Vegetable meanderings

The sign at the side of the dirt road should be warning enough: seedlings are sold here “wholesale to farmers”. But I want seedlings badly and I can’t bear a trip into town.

Peppers for Africa in the kitchen: the garden worked hard all summer

The women behind the counter can probably tell from a mile off that I am not a big buyer. The grumpy one spits something at me. “Pardon?” I squeak. The nicer woman meets my eye. “There’s no spinach, broccoli and cauliflower,” she deciphers.

Pity about the broccoli. A dozen little plants are growing strongly in my veggie garden, but I wanted more. Now, in the autumn coolness, is the time to plant them, I’ve learned. They become covered in mildew in the hotter months.

“I’ll take 10 each of whatever else you have, please, but no beetroot,” I say (I don’t like beetroot, the way it turns everything on your plate red).

Word vomit

Broccoli does better in my garden in the cooler months

I babble on. Call it nervousness; my son calls it “word vomit”. “Last time, I got 20 of each, and it was far too much,” I say. Indeed it was: 20 somehow seemed to be more like 50, and I was handing out seedlings to anyone vaguely interested. The comment is ignored.

I recall my last visit here: a big, burly chap drove up in his bakkie (pick-up) and bought 1,000 tomato seedlings.

Anyway, the women here are friendly enough to a little buyer like me, and encourage me to “give us a tinkle” soon to check if the other seedlings are ready. And for R18.20 (less than two euros), I buy 10 thyme plants, 10 tomatoes, 10 cabbage and 10 lettuce.

Gurus

Now for the planting. First, I consult my gurus: Toni B Walters (Cultivating Flavour, Lizard Leap’s Press); and Jane Griffiths (Jane’s Delicious Garden, Sunbird Publishers).

The vegetable garden is tired after working hard all summer, so we’ll leave a few beds empty for a while (apart some coriander that may seed itself): they’ll be snug under layers of newspaper.

Oh yes, the planting. What should be a 30-minute job takes close to three hours. It’s as if I actually stop thinking when I’m gardening; I just go with where it takes me.

There are bottles to be planted, weeds to be pulled out, things to be cut back. I find a row of ancient red bricks, buried for who knows how long. They will work fabulously as a pathway near the milkwood trees. I dig them out. It’s far too much trouble to fetch a spade from the shed, of course, so I do it with a hand spade. And I land up with a big blister in the palm of my hand.

Close-up look

The lemon tree: too laden to cut back yet

Then I discover a very long, thin snake. I get a real close-up look at him as my face is inches away from him while I squeeze my body under the lemon tree that has grown over the pathway: I can’t cut it back yet because it’s heavy with lemons.

He is pretending to be dead (I think it’s a grass snake), so I turn the trickle of water from the tank on him. Poor terrified thing, he flees. I don’t scream or run away. And if I could pat myself on my back, I would.

Back to the planting. I stop planting cabbages when there are 20 in the ground (thought I bought 10).

I am determined to grow tomatoes without using poisons. This is, after all, tomato country. I can remember my grandfather, who farmed in this area before retiring to this exact house, giving me two tomatoes to taste: one grown in a tunnel, the other in the sun. You cannot compare the taste.

Tomatoes like weeds

The self-seeded cherry tomatoes grow like weeds here, but every bought seedling has literally rotted. This could be something called botrytis, a fungus that thrives in warm, wet weather: just the kind of summer we’ve had.

Maybe this cooler weather will be better for tomatoes. Plus, on the advice of one of my gurus, I don’t include manure in the planting holes. I do, however, line the holes – 20 should do – with comfrey and seaweed, as well as a bit of shredded newspaper, and I’ll keep feeding them with a seaweed, comfrey and/or “worm wee” tea (earthworms don’t actually urinate; the vermi-liquid is a by-product of the process). This is said to help keep disease away, at least partly by making plants stronger.

In summer, some lettuce shrivelled in the sun and some bolted in the shade. So I plant them all over to try to figure out where they will do best.

The thyme is also spread all over. Although I haven’t eaten meat for about 30 years, thyme reminds me of the biltong my grandmother made on the farm, and it remains one of my favourite herbs.

Somehow, while this is happening, I manage to acquire trays of spinach, broccoli and pepper seedlings, a rue plant, and seeds for red onion and peas … no wonder a gardener’s work is never done.