Babylonstoren

Having lived in this area for five years, I had the fabulous experience of visiting Babylonstoren for the first time the other day. I am still in awe when I think of the first time I walked those gardens and sat down to a beautiful brunch in The Green House. It has this "wow-factor" that is hard to put into words, one have to experience it for oneself. Really!

Babylonstoren is situated in the Drakenstein Valley between Franschhoek and Paarl, in the heart of the Cape Winelands.  There are many activities to keep you busy all day long, which includes The Garden, wine tasting, hiking up the koppie, bird watching, photographing every square inch of this beautiful property and of course, EATING....

I cannot insist enough the importance of experiencing this place for yourself; once you've been there, you'll know what I mean. Like my friend said; "it looks like they employed someone to go around all day, merchandising and decorating". It is just FABULOUS!

At Babel  

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The Garden

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You can view more pictures from others that visited this amazing place on gramfeed. Then head on over to my favourite local blogger Vasgevang, to see his posts about Babylonstoren, here, here and here.

And now for some pics of my own.....

Even the taps are beautiful... hehe..

Happy weekend!

Veggie garden

Since our potatoes in a bag are growing so well, I decided to try grow sweet potatoes too. I cut the bigger ones in half and put them in water to sprout....

From what I read on the internet, you're supposed to let them "run out" and make some "shoots" or "roots" before you plant it. Put the potato  into the soil and leave only a few bits of the greenery sticking out above the soil. So far, two of them have "sprouted" and I'm waiting for the right day to put them in the ground. Both will go in the same bag and we'll see what happens.

Happy day!

From the garden

Temperatures are soaring in the high thirties and yesterday even 42 degrees here in the Boland. It's too hot to garden really, but I try.....

This is the first aubergine fruit on the plant

The first tomato to change colour this much without rotting or being eaten by pests

The radishes are doing very well

Lettuce seems to be very happy here

Cabbage is being destroyed by tiny little wormy beasts

Potatoes in a bag - we can't wait to harvest these

Butternut which was a surprise to find in the garden since we never
planted it! Until now it hasn't been doing all that well, but I read that
I should feed it some calcium and try to pollinate by hand. I'm hoping
that will work, including watering only around the base instead of all over the
whole plant with sprinklers. Fingers crossed....

Happy day!

Veggie garden update

The Captain and I have been busy with several things over the last couple of weeks; one of them being our veggie garden. Here are some photo's of what we are expecting (eagerly) to harvest in the coming months.

Potatoes - planted in a bag to save on space and "just for fun".

 Aubergine - the blossoms are just lovely!

Butternut - we didn't sow this; it must've come up from a seed that was in our homemade compost.   

Tomatoes - I am so excited to harvest these sometime soon! There's just nothing like a fresh tomato from one's own garden!

Salsify - I'm not familiar with this, but The Captain promises it is really good.

Rhubarb - which will take a bit longer before we can harvest, but definitely worth the wait!

Happy day!

Veggie garden update

Hi all! Sorry I've been away for a while. The Captain and I have been busy again with the kitchen (which I will share with you as soon as it's done...)

Here's an update of the veggie garden which I wrote about here.

 This pic was taken three weeks after it was initially planted...

This is what it looks like today. I have put together a bit of a support for the tomato plants and we'll see how it holds up.  By the end of the week I'll have the other three boxes ready for planting too - my seeds have been ordered on-line from Livingseeds and I'm sooo excited to get busy with all that. Soon we'll eat fresh, seasonal vegetables from our own garden. There are some unusual vegetables that is impossible to get here,  like salsify, celeriac and shallots. I managed to find some on the Livingseeds website and these are the ones we are most looking forward to. I'll keep you updated!

Happy day!

Pot maker

Another recent purchase from Lee Valley is a Pot-maker for making paper pots to start seeds. Once your seedlings are big enough to be transplanted, the paper pots can be planted in the garden where the paper will decompose and the plants will take root. A while ago, I wrote a post about green gardening and paper pots here and this little pot-maker is so much easier to use than what I did before - rolling strips of newspaper around a wine bottle and trying to squish the bottom to make a pot.  "Ha!"

With a bit of Mel's mix in the pots, the seeds germinated in no time at all!! Okay, so I mentioned Mel's mix before and promised to explain it. It is the best recipe for garden/potting mix that I know of. You buy about five different brands of compost and mix one part of each, all together. Then you take one part of this mixed compost, one part medium grained vermiculite and one part peat moss; mix THAT all up and you have a perfectly rich, light "soil" for pots, veggie boxes and more.

