Dear DuPont, You're Not Welcome, Here.

In some slightly good news... South Africa's Competition Commission has blocked the purchase of local seed company Pannar by Pioneer Hi-Bred, a division of the US-based chemical giant, DuPont. Thank goodness for small mercies. The Competition Commission has said that they're release their full report soon, but that the deal was turned down because it would effectively reduce the number of large-scale Maize seed suppliers from 3 to 2.

Not that Pannar is any kind of beneficent angel. They're a large seed company in their own right – the largest in Africa, and as equally enchanted with the idea of controlling seed supplies as any of their US and European compatriots in crime.

Remember that Maize is SA's staple crop, so the Competition Commission's reasoning looks like sound to me. Looks like they're one of the few parts of the kakistocracy actually doing the job they're supposed to be doing, and doing it comptently!

It would be good would be to have an even wider range of suppliers in this country, but the laws around seed-sales are complicated, convoluted, restrictive and blatantly favour the entrenched big players.

Everything's Springing

A Spring Update

Some weeks ago, I suddenly woke up to the fact that it's Spring planting time, and I'd already missed my first-planting window by a week. Time to get busy!

Seed benches in their new home in the old Banana circle.
Closer to hand means better managed.

Much sowing of seed in seed-trays ensued. Honesty compels me to confess that I think this is the best Spring germination I've seen – at least in many years! Perhaps being a week late wasn't such a bad thing, after all. Tomatoes and Chiles are mostly up, and some of them – notably Brandywine, Purple Russian and Black Cherry – are almost ready for transplanting into their permanent homes already. Purple Russian and Black Cherry were substantially drought-hardy and very prolific for me on their first trial-run last year, so I'm looking forward to them. Lime Green Salad were doing well until a snail got into the seed-tray, so I've replanted them. I ran some germination tests on my Lettuce seed collection, and, sadly, most varieties are toast. I'm down to about 6 or 8 varieties which I've made sowings of and will grow up for seed.

This tray's for Dan, to wish him strength in his time of trial.
All varieties in the tray were sent to me by Dan and Val.

The major challenge has been getting beds prepared in time. With 3 seasons of drought behind us, the veggie garden has been sorely neglected. Last year, particularly, I found it just too depressing to even venture out into the wasteland that was supposed to be a good part of our food supply. That means that the weeds and Kikuyu had just about taken over completely, and clearing beds has been quite a Herculean task. Then, too, the lack of water until May means that I have almost no compost prepared. Luckily, our good neighbour D'vorah came to the rescue with half a dozen bags of horse-shit (in varying stages of decomposition and quality.) I've reserved the manure for those beds that needed it most – mainly the Tomato, Chile and Cabbage beds. The legumes can get by with just the bit of very old compost I did have - clearly not much in the way of nutrients, but still useful for the organic content.

Despite a few months of good rains, September has been even drier than usual, though it is, by my records, our lowest-rainfall month through the year. The few miserable dribbles of rain were little showers of 1 and 2 millimetres that really do more harm than good. At least we go into the season with full dams, so, even if the usual October/November deluges fail to materialise, we should still be OK for water until about Jan/Feb.

We have several new Tomato varieties to trial this year - varieties that have not survived the trials of years past. Along with them are several new Bean varieties:

Greek "Big Beans" (brought back from Greece by my parents from their trip there last year) I don't know anything about them - not even their growth habit, though I've guessed they're a bush variety. They're a lovely tasting, large, white bean. Excellent eating! (And I eat a hell of a lot of beans!)

Purple Podded Pole Bean (from Baker Creek seeds.) In general I am finding that pole beans are so much more productive per unit-area than bush types, that, if I can spare the poles and the energy to attend to them, I prefer them.

Papa de Rola (also from Baker Creek.) Their picture just looks so awesome I had to try them!

Cannelini Beans acquired from the local Fruit & Veg store, so I'm just trusting and hoping that they haven't been irradiated or anything stupid like that. Still to be planted, since I must get off by duff and clear another couple of beds.

But that doesn't mean I neglect some of my old, bulk-quantity standbys...

A prettier sight you've seldom seen...
Hopi Black beans emerging just 5 days after sowing.

