Nurture your garden
FOURWAYS – How does your garden grow? Read to find out why Fourways resident, Arina Duvenhage, stands by that fact that every day should be garden day.
The country’s soil is seen as nutrient deficient therefore most of the fresh food items community members buy do not supply them with enough nutrients.
This stark fact was highlighted by Fourways resident, Arina Duvenhage, who runs the Garden of Eden Garden School.
“There is cancer in my family so I am not prepared to use any pesticides or fungicides. So my quest was how to grow organic vegetables without pest and fungus problems,” Duvenhage said.
Duvenhage told a large gathering of members of the Randburg Horticultural Society at Ludwig’s Roses on Kyalami Road, that after spending several years researching the pathology of plants, she discovered that there was a lack of nutrients in the country’s soil.
“Soil samples we have tested from Standerton to Midrand all show too much magnesium and too little calcium. Without calcium there are no new cells which results in small leaves, small flowers and masses of pests. Vital micro-organisms die off and you end up with no vital minerals in the soil,” Duvenhage said.
“The biggest problem when gardeners try to correct this is that they use fertilisers wrongly and the wrong fertilisers.”
Duvenhage gave the attendees a number of tips on how to get their gardens into prime condition in just four months.
Duvenhage advised that:
- Each month you should feed your garden by spreading just 1mm of mulch over the soil.
- Diversity is good and you can use things such as soya bean meal.
- Bounce Back (chicken poo pellets now called Atlantic All Purpose), Seamungus, lucerne meal, rabbit pellets, grass and leaves can be placed on the soil.
“It is food for the microbes. Do not work it in – let them do the work,” Duvenhage advised.
“Then for the plants themselves, every morning between August and January, it takes me about 10 minutes to spray my roses and veggies with a foliar fertiliser such as Trelmix, Seagro or any other natural product with lots of trace elements in it. I also make my own organic mixes from natural products. Thereafter you can drop the spraying to twice a week and then once a week. You need to keep those microbes fed.”
