Planting our First Home-grown Seedlings

Last week we planted our first home-grown seedlings – Haricot and Valdor Yellow Bush Beans.

Heidi-Mari and Josua made us a light box to germinate our heirloom seeds. The light box was also part of their science activities in Exploring Creation with Botany.

We sowed our seeds in seedling trays on the 24th of September. We sowed beans, carrots, tomatoes and lettuce. We got our heirloom seeds from the Gravel Garden in Somerset.

Within two days the lettuce appeared above the ground. We could hardly control our excitement.

Then 4 days later the beans appeared.

The carrots and tomatoes appeared a few days later. I can’t wait to plant the carrots!The beans almost ready to plant in our raised vegetable bed.

And last week we planted them.

On the 27th of September we sowed some herbs (chives, chilies, peppadews and basil) to plant between our vegetables for pest control and on the 3rd of October some more beans and tomatoes.

For our already existing garden of lettuce and tomatoes, we bought yarrow, basil and parsley plants at the slow food market in Stellenbosch. Yarrow and basil are especially good companion plants for lettuce and tomatoes. Christo bought me a book from Margaret Roberts on Companion Planting.

You may remember that we planted two strawberry plants on Equinox day the 22nd of September. Here are the first strawberries starting to ripen. Never before have we seen such shiny, red strawberries. Luckily they are in hanging baskets, or we would never have seen them ripen – small hands would pick it at the first hint of red.











The whole week I was waiting to pick my first rose. This morning, after the rain I went out to have a look and I could pick the most perfect rose!