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Hihi,
So I live in South Africa on the sub-tropical East Coast. I've been wanting to start a kitchen garden of my own for a good while now, but I've always been kinda scared off because it just seems so daunting. Frankly I don't know where to start. Most of the books I've looked at deal more with temperate climates like what you guys have in Europe, so I'm kinda stuck.
Specifically, there are a few things I don't really know how to deal with:
Sand: The soil here is practically non-existent, with sandy dunes stretching at least a couple of hundred meters inland. I've kinda resigned myself to having to do mostly container gardening, but it would be nice to have a few sustainable crops.
Monkeys: We have a couple of monkey troupes around here, and with the massive expansion going on the poor buggers are desperate for food most of the time. They are clever as well, so they are not scared off by scarecrows or dogs or the like - I once saw a troupe drive a couple of dogs off by pelting them with stones.
The Humidity: We have a saying here - if it doesn't rust, it grows. Plant illnesses and moulds and termites and stuff are plentiful here, and most of the ornamental gardeners I know have to go to a lot of cost and effort to keep their plants healthy.
So yeah, any advice you guys can give me on starting out would be very much appreciated. For what it's worth, here is what I've been thinking:
I want to start with just salad vegetables, as I understand they grow fairly easily and don't need as much attention - tomatoes, lettuce and sweet peppers, and maybe cucumber. I was going to make some cages out of chicken wire to protect my plants from the monkeys, but I don't know if that's going to be enough to keep them out. I have a few pots that I'll be keeping around a back door for now - we have a small courtyard as well, but because of the heat and humidity, it's like an oven, and the only stuff that flourishes there are ferns and mosses, so while it would be easier to protect, I don't know that it's a good environment.
Mina.
So I live in South Africa on the sub-tropical East Coast. I've been wanting to start a kitchen garden of my own for a good while now, but I've always been kinda scared off because it just seems so daunting. Frankly I don't know where to start. Most of the books I've looked at deal more with temperate climates like what you guys have in Europe, so I'm kinda stuck.
Specifically, there are a few things I don't really know how to deal with:
Sand: The soil here is practically non-existent, with sandy dunes stretching at least a couple of hundred meters inland. I've kinda resigned myself to having to do mostly container gardening, but it would be nice to have a few sustainable crops.
Monkeys: We have a couple of monkey troupes around here, and with the massive expansion going on the poor buggers are desperate for food most of the time. They are clever as well, so they are not scared off by scarecrows or dogs or the like - I once saw a troupe drive a couple of dogs off by pelting them with stones.
The Humidity: We have a saying here - if it doesn't rust, it grows. Plant illnesses and moulds and termites and stuff are plentiful here, and most of the ornamental gardeners I know have to go to a lot of cost and effort to keep their plants healthy.
So yeah, any advice you guys can give me on starting out would be very much appreciated. For what it's worth, here is what I've been thinking:
I want to start with just salad vegetables, as I understand they grow fairly easily and don't need as much attention - tomatoes, lettuce and sweet peppers, and maybe cucumber. I was going to make some cages out of chicken wire to protect my plants from the monkeys, but I don't know if that's going to be enough to keep them out. I have a few pots that I'll be keeping around a back door for now - we have a small courtyard as well, but because of the heat and humidity, it's like an oven, and the only stuff that flourishes there are ferns and mosses, so while it would be easier to protect, I don't know that it's a good environment.
Mina.
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