Hopi Black Beans are my main staple bean crop. They are tasty, fast cooking, prolific and trouble-free, producing a good crop even in total drought. I basically stick the seed into the ground – usually the poorest bed I have, perhaps with a dusting of lime and bonemeal, trusting them to just get on with things – and then neglect them completely until they've dried out and are ready to be threshed. And they always do just Get On With It! Even last year, when they received not a single drop of irrigation water – not even after sowing – they produced a reasonable crop. This year I watered them exactly once, a couple of days after sowing, and they were showing their heads after less than a week. The only bare patches in the bed are two spots where the Chickens decided to make dust baths.

Rattlesnake are a fine, dual-purpose, pole bean, given to me by my good friend Franz. They're a brilliantly prolific and flavoursome green-bean, quite stringless when young, and make a fine dried bean if they get too big.

If there's time I'll also have to make space for Dragon's Lingerie - another of my staples, but, to be honest, I'm not sure where I'll find space, since I do like to grow at least a whole bed-full.

I didn't have time to prepare a bed specially for Squashes, but Inspiration struck! I had a good pile of garden-slash that needed burning - dead Banana leaves, rotten support sticks, old bits of wooden ladder long since fallen into ruin, tree prunings from the fruit trees... so I piled it all up amidst the worst of the Kikuyu and set it all alight. A roaring great bonfire, and I was left with a well-ashed, clear patch of Kikuyu-free ground. Dug it up, turned the ash in along with several shovels-full of composted manure, and made a nice Squashie mound. In the middle I've put some Lemon Cucumber together with Sunflowers (labelled "Parrot Food" at the local agri) in the hopes that the Sunflowers will provide good-enough stakes for the Cucumbers to climb. Around the edges of the mound I've put Table Queen (a favourite of mine) squash, a couple of Japanese pumpkin varieties that I found at the local Fruit & Veg store some years back (I'm hoping, possibly in vain, that the seed is still viable, since it's pretty old by now), and Waltham – a Butternut variety. I know it sounds like a lot, but it's quite a big mound, and I'll thin the plants to one or two of each in the unlikely event that too many of them germinate. Though the way this Spring is going so far, they will all come up!

I'm also planning another Squashie/Pumpkin mound. Maybe this afternoon, since there's rain forecast for tonight and tomorrow.

And I haven't even mentioned the Beets, saladings, Snow Peas, Endives, Swiss Chard, Giant Garlic, Golden Beet seed setup, Dill, Fennels,...


It's been a really busy Spring, and I'm really happy to be back in the garden.

Life and Death Update

A happy surprise, this morning: As I went to let our Two Chicken Flock out of their house this morning, I was greeted by another little blonde hen! Evidently she's been sleeping rough somewhere, and escaped the Ratel's attention.

When there were four roosters she was getting a really hard time from them. Roosters at the teenager stage are - just like their human counterparts - randy little wosnames, and with too many in the flock, they keep trying to prove their manliness... errr... male-chickenness... to one another, and the hens suffer from what might best be termed Overattention. So this little hen probably went off to sleep in a convenient bush to escape all the bonking, and has been sleeping there ever since. Perhaps she'll rejoin the other two, now that the pressure's off.

Nice... A 50% increase in the flock for no effort!

Life and Death

Warning: Graphic images ahead. Squeamish people should leave now.

Picture courtesy of Wikipedia.

A visit by a neighbourhood Ratel (a.k.a. Honey Badger, though they're not related to Badgers at all) has dealt a severe blow to our status as Chicken growers and breeders. It's been quite a long while since the last time a Ratel managed to get in to the Chickens, but the recent visit from our other wild visitor - a Caracal - should have given me ample warning that our chook-house security needed attention. I am a bad and neglectful human person.

The night before last I was woken at about 10:30 by a tremendous bumping and banging, squawking and flapping from the chicken-house. Leapt out of bed, grabbed a light and rushed out to find a full-grown Ratel sitting in the midst of the flock. I opened the door and Ratel leapt out and vanished into the night, chased by an overenthusiastic Keira dog.

It was mayhem in there. Dead chickens all over the floor. Still, not much I could do in the dark, so I shut all up and went back to bed, only to be roused again half an hour later! Sure enough, the Ratel was back in the chook house, and, obviously spooked by the strong light destroying its night-vision, spitting and hissing at me. These animals are not to be trifled with, so I kept a wide berth as I opened the door to let it out. Utter chaos inside.

Next morning revealed the full extent of the damage.

Over the past several months we have lost quite a few chickens to neighbourhood dogs. It seems that non-permanent residents are incompetent to take responsibility for controlling their dogs in a farming area where livestock of all sorts abound.  Stock loss to dogs - including feral dogs - is a significant problem for all the farmers in the area, and many of them have a zero-tolerance, shoot-on-sight policy for unknown dogs on their land. As a result, our flock numbers were way down to only 4 hens and 4 roosters.

