Per Liz’s request, I present the Captain and Tennille

As I was watching this, I thought of another love song about “staying together”. Of course, this one is about “The Herpes”. (Are ya feelin’ me, Tizzle?)

Yesterday I spent a lovely afternoon planting some great new additions I picked up at the Botanical Society’s plant sale, as well as Stodels nursery last weekend.

From Botsoc – a  Nemesia ‘Snow White’  and a Nemesia ‘True Blue’, as well as a “dyschoriste thunbergiifolia” (still trying to find out what its friendly name is. )

Dyschoriste thunbergiifolia

Nemesia "Snow White"

Nemesia "True Blue"

I also planted the beginnings of what will hopefully become a little Rosemary hedge.  I planted six small Rosemarinus Officinalis (Barbeque Rosemary), and will trim their tops every few days, to encourage them to fill out from the bottom.  It’s very exciting.. the hedge won’t be much taller than 20 centimeters high – so should be very quaint.

Okay..  even with all my fencing off, and deterring, an distraction attempts, my kitty Jinx has done some serious damage to part of my new veggie/flower garden!!

So.. I decided my only option was to fill that section with indestructible, hardy, indigenous (to South Africa) succulents.

So I popped off to my new favourite nursery - Hart – in Ottery, and, after MUCH deliberating, I chose one of each of these:

• Ornithogalum thyrosoides (Star of  Bethlehem)
• Crassula Spathhulata
• Bulbine Frutescens
• Kalanchoe (with gorgeous grey leaves and pink flowers)
• And two yellow daisies – Argyranthemum – lemon queen)

I moved a few of the cerise coloured Ddanthus in amongst them, as well as a  young blueberry I’m hoping to establish. Planted all together, with the daisies at the back, they certainly look unusual, but I like their quirkiness, and the best part is that so far, they’ve been untouched by the likes of kitty feet! (Touch wood!)

What was previously our chilli bed became bare and barren due to our kitty taking it over has her favourite toilet spot!

But I decided we couldn’t be defeated.. this bed is the sunniest spot in our garden, and I wasn’t going to lose out on yummy veg, gorgeous flowers, and tasty chillies this coming spring – So I decided to plant the whole bed up as a decorative veggie garden.

I started off with potting the surviving herbs, chilli plants and fruit plants.  Then I removed the surface mulch of peach pits, and bagged that.  Next, I dug in a whole bunch of rotted leaf mulch, and Bounce Bag. I left the bed to mellow for a week.

I had already picked up some of my seedlings and seeds I planned to plant, but had still to decided how to lay out the bed, and how to demarcate each section.  But by the time the next weekend came along, I had finally settled on a plan:

I would plant broccoli and red cabbbage seedlings, interspersed with beets (grown from seed), and three fennel plants.  According to Margaret Roberts, all these are great companion plants! (what luck !)  I was initially going to demarcate the separate parts with some wood edging or something, but decided to rather go the colour route – I picked up 3 punnets of marigolds (great to protecting other plants from pests), a couple of punnets of Dianthus (gorgeous cerese and pink), as well as a large punnet of white allyssum.  Added to that, my great weekness, lillies.  I picked up a pack of 5 yellow Asilforum (Royal justice), and 3 of my favourite Stargazers.

I created three individual mini-beds, one mostly brocolli, the other mostly cabbage, and the middle a mix.  and all dotted with beet seeds.  I used the flowers, fennels, thyme, sage and berry plants as borders.   I covered each bed with green ‘chicken wire’ mesh, to protect from kitties, and greedy birds!

Lets hope everything survives the torrents of rain the Cape has been experiencing lately.  Well, if it doesn’t kill them, it’ll make them fantastic!!

A bunch of my family got together and gave me my very own Worm Farm for my birthday.

I’ve been wanting one for a while.. so was thrilled! We went off to buy the worms from the shop, which are sold in an innocuous cardboard box! Shame.. poor things.. Anyway.. we assembled everything, popped the worms in, together with a whole lot of coconut fibre, soaked in water, and got them started with a couple of kitchen scraps.

It’s been about a month now.. I’ve been very careful about not adding too many scraps, as the farm started to smell a little. There is a healthy community of fruit flies etc, which I believe is normal.

But the most important thing is that I can see little speckles of worm castings starting to build-up, which means the worms are starting to make their compost!! yay!!

I think it’ll take a couple of months for a true balance to settle in, so I’ll just be patient.

i’ve managed to tap off a couple of 100 mls of ‘worm tea’, so I’ll be intrigued to see how the plants I put it onto grow.

Very exciting – can’t wait for the first harvest of compost!! THANKS LITTLE WORMS!

I’m now a member of a brand new garden club!! We’re called Flourish, and we had our first meeting a month ago!

Most of us are the children/relatives of a far more established club who decided they needed to pass their knowledge on to a new generation. So they’re kindly supporting us for the first year, by helping with the month-to-month tasks, but most importantly, by offering their knowledge and expertise, so we can benefit from all their experience.

In fact, I’m not just a member – I’ve also found myself on the committee!! I offered to set up the Flourish Garden Club blog (check it out at FlourishGardenClub.wordpress.com), so the chairperson asked me to be a committee member too.

Anyway. I’m really excited about this club.. We’ll be doing things like plant swapping, building up a reference library, exploring a new garden each month, having talks from experts, and not to mention sharing our experiences and getting to ask lots of questions that other might be able to answer !!

Watch this space, and I’ll update you on how it goes.. or better yet, watch our progress on our blog..