The Garden, Part 1

I’m just about three weeks into to my stay in South Africa, and I must say the garden looks significantly better, but there is still a long road ahead. So far, I have been pruning the two tomato plants and the mint, and mixing up the soil regularly to prepare it for planting. Perhaps my biggest accomplishment so far has been ridding the tomato plants of the giant armoured crickets. A quick google search helped me learn more about their lifestyle and it became clear that they would not pose that much of a problem.

Because these crickets are so massive, they cannot jump, and they do not have wings to fly. This meant that all I had to do was remove all the ones currently on the plant, and either move them to a new location or give them to the chickens for food, and that took care of most of my problem. The day after I performed an extensive cricket hunt, I found only one on the tomatoes. Over the next couple days that has dropped to zero.

I will keep checking daily for the intruders, but I think that by keeping up on their movement I can stay ahead of the game. Also, by donating the bugs to the chickens, I was rewarded with some eggs in compensation! These crickets are a common pest in the area, and one of the best ways to deal with them according to wikipedia is to just dig a 50cm trench around the crop/garden, and they can’t cross it. So that’s my backup plan if necessary.

Basil Top L, Tomato Top R, Parsley 

In other garden news, a little over a week ago I planted my first experimental seeds into some pvc tube end pieces to see what would happen. Everyday I nurtured those tiny seeds. I brought them in the lab at night, and put them in a slightly sunny spot during the day. They were given plenty of water and love. And all that work paid off, first in the form of tiny tomato sprouts! The other two plants were basil and parsley, and basil followed shortly after the tomatoes in sprouting.

After about a week and nearly giving up on the parsley, I saw the first tiny sprout this morning, and quickly showed it off to everyone in the lab. While waiting on these planted seeds, I also put some seeds for lettuce and cucumber in moistened paper towels inside of plastic bags and taped them to the window. It’s been four days and I can already see tiny shoots sprouting from the seeds. I honestly know nothing about what is best for the different seeds I have, and if I should sprout more in the bags or just in soil. But I’m willing to try multiple ways and learn through trial and error.

In the garden itself, I planted a short row of carrot seeds as well. The patch they are in generally stays pretty moist, but not too wet. All of the garden is watered from the drain pipe of the sinks in the lab. Right now the water distribution is very uneven, and the pipes need some clearing out and better connections. But with the current location of the plants everything is getting sufficiently watered. I’ve been told that carrots have worked out in the past, so I have been optimistically checking for sprouts each morning (a bit prematurely perhaps).

Yesterday was a big day in the garden especially. I was able to take some small aloe vera shoots from an a person’s personal plants and transplant them into the communal garden. I took three relatively well established plants, and put two in mostly sand and one in the garden soil. I also plucked two tiny shoots with only two branches each, and put those in tiny pots (toilet brush holders).

Re-homed Aloe Vera

At this point I’ll go ahead and mention that the lab has a surplus of toilet brush holders, since we use the brushes for cleaning the mole rat colonies. The kind here are like small plant pots, and they have no other use in the lab so they’ve just been set aside. I have been able to put some of them to use in the garden, and they should do the job nicely!