't approve of birds taking over his garden... So the garden belongs to Billy and the vegetables (and big trees, hadedas, guineafowls, squirrels and a miriad of other wildlife that can get away quickly!)
My next project is a greenhouse - I'm going to start small and see how it goes but it extends the vegetable growing season to all year round which I find very exciting! I also intent to propagate avocado and hydrangea cuttings... Can't wait to document that journey!
