IOS feature Advice from

INDEPENDENT THE on Saturday FOCUS ON KZN

GARDEN ANYWHERE

You don’t need a proper garden to grow your own veggies. Balconies and even bits of wasteland can be cultivated for your and your community’s health

BY DUNCAN GUY

Xolani Hlongwa of the Green Village and Green Gallery projects admires tomatoes and beetroots planted in the ruins of a building in Durban’s Umbilo Road.

INDEPENDENT on Saturday’s editor Mazwi Xaba has a passion for helping homes and communities grow food gardens – which was spurred on further because of lockdown. His weekly newspaper features all the tips, tricks and stories you need to turn your balcony, garden or community land into a kitchen garden. Read the newspaper every Saturday to get the latest news from avid gardener Duncan Guy. THE CITY’S urban agriculture scene is emerging from winter and lockdown.

In Durban’s Umbilo Road, a healthy row of tomatoes and beetroots planted during level 3 are on their way towards rooting and fruiting in the dilapidated ruins of a building where former ballet artist Xolani Hlongwa has started a food garden and art centre at his Green Camp project.

“It’s to show that you can farm anywhere,” he says.

Much of the agricultural activity, however, now happens at his associated Green Village project in Monteseel, near Drummond.

In Durban North, seedlings have sprouted in compost bags as Fin McLean prepares to spread the idea to inner-city balconies, complete with guides on how to grow food in South African languages, French and Swahili.

His initiative, Ubuntu Farms, was born out of wanting to make a lockdown feeding scheme in the Point area more sustainable.

“It will empower people to take control of their food production. We’re trying to create the idea that they can grow anything,” said McLean, 20, who has been back home from Stellenbosch University since the beginning of lockdown. He is studying sustainable urban development.

INDEPENDENT THE on Saturday FOCUS ON KZN

Spring has seen herbs flourish in off-the-grid guru Graham Robjant’s garden, thanks to the worm tea he produces on-site. Vegetable seedlings are responding to the new season by growing rapidly in his nursery section.

He’s sorting out his ant problem by applying black pepper, a bit of salt – not too much because it can change the pH of the soil – and vinegar, instead of commercial products which are harmful to the insects.

“These things don’t harm the ants. They just don’t like them.”

Robjant never wants another incident of a “creature of nature” suffering because of gardening chemicals, like the hadeda that choked to death in his hands after eating toxic slug pellets. He values the birds for doing a great job, turning the earth while foraging.

A better way to deal with slugs and snails is to break up eggshells, or place copper coins in the garden.

“They don’t like eggshells because they damage their sensitive membranes and the coins cause electric shocks,” he says.

Sunflowers, which will attract birds and bees, are expected to pop up in a week.

He battled to find seeds and ended up buying rabbit mix that contained them from his supermarket.

Grasses thrive underneath his bird feeder and in other patches of his garden, courtesy of bird droppings. One is sorghum.

Permaculture boffin Vanessa Meintjes recommends the grain as a way people can practise the “three sisters” version of North American planting, using indigenous food plants, with sorghum providing the structure for wild peas that are climbers and indigenous watermelons that spread below them.

She also encourages cultivating food plants alongside indigenous growth to increase biodiversity.

There is an abundance of monkeys in Glenwood, which has forced people to get creative to safeguard their food gardens, says Robjant.

“During lockdown there was very little vehicle traffic. Monkeys became a lot braver in the territory we took away from them.”

His alert young German Shepherd keeps them at bay.

Robjant’s home is powered by solar panels and people constantly ask him for advice about going off the grid.

He says the appliance you need to keep going is the fridge, where food is stored, not the television set. He also recommends alternatives to air conditioning, such as whirly birds that suck out warm air through the roof, or a wet towel placed over a low-powered fan.

“The problem is that people want to go off the grid but they don’t want to change their lifestyles.”

His panels, though, power gadgets that suit him and his own lifestyle: devices that trigger bangs to go off if a fence hopper clears his walls, others that detect when the soil needs water and automatically pump it from his rainwater tanks when necessary.