The Class 9’s harvested all the carrots and cabbages which were growing in our garden. With these they were able to create a delicious coleslaw salad. There were so many carrots that we could not use them all at once, and so we are keeping some of them to cook in the future. We need to find a better plant to grow cabbages though, as most of them were tiny and riddled with holes munched away by the many snails which had made them their homes.
The garden in which we grew these will become the new gooseberry patch. Our gooseberry bushes keep on growing these delicious yellow berries and our tomatoes, although minute even for cocktail size tomatoes, continue to thrive as well. Unfortunately the crop of watermelons we grew was attacked by worms which had burrowed in them from below. Our pumpkins did not do too well either. We had one giant pumpkin which the Class 8’s made into a soup.
Meanwhile, both classes 8 and 9 have been hard at work on reclaiming a large patch of land from grass, composting it and working it onto furrows to plant sorghum, dock and spinach. Soon bean tepees and squash will be added to the new garden as well. Hopefully our feathered friends will not be able to get to the seeds and let them grow. It would be amazing to have this crop growing in our garden.
David and I are very excited about the countless possibilities which we can meet in the garden. Yes, we do know about companion planting and how we need to plant rotation-style, to enrich and sustain the soil, but there are so many possibilities which are not explored yet involving African herbs and local plants … We will keep you updated, and hopefully as enthused as we are about life in the vegetable gardens.
Violetka Diemer and David Haigh – the High School Gardening Team