In the past few weeks the farm has started to take shape – it is looking more and more like the historic Cape Town vegetable gardens on which Tanya based her design forOZCF.
In the righthand side section (when facing the ocean) beans, Italian mixed lettuce, patty pans, courgettes (zucchini / baby marrow) and a few others I am forgetting have been planted and are growing at an alarming rate.
In the lefthand side section Clinton and I planted onions, carrots and radishes. Mario taught us to mix the carrot and radish seeds with sand before planting. This helps to thin out the seed as opposed to thinning out seedlings once they have sprouted. The radishes grow much faster than the carrots so you can harvest them first and let the carrots continue to grow – another method of naturally thinning out the carrots. The sand has the added benefit of indicating where you have sowed your seed. Theonions were planted using a plank with equally spaced holes, one seed was dropped in each hole and then the row was covered with a mound of soil.
By staggering the planting we will have a continuous harvest as well as allowing time for crop rotation to maintain the health of the soil.
