There be giants here

Only the most intrepid of us – like my dear V – have ventured outside in the rain and wind of the past week. And he did it all for me.

Table two protects those saplings at the back from fiddling hands

I have quite an affair going with growing new plants from cuttings and seeds. But one of my previous cuttings tables (built precariously out of bamboo) simply rotted and collapsed; the other (an old plastic garden table) bowed so dangerously in its brittle centre that it was a miracle it could support even a whiff of plant. 

It had got to the point that most of my cutting pots and seedlings trays were scattered over the ground.

I mused, aloud and often, that my new tables would be really big and long to hold a lot of plants. They’d be made out of something strong and resilient, perhaps treated decking planks. Maybe they’d have a shelf to hold empty pots. All we needed was someone to actually build the thing/s.

Most unhandy

Table one is a beauty. I don’t even notice the slightly splayed legs

After more than a year of musing and keening, V, my most unhandy husband, steps up to the task. First, a big pile of decking is delivered. I fully expect that the pile will lie on the lawn, carving brown ruts into the grass, for a few months. But no, come the weekend, and construction of the first table begins in a respite from the rain.

V works tirelessly. I am called on to assist with holding things in place so he can attach the legs. It’s a very strange business: it involves holding the top at a guesstimate distance from the wall (hopefully the same as the length of the legs). This is probably why the legs splay, ever so slightly. But he adds braces to the legs. So all is well.

Something else is a little odd – this table is about a metre high, at least as wide and pretty long. “It’s for giants,” I declare. “You wanted a big table,” he says. It’s so sweet that I really don’t care, and fortunately, I am tall enough to be able to reach the back at a stretch.

The outer reaches

Now for table two. This time, the handy Lub joins in the task. And before I know it, there’s a massive, really massive, triangular table in the corner, using the posts of the old fence as supports. Now, this table … I can only reach the back of it by walking outside the garden and stretching over the fence. So I lug a few saplings outside to get to the outer reaches – they need to grow quite a bit bigger before they get planted out.

But I don’t care a bit. And I didn’t even mention that the shelves are still to come. These are such special tables, and I wouldn’t change a thing about them.

Jewels of the bush

Not long after we moved to East London, I found myself wending my car along a dusty farm track. I was searching for a nursery I’d heard about, one with a great variety of bromeliads, indigenous bulbs and clivia.

Jewel-like clivia flowers in my garden

Suddenly, it was upon me. Two excited and very large dogs herded me to rows of shadecloth-protected tables, groaning under the weight of plants. There, I met a woman called Stella. These plants, all of them, were so clearly her babies.

Stella noticed my awe of her clivias – the adults with their jewel-like flowers and the vast trays of infant plants. So she reached for a clivia’s fat red berry and began gently rubbing away at its skin. 

Slowly, one pearl-like seed emerged, and another and another. “This is how you do it,” she told me, and then handed the seeds to me.

Stella’s seeds and their grandchildren

Clivia nobilis

Stella’s farm nursery, sadly, is closed these days. But since our encounter, I’ve never bought another clivia plant. I’ve grown all of mine from seed, and I’m sure some are the grandchildren of those that came from Stella. And now, in springtime, I can’t keep my hands (or eyes) off my clivias, also known as “bush lillies”. It’s definitely the time for making babies.

Fresh from my foray into seed germination, I see the fruit hanging off the clivia among this spring’s flowers. Thankfully, I don’t battle with growing clivias from seed as I do with other plants (perhaps because these seeds are so big?).

Seeds newly harvested and laid on a sandy medium

A couple of years later, almost ready for planting out

Anyway, the berries I’m looking at now have formed from last year’s flowers, and they are ripe and juicy. I pick a bucketful of them, and they look good enough to eat. You shouldn’t though. They would make you ill. 

Wild abandon

I grow both Clivia miniata and the lesser-known Clivia nobilis. C miniata is more prized in the garden because it is supposedly the most spectacular of the six known varieties, most of which grow wild in the Eastern Cape. But I do like C nobilis, whose flowers droop like pretty pendants. It may be slower growing (or so it is said), but I find that it’s less bothered by the horrible amaryllis worm.
 

What I should do is separate the seeds of the two varieties so that they can be correctly labelled. I don’t do that, but then I don’t mind the varieties getting mixed up some kind of wild abandon in the garden. Next time.

Labour of love

I find a comfy spot to relax, and I begin opening the fleshy fruit and releasing the seeds from the membranes that keep them together and prevent water from penetrating the seeds (this could cause rot and fungus). It is a labour of love: it has to be because it can’t be rushed. At this point, some people will wash the seeds in a bleach or peroxide solution to prevent any possible fungus infection. I never have; I don’t think Stella did.

