Planted

By the cornflower patch: eggplant - black beauty, green pepper - grocery surprise.

By the swiss chard: cabbages - copenhagen, courgettes - caserta (an old pack, so we'll see if they sprout)

Long bed: Rolet little gems

Square bed: Butternut - grocery surprise

seed trays: toms - floradade, oxheart. (the plan is to plant the oxhearts by the square kitchen garden and the floradades out along the far North wall. The yellow pears are going to go where the weird cactus thing is now, with marogo as a companion plant rather like a ground cover - we shall see)

I'm going to tackle that area where I want the yellow pears and marogo to go tomorrow - right now though it's time to slap some wors on the braai to go with the potato and butternut and red onion roast.

A list of things sprouting.

I had rather given up hope on the radishes, I guessed that mice had eaten the seeds.

Apparently not, for I now have a row of sprouted radishes.

And two turnips. I have no idea what happened to the turnips. They are usually the ones that sprout like wildfire.

The indoor chillies have just started to germinate so that makes me a happy cat.


I'm reading a bunch of blogs focused on reducing plastic waste. It's amazing what people can do away with when they put their minds to it. Quite a few of the things we do by default (like reusing containers rather than buying clingfilm) but i'll be putting some of the ideas into practice. At any rate just being more aware of the what I buy and throw away should have some effect on our plastic usage.

An attempt doomed to failure

The winter garden looking all dead and spiky. Those banana trees are rather ragged. Poor things.


So what's all this talk of failure - well, carrots, naturally. I have never been able to grow them but here I am trying again. This time they're in a large container so we'll see if that makes a difference.

The local Pick n Pay didn't have the energy-saving globes I was looking for, so looks like that's going to have to wait until we're willing to make the trek to the huge Pick n Pay by Greenstones.

It did however have biodegradable dishwashing liquid and laundry powder. Whee! The dishwashing liquid is from the Pick n Pay Green range and the laundry powder is Ecosoft 2in1.

In other exciting news, the dogs and cats have been dewormed and treated, except for Tarantino, who is presumably off killing things.

Thursday's weather:

Min: 2°C
Max: 21°C
Weather: Fine and sunny.
Wind: moderate north-westerly
Sunrise: 06:56
Sunset: 17:28

Ooh, looks like it's getting warmer, and the day is 1 minute longer. :D

ETA: Okays...I have to admit I was more than a little sceptical about how well vinegar and bicarb of soda were going to work at cleaning, but my bathroom tiles haven't looked this good since the last time I used Bang on them. Crazy. Chalk one up for the greener alternative.

Copenhagen Market Cabbages

Six days after planting, the first of the Copenhagen Market cabbage seeds have sprouted. You can just see them if you squint.



I've got one square metre raised bed that should be ready when they're big enough to be transplanted. Amazingly, the dogs are not digging up the beds, something that I had been a bit worried about.

I'm using the layered bed/lasagna bed method this year so we'll see how things go with that.

Today's weather:

Min:		2°C
Max:		19°C
Weather:		Sunny
Wind:	light north-westerly
Sunrise:	06:56
Sunset:	17:27