One way of reducing cost is to grow one's own food. Well! That is such a short sentence. Yet the topic is boundless. I have no doubt that one could spend 18 hours a day reading about this for ten years, still learn on day 365 of the eleventh year and onwards through the rest of one's life. The topic is so vast.
As you read this, bear in mind that until now I have been one of the people that plants hide from when I visit a nursery - a bit like the little girl in the dental surgery in Finding Nemo. Plants know when people don't have a clue what they are doing.
My first personal challenge is that I have a small suburban plot of ground, most of which is consumed by house. There is so little open space left. Also, I live in a seaside resort, in what, once upon a time, was a river bed, back in the days when earth was still deciding what would be land and what would be lake. The consequence of this is that the soil is very poor. It is sandy and acidic. To boot, the resort where I live, vies with Port Elizabeth for the windiest place in South Africa. So gardening is fraught with challenges.
My first personal challenge is that I have a small suburban plot of ground, most of which is consumed by house. There is so little open space left. Also, I live in a seaside resort, in what, once upon a time, was a river bed, back in the days when earth was still deciding what would be land and what would be lake. The consequence of this is that the soil is very poor. It is sandy and acidic. To boot, the resort where I live, vies with Port Elizabeth for the windiest place in South Africa. So gardening is fraught with challenges.
Enter Square Foot Gardening! What a wonderful innovation. There is almost no excuse for not achieving some level of self sufficiency. But baby steps first. I started following some of the square foot garden techniques whilst using containers that were already on the property. I followed Mel's soil mix recipe for filling the containers with viable, friable soil, I placed the containers for maximum access to sun, and my watering can became my best friend.
The next baby step was to choose which veggies to plant. This was a tough one. I come from an instant gratification world. One has a thought, and hey presto! The thought materialises in programmatic form; or one wants something and one buys it from the closest mall. Not any more. There is absolutely nothing about planting which vaguely relates to instant gratification.
I started with quick turnaround plants. The quickest I could find were radishes and mustard. I planted up a window box of radishes, and eight herb pots of mustard. Within four days the first little radish plants had pushed their way through the soil. Four weeks later I was eating my first radish. It was in this first mouthful of home-grown veggie that I began to understand what I was doing. It tasted wonderful! I ate the radish with the greens on toast. Nothing beats young and fresh. Trust me on this one. What is the most fun, is that one picks a radish, and pops in a seed, and the four week cycle starts all over again. At any one point in time, one only needs enough radishes growing to last for four weeks. I can't say that the mustard has lived up to its reputation of being a quick turnaround plant. I have yet to savour the first leaves from this mini-crop.
Radishes in a window box
I have subsequently planted swiss chard [3], baby spinach [10], peas [2], beans [2] and carrots [15]. For the time being I am learning, so the quantities are really, really small. As I gain experience, I will plant more, but only what I envisage needing in the time that the seeds take from germination to harvest. I have also filled up the containers that house these plants with - you guessed it - more radishes. In this way, the radishes will germinate and harvest at least once, maybe twice, before the bigger plants need more room. In time to come, I will have some left over to give away, and some to preserve for a rainy day.
The newer plantings are slower growing. They take 6 to 10 days to germinate, and 3 to 4 months to harvest. For this reason I am really pleased that I started with radishes. I can enjoy the fruits of my labours whilst enjoying the anticipation of more to come. And I am only six weeks into planting for the first time! Quite astonishing.
We are heading into autumn now, so the choices on what to plant are far more limited than they will be in September. There remain plenty of choices.
And this is just the beginning. What follows next is building the square foot boxes and preparing a compost heap. More on these as I do them.
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