Close-up of the seed

Then I lay the pearly seeds onto a bed of quite sandy soil, pushing them down just a little, not to bury them, but more to secure them in the soil. And I will water them regularly.

From experience, I know that it will take a month or two for germination to start. And it is delightful: each seed sends out a tentative green shoot, which then twists itself into the soil. It will take a year or two before they get big enough to plant out into the garden. And it will take three to four years before we start seeing flowers. 

The wait pales into nothing when you’re rewarded with your very own homegrown clivias. I promise.

The flowers offer a vast array of colours

This serious frenzy of making babies

My method for rooting cuttings seems to be fairly successful, even with “difficult” plants, but my attempts to get seeds to grow is another story. V also, with his chilli obsession, tries to grow plants from seeds, but sadly, his success rate is even worse than mine.

   

A beautiful sight, full of promise

We’ve even passed on some precious chilli seeds, including the naga, to my sister Angela’s gardener, who seems to be able to grow all kinds of things.

Crazy

Nevertheless, V went a bit crazy ordering seeds from an online  store called Living Seeds. He chose some unusual chillis, like white habanero and “NuMex Twilight”. I joined in the frenzy, and ordered old tomato varieties, including the heirloom brandywine cherry, as well as “Blue Peter” runner beans and “Caserta” marrow.

Angela came visiting in the midst of all of this, and she too got ordering. Strawberry popcorn and multi-coloured corn, among other things, went into the basket. We’ll swop seedlings later – assuming we get lucky enough to get to that stage.

A few days later, we take delivery of lots and lots of fascinating seeds. After we ooh and aah over the stash, we are faced with the obvious reality: now we have no choice but to get this seed business right. And what a serious business it seems to be.

Harass the Plant Guy

This warmer spring weather suggests that it’s a good time to plant seeds. But I suspect that my soil medium choices for germinating seeds are not good ones, so I start by harassing the local nursery person: he calls himself the Plant Guy and he supplies seedlings to nurseries all over East London. I know he knows all about growing seeds.

He explains kindly that for getting seeds to germinate, it’s best to use a milled bark medium, and none of the stuff that I’ve been using (peat moss, potting soil, and so on). A few days later, I collect a mega bag of this medium from the nursery.

Living Seeds also gives good advice on seed germination: it told me, for example, that using seed trays can give you 90% better germination rates than direct sowing. There’s no shortage of trays in my potting area, which nestles in a mostly sheltered and shady spot behind the garden shed.

Fine balance

I’ll be careful with watering: gentle watering that doesn’t dislodge the seeds; not too much (the seeds will “damp off”, drown and rot, in other words) or too little (well, they will shrivel up and die).

Many hours later – how did I land up doing all of this on my own? – trays of seeds buried in the Plant Guy’s mix (at a depth not more than three times the size of the seeds) are neatly placed on the potting table. Their names are written in red permanent marker on labels made from strips of a cut-up ice-cream container.

It’s quite a beautiful sight, I think, full of promise. And I will keep you posted on any success, or lack of it.

Go native

Down here in South Africa, especially along the coast, we seem to have a perpetual fixation with palm trees. I know, I know … we’re trying to evoke a sense of being on a tropical island. Or something.

Choose me ... the knobwood tree

But it’s old fashioned and inappropriate in this world where the imperative is taking care of our environment. A big part of that is planting indigenous, especially when it comes to the really big stuff – trees.

Think Durban beachfront: it’s literally coated with palm trees. They started dying at some stage. You have to wonder why the effort of planning and spending public money didn’t go into planting something indigenous, like our lovely milkwoods, red or white (Mimusops, Sideroxylon inerme).

We are so fortunate to live in a nature reserve next to the sea, but I am disturbed that somebody took it upon themselves to plant an exotic fan palm in a public space here. It is dying, thank goodness. But still. I assume this person has not seen a veld fire (wild fire) – they have swept through the reserve from time to time – nor a burning palm. Their high oil content turns them into torches. I’d say that is a hazard in a nature reserve.

Or me ... the cabbage tree

Very few palms are indigenous to South Africa, and even those tend to have very localised growing areas. They include the Kosi Bay palm (Raphia australis), wild date palm (Phoenix reclinata), Pondoland coconut palm (Jubeaopsis caffra), and the Ilala palm (Hyphaene coriacea).

