Establish Sustainable Garden on a Small Scale
Now that I have joined the ranks of gardeners who grow their own, I'm on the hunt or organic vegetable seeds that I can grow in my vegetable garden.
19/09/2020
Seeds For Africa
I have now become a sustainable gardener, one that grows their own - I hope - and one that produces enough vegetables to feed themselves. I know it is only on a small scale, but even my little vegetable bed and vertical gardens should provide me with a good supply of produce, and organic produce that is grown without the use of toxic pesticides and chemical sprays.
As my garden grows, I will be keeping you updated on the progress as concerns what works and what doesn't work. The raised beds are now filled with a variety of vegetables, most of which are seedlings that have been purchased. I have also established a small number of seeds into seedlings and these, hopefully, will provide a second wave of produce once the original seedlings have born their produce.
One of the raised beds containing a selection of seedling broccoli and cauliflower and carrots started from seed. You can also see a few marigolds here and there to, hopefully, keep the pests at bay.
The seedlings purchased to start the vegetable garden are an expense I won't have again, as it is far more expensive to grow your own using seedlings. If you truly want to be sustainable and also save money, it is far better to purchase seeds to establish your year-round crops.
Even though the area where the raised beds for the vegetables is small, we managed to cram in quite a lot. We will still be adding a few more vertical seedling towers for all the new seed types sourced.
We ended up having to buy a few seedling vegetables, due to the fact that we were unable to source seeds for these.
It has been a week since we set up the vertical PVC pipe seedling towers and these are already starting to show some growth. The recycled bottle self-watering containers are working extremely well and we filled up with water last week and haven't watered again since that time. The soil is moist but not overly wet. The tomato seeds have started to sprout and once these reach a nice height, they will be moved into the vegetable beds. Read more about the recycled plastic bottle vertical seedling gardens in this article.
Sourcing Seeds for your Homegrown Vegetables
As mentioned briefly above, it was difficult to source a wide selection of seeds, particularly for those vegetable varieties favoured for homegrown vegetable gardens. I have been searching for quite a while and it was only recently that I stumbled across Seeds For Africa. I could not believe the selection of seeds that they have, both of local vegetables and some favourites from Australia and other countries.
If you are planning on growing your own and keeping costs down, you simply must pop onto the Seeds For Africa website to check out the selection of vegetables. Ordering was easy, prices are better than store-bought seed packets and the service was speedy. I was also surprised to find a free packet of fruit and vegetable fertilizer as a gift. If you read this - thank you, guys!
From now on, no more seedlings. We will be starting up our seedbeds soon using PVC gutters and brackets fastened on a wall above the raised vegetable beds. It's all about trying to get as much in the space as possible so that we can grow a variety of vegetables for our consumption.