It really is the absolute best of mixes. When I sowed the seeds in my paper pots (above) I made an experiment and used plain potting soil in some pots and the special mix in others. I'm still waiting for the seeds in potting soil to germinate, while the ones in the special mix are practically ready to go in the garden already. Wow!

Happy day!

Veggie garden

Wanting to grow my own veg at home for as long as I can remember, the day has finally arrived. The Captain ordered a book by Mel Bartholomew about Square Foot Gardening, or SFG in short. (You can read the review on his book here and visit the SFG  website here.) It gives you great ideas and a whole "new look" on how to garden.
I did my own bit of research in Jane Griffith's delicious book and on her website and blog about organic gardening which has been a huge inspiration to me.

We decided to go "above ground" and higher up than the usual raised beds, saving on our "broken" backs a bit. My first stop was at Stellenzicht vineyards here where I was lucky to get hold of 4 old wooden crates (about 1m x 1.2m) which was previously used for the grape harvests.

The next step was to source the ingredients for Mels's mix. Quite a genius mix, but I'll tell you more about that another day.

With the mix all mixed, we were able to fill only one crate; but for me that was quite enough. My seedlings went in there and voilà, all ready to grow into delicious, juicy, home-grown goodness!

I'll keep you updated on the progress of our veggie boxes.

Happy day!

Beautiful poppies

After what seemed like an eternity to me, waiting for these guys to emerge in their full glory, I had my surprise this morning. .....

  

The Papaver Somniferum that I had been keeping a watchful eye on, finally delighted me with their beautiful blooms and I am over the moon!  It was just so worth the anticipation and (just a little) impatience (smile...).
Aren't these just too pretty?

Happy day folks!

Gardening mystery

Towards the end of winter I was very excited to get some spring and summer flowering annual seeds in the ground; and that is just what I did. With seed bombs and direct sowing into the soil. Several packets of seeds later, I decided to discard the empty packets and not make a note of what went in where. Hence my "problem" to identify this mysterious, monstrous plant in the garden. 

It is now about chest height and still going strong. Looks like a flower is about to unfold itself and I'm rather excited to see what it will look like. Perhaps then I'll be able to tell what it is. It might be a good idea to keep a gardening journal to record everything I do, as I have a habit of buying seeds and throwing them around the garden at random. Bouh!  I'll keep you posted!

Happy day!

Up-cycled hanging basket

The Captain is forever calling me his "squirrel" because I can hardly ever throw anything away that "I may have a use for in the future".  I did a bit of swimming pool maintenance now that summer is upon us and part of that was replacing the weir basket. Knowing that there will be a use for it in the near future, I kept the old one (of course!!). This weekend, enjoying glorious weather, I did a spot of gardening when I had this brilliant idea! Hanging basket! I can make a hanging basket with the discarded weir basket. A lot of scrubbing later to get rid of the chlorine residue, and voila!

Of course, if we had the E-clear water treatment system for our pool, I needn't have bothered to scrub at all, but I wanted to be sure to get rid of the chemicals. Now that I've seen how well it works, I might just pop into the hardware store for a few more of these baskets.

Happy day!

From my garden

I love the pretty flowers of Spring. These are from my garden and the Poppy 

specifically flowered from the seed bombs that I wrote about here

Happy day!

That time of the year again

With the beautiful, warmer weather of October, comes the inevitable wind so typical of our region; almost like the Mistral of Provence. After a long night of terrible winds, I had some tidying up to do around the house and garden, shredding all branches and leaves that had "come undone" in the storm.....

With the composting bin almost up to the brim again, I am happy....

Happy day!

Vygies

One of my favourite Spring flowers here in the Western Cape is the Vygie variety.  The Namaqualand region is rather quite famous for it's Spring Flower extravaganza and we try to visit every year to see the wide open fields, covered in wild flowers. (DO go to the hyper-link and check it out!!)

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This year I also planted some of my own in an old, rusty wheelbarrow that used to be a vessel for beautiful, green moss. (see here)

Here is what the Vygies are like at the moment:

Early morning when the sun is just out, their petals are still closed; like they are sleeping. As the morning gets warmer and the sun comes out higher, they open up more and more until you can finally see them in full bloom with their pretty faces in full sun when it is nice and warm. They are really lovely and I am excited like a child each morning to see them open up like this.

Happy day!