Beautiful locals

There are so many beautiful local alternatives to palm trees that it makes your mind boggle. The cabbage tree (Kiepersol) is one of my favourites. I have several in my garden. The bushbuck love to eat it too.

Or me ... the allophyllus

The deciduous knobwood (Zanthoxylum) is fascinating. They make gorgeous neat trees that soon establish little groves. When you crush their leaves, they delight with a whiff of lemon.

This part of the Eastern Cape is home to magnificent coral trees (Erythrina), also deciduous. Collecting bowls and bowls of shiny red lucky beans that drop from these trees are part of my childhood memories.

The allophyllus, now sporting handsome red berries, thrives on this part of the coast. And the wild olive (Olea europaea sbsp Africana) stands up admirably to the sea winds; I know because I killed a string of trees by exposing them to the wind before I happened on this pretty thing.

The white stinkwood (Celtis Africana) grows well down here. In my Irene, Pretoria, garden, it was one of my favourites. Even the stunning fever tree (Acacia xanthophloea) grows here – I had a beauty in my suburban East London garden – but it grows naturally much further north than here.

These are just a few of the possibilities that I can think of offhand. With such a wealth of native trees, why would one ever choose the exotic?

Fresh and simple life

As much as I enjoy going on an amble, one of the most pleasant things about it is coming home. So we’ve had a lovely week of overdosing on all kinds of art in Grahamstown, but that also meant overdosing on wine and eating out.

An earlier version of the salad, including avocado wedges

It means, too, that I deeply appreciate being able to stroll into the vegetable garden and pick a fresh and simple supper: fat cherry tomatoes, a handful of spinach, and a couple of small heads of broccoli. I note that the sweet peppers are starting to form healthy little fruits.

I like to make a warm salad with these ingredients, based roughly on a recipe from Kathy, so roughly that I can’t clearly remember the original.

My lemon pickle is a success!

Anyway, I wilt the spinach in olive oil in a frying pan, grind in a bit of salt and black pepper, and then lay the leaves onto a platter as a bed for the salad. I’ve also used a mix of rocket and fresh lettuce leaves in the past. No result is ever the same; see the pic I’ve given you on this page for an example.

I steam the broccoli florets, not for long because I want them to keep that beautiful green colour, and toss that onto the spinach. Then I add the cherry tomatoes – I fry them lightly in olive oil this time because it seems to enhance the taste – some feta cheese, raisins that have swelled in orange juice (I've used cranberries before), and a bit of dry roasted seeds (pumpkin, sesame and sunflower). I sprinkle balsamic vinegar over the lot.

It’s delicious. We eat it with V’s leftover ciabatta, which tastes good toasted the next day.

Sweet taste of tartness

And we get to open the lemon pickle I attempted to make towards the end of May. It’s perfect! And this is a surprise, I admit, because I was a bit doubtful. 

The texture of the peel and flesh is soft, yet far from mushy; the lemon juice itself has turned into a kind of syrup; and the taste has just the right amount of salty tartness.

Our friend, Prof, can’t seem to get enough of the pickle, and goes home with a little bakkie (plastic container) crammed full of it. That is just the kind of encouragement I need to experiment some more.

Spreading the joy

Gardens are made to be shared – not just through sight and the other senses, but most importantly, through cuttings, roots and seeds that spread the joy and peace that only a garden can give.

One of Mary’s pics, of herself and her cousins, with her own inscription

I learnt that from one of the wisest people I've known – my paternal grandmother, Mary. She was a true plantswoman, among many other things. Some of my happiest memories are of running around her rose bushes, chattering to her while she marvelled at a bloom or fussed over a stubborn weed. It was in her various gardens that I got to know the smells of lavender and rose geranium, the feel of soft and furry lamb’s ear leaves, the taste of cherry guavas.

Generous spirit

Beautiful, kind Mary

She would always be handing out seeds or cuttings from her garden. Simple yet beautiful nasturtiums were among her favourite flowers, and four gardens later, many of the nasturtiums in my garden have grown from seed that Mary originally gave me. She seemed to gain such pleasure from knowing that a cherished plant would now also be treasured in someone else’s garden. It struck me, even very young, that this was a true generosity of spirit.

So every time I take a cutting – for use in my own garden or to pass on to a special person – I think of Mary. And I like to think that she would approve of my attempts at propagation. In fact, I know that she would have many words of gentle encouragement.

Army of new plants

My system seems to work quite well. In a tucked-away spot behind the washing line that gets afternoon shade from the ngwenya tree (wild plum, Harpephyllum caffrum), an army of plastic pots brim with new plants. These cuttings are mostly from my own garden (I also raid friends’ gardens), and they include geranium and pelargonium, scabiosa, fuschia, daisies, lavender, rosemary, felicia, plectranthus and osteospermum.