Our prized young rooster, horribly mutilated
by the Ratel's attack. I dispatched him quickly
and cleanly. He is tonight's supper.

Now we're down to 2 chickens. Just one rooster and a hen. Very sadly, the one young rooster, who we had earmarked as breeding stock, was severely damaged by the Ratel, and I had no option but to put him out of his pain. The Ratel had ripped the entire front of his face off, including his beak.

The other young rooster seemed, at first, to have some chance of recovery, but on closer examination I found that he was unable to breathe properly, could not drink water, and his mouth was filled with dried blood. I suspect that his tongue was gone.

Another hen I found alive, but with both eyes scratched out. Later inspection showed that her body had been badly torn in places, too.

This poor dear had had both eyes scratched
out, so there's no chance of her surviving.

I had the unpleasant responsibility, yesterday morning, of killing them all. Another rooster and a hen are simply... gone. I presume and hope that at least the Ratel ate them. What I cannot comprehend is the wanton destructiveness of Ratels. I can easily understand - and sympathise with - animals taking our livestock for food, but the sheer killing of everything that moves is beyond me. Perhaps an animal behaviourist could explain it to me.

The remaining rooster is reasonably hale and well, with only slight damage to his comb. He's looking a bit lost, though, wondering where the hell all his hens have got to.

I spent the rest of yesterday fixing the floor of the chicken house so that nothing can get in (that way) again. Until the next time...

Weeds in Pathways

Patrick has written an interesting post about keeping gravel pathways clear of weeds by using a weed-burner. I think this is an excellent idea! I use a small blowtorch for periodic debugging of the Chook House, preferring to scorch the inside surfaces and roosts rather than use noxious poisons. I confess it has never occurred to me to use it to get rid of weeds. I'm slow, I know...

And weeds, in the veggie-garden paths, have been a perennial bugbear forever.

A year or so ago I had an inspiration for "dealing" with the pathway weeds. A method that differs quite radically from Patrick's strategy, approaching the problem from an entirely different angle. But, in fairness, our circumstances and constraints are completely different. I am not working in a community garden, so I don't have to deal with common pathways, nor with rules about how I may run my garden! Nobody comes to give me dirty looks if I neglect the weeding of pathways!

Nor are my pathways gravelled. I shudder at the thought, since I am wont to wander about the place in my bare feet (and, frequently, barefoot in my head, too) and gravel is  - along with stone chips - one of the nastiest, most barefoot-unfriendly things you can do to the world. Don't.

I freely admit that I had not thought much of my solution to the weed-in-path problem, until Patrick's post made me re-look at it and realise that, perhaps, it is quite a novel idea for some people.

For years I fought the weeds. Sans gravel, this was mostly achieved with a conventional push-hoe, and took me about 15 minutes per pathway. But sometimes it got neglected, and then it ended up taking a bit longer. Especially in Winter, when the Winter grasses take hold with their strong, tough, bushy roots. Then it takes quite a lot more energy. Until my epiphany...

Pennyroyal clumps planted into newly-weeded
pathway. Clumps derive from the bits weeded
out of veggie beds. The whole process is a little
slow to start with, but that's the nature of all
exponential growth systems!

I realised that, outside of metalling the pathways - a concept I dislike - weeds were always going to infest the paths! Given that something always wants to grow in the bare-soil paths, perhaps I'd be better off planting something more manageable and less rampant than the usual motley collection of weeds.

So, for the past year or so, I've been planting and expanding Pennyroyal as my preferred Pathway Plant Of Choice. It mostly keeps the weeds out once established. It grows fairly slowly and is shallow-rooted, so the bits that do grow into the veggie beds themselves are easily sliced out with the spade. It smells great as you walk around the garden, and it's kind to bare feet!

The only downside of Pennyroyal Pathways that I've come across is that, when the Pennyroyal wants to flower, it grows loads of long tendrilly flower-stalks, and the leaf-mat tends to become a bit sparse and thin. This is not a big deal for me, since the rest of the year it presents a dense, and above all weed-resistant, pathway covering.

All win!

Lynx Bait

An uninvited visitor in the night helps out.

Wild Mushrooms for Ecosystem Development

Found in a tucked-away corner of the garden, just near the cottage...