This week we put in the seeds for cabbage , Kale, I thought let try that this winter and it looked a lot like a vegetable, some body gave us and we try to keep going because the mothers like it so much, they called it Zimbabwe cabbage.
So when I bought the packet with seeds I thought great we can have lots now. Then I found out(everyone in Holland ) that it is boerekool, so you see that is how much I know about growing vegetables!!!
But this winter the children at the school will have Hollandse boerekool.
It is also called "Chou Moellier"sounds a lot more interesting then Boerekool.
It is ideal because you dont use the whole plant you just keep picking the leaves off and it will keep growing, I love vegetables like that , Swiss Chard the spinach here is also like that, you just keep on eating from it.
I have learnt so much these last few years about growing vegetables, I hope I can do more companion planting this year and try to plant different vegetables together at the same time so that when the one lot of veggies is finished, the next lot will be ready to be picked.
I want to try not to have any empty bed this year. Hope I will get it right.
If anyone out there has some advice please sent it to me , believe me I can use it.

HERBS

We have a small hedge of an indigenous plant which bears small clusters of round black berries. A visitor to the school garden pointed these berries out to Shirley last year on a small plant which had grown wild, and said how tasty they were. Shirley was hooked! She remembers a friend’s mother making a delicious jam from the berries many years ago but had never before seen them growing in the wild. The berries were left to seed and the resulting hedge now has a lovely crop of fruit which Maaike and Shirley like to eat (the fruit has a liquorice taste), but Milly says ‘it’s an acquired taste’… so not to everyone’s liking then! I was looking up ‘ringworm’ in Margaret Roberts’ “Indigenous healing plants” because so many of the children have ringworm and I hoped we had some plants in the herb garden with which we could treat it. The first plant mentioned is Solanum Nigrum or Nastergal and this is the name of this berry bush!! Apparently the green berries are poisonous (the ripe fruit is not toxic) and it is these green berries that are used to make a paste. This is then frequently applied to the affected area. The leaf of the Solanum Nigrum can also be cooked with spinach – the leaves and the fruit contain fairly high quantities of vitamin C.

We are trying to encourage the women who work in the garden to make use of the herbs to treat ailments. In January, Margaret used some Wilde Als to treat the after effects of a viral infection and was very pleased with the resulting well being. It was also Margaret who applied a whole clove (the spice) to a sore, loose tooth. The pain disappeared she said, and she forgot about her tooth when she was eating her lunch. To her great joy, the tooth came out when she was chewing! She was delighted that she didn’t have to pay a dentist to extract the tooth for her.

by Shirley Doyle

The start of this year did not go too well, really I am never happy there is too much water or there is nothing. We had lots of rain this summer, very good of course, but when it rains it rains with buckets, lots and lots of buckets.
When it is not raining it is dry dry dry. and then we have the biggest problem, the school has only water from the borehole and the pump of the borehole is really the problem of our frustration these last few months. If the pump does not work properly we dont have water or very little water and then that water has to go to the kids in the school first ofcourse in this heat they need to drink water , I wont even start on the situation in the bathrooms of the school when this happens.
At the moment it is a bit better and we started to put the new seeds in, I had to wait till we knew for sure we would have at least the first week enough water for the new seeds to take.

This summer we really wanted to try if we could grow as many pumpkins as we could, last year the ones we planted did very well, so we thought let fill the lower half of the garden with pumpkins, I could not wait to see them grow, but no this year did not go well, perhaps because it was such a wet summer but we only had a few pumpkins this time.
The butternut did better we had planted 2 terraces full of them , they did very very well, also the courgettes or marrows as they call them here, we had lots and lots of them.
But I was really disappointed that the pumpkins did not do so well this summer, whoever is out there and can give me some advise how we can do better next summer please let me know!!!!

A few photos of Christmas party we had for all the ladies, who help in the kitchen and in the vegetable garden.
This way we are saying thank you to all these ladies without whom we would not be able to feed the children or have a vegetable garden.
These mothers are there every morning at 6am winter or summer and believe me 6am winter time is coooold!
They are all volunteers helping us to give their and all the other children at the school a warm meal.
They work hard and have learnt so much!

Buster

BUSTER

Buster must be almost a year old now - he has become the ‘kitchen dog’. Whenever one of us arrives at that side of the school, Buster is sure to make his appearance. He is a big dog and unfortunately leaps up at us in greeting, and then nips your bum and feet! After the initial exuberance, he does quieten down thank goodness. He has such a friendly, sociable nature that you can’t help liking him.

By Shirley Doyle