All of these grow really easily from cuttings. Aloes and other succulents do, too, but they will usually grow from cuttings that are shoved into the ground; best to let them dry for a few days to avoid rotting, though.

There’s also row upon row of baby clivias, growing from seed. These will take about three years to get to flowering stage.

Secret

A perfect mini greenhouse

And here’s my “secret”: I cut the top off a plastic cold drink or water bottle, and invert it over a new, watered cutting. It forms a perfect mini greenhouse. You seldom have to water the cutting again. The plant takes care of that itself through transpiration: essentially, the cutting takes up water from the soil and then releases it into the atmosphere, kind of like sweating.

It’s quite a thrill seeing the water droplets form on the inside of the bottle and run down to sustain the plant. I remove the bottle when I’m certain that the cutting has grown some roots.

This method has increased the “strike rate” of my cuttings: four out of five, instead of two or three out of five, usually take. It lets me experiment with more demanding plants, like roses, and it gives me a constant supply of plants to fill empty corners, without having to spend a fortune at the garden centre. And one of the nicest things about it, for me, is that I give something meaningful to people I care about. Thanks to Mary.

Mid-winter pleasures

It’s the winter solstice today here in the South. In theory, it’s the middle of winter. But it’s far from a typical winter day: in this summer-rainfall area, most of the morning has been wet and overcast.

I pull on a jersey and walk through the garden, and even in this relative gloom, I am struck by just how lucky I am to live here. There is so much going on around me, and that’s apart from the birds gathering over the sea.

A kingfisher takes off from the knobwood tree. A pair of sunbirds are dipping into the wild dagga and the strelitzia. The hadedas are patrolling the grass, aerating the soil with their long, long beaks. A flock of guinea fowl are pecking near the aloe garden.

The gloriously scented indigenous jasmine is coming into bloom; so is the iboza. The first clivia minutiae flowers are out. Some of the aloes, including the exciting “hedgehog” hybrid, are starting to flower. The lemon tree is still heavy with fruit. The broccoli are forming good heads, and I think we can eat some this weekend.

I took pics as I strolled, and I’ve experimented with putting some of them into a collage on this page. I hope you enjoy them.

It’s okay to be potty

Our old wheelbarrow has worked so hard that it’s truly on its last legs … um, wheels. And I can’t wait for it to call it a day. I can picture it, parked in its final resting place in the garden, overflowing with flowers and pretty leaves. It will make an excellent container for plants.

The wheelbarrow’s next life is all planned (with Isis’s permission)

I’ve had a fixation with containers, you see, since I first started gardening. My first garden – in Westville, Durban, if you recall – was on such steep land that I hit on the idea of planting as much as possible in our courtyard in containers. Anything, absolutely anything, even an old toilet cistern, was turned into a home for plants.

Whenever I had spare cash (not often), I would buy a pot. Over the years, the obsession turned into a sizeable collection, most of which has followed me to my various gardens around the country.

Habit of frugality

Potty things in my garden ... ceramic head by Steve Meise; pretty pastels from Gen

And my frugality (born of necessity) became a habit (because it feels right in our  throwaway society). So I’ve just turned a 5 litre olive oil tin into a plant pot: I cut away the top with a can opener, punched holes in the bottom with hammer and a large nail, and planted a trailing pelargonium, grown from a cutting, into it. It stands on a chipped side plate from the kitchen.

Old colanders have found new life in my garden as containers for plants. So have rusted and holey three-legged pots, a lot of strange pinch pots from my pottery craze days, tightly woven baskets, a coconut shell, hollow pieces of wood, and a couple of cracked clay basins. I’m considering the possibilities that the old bamboo steamer holds.

Fabulous pots

In my Irene, Pretoria, garden, I found a stash of old chimney tops, and they made fabulous pots, especially for fuschias.

In friends’ gardens, I’ve seen plants growing in pretty teacups (drainage would be an issue, I think), old shoes, and even the skull of a large wild animal. And I can just see how lovely my pink roses gumboots would look if a plant – a small trailing aloe, perhaps – came frothing out of them. Frankly, though, I prefer them on my feet.

Anything goes, really, as long as it is aesthetically pleasing to you. It works in my garden because most of my pots are conventional and painted in various earthy colours, even though a few have fallen victim to my occasional mosaic frenzies. Mostly, I think it works because I think it is pretty. And that’s what matters, isn’t it?