Beware of dry winter
As they often do, things have settled down over the winter, with much less action in the garden and some preparation for the prolonged dry spell. While this is bad news for some flowers and plants, it’s what the indigenous life in the Eastern Cape is all about. So many local plants can be planted and thrive, even with dry conditions and poor soil.
With winter coming in and the drought extending, it’s time to be thinking about waterless gardens. This is a place that the Eastern Cape is unusually strong in. Of course, there’s no way you can control the weather, but there are a surprising number of things you can do to make sure that it doesn’t affect your plants.
The word for plants that don’t need watering is xerophytes (which means ‘ dry plant’). The simplest way to start building your xerophytic garden is to see what’s working immediately around you. There are many be aloes that are just coming towards flower at the moment. While most waterless gardens require bringing in special plants and techniques, much of the Eastern Cape’s plant life is naturally set for short rainfall with long dry spells between.
You can also keep your water needs low by separating off your bed. There are a few ways to do this. First, you can raise the beds. Put in a border around them and top up the soil, so that they’re not sitting at ground level.
Doing this will make sure the bed itself captures more water when it does rain, less of it will seep away. It will also create a relatively windless area around the bottom of your plants, which is crucial to keeping them moist (air movement accounts for a large part of moisture loss).
It’s also a good idea to cover your beds, both at the ground level and a little higher. Ideally, you’d use an organic layer, but in a pinch any old blankets, cloth or sheets of newspaper will all help keep water in the ground and around your roots. This will also help keep your beds warm.
Keeping your beds warm is crucial. This is where a mix of horse manure and green mulch can make the difference between survival and dying off for a bed in the winter. Ideally, your soil temperature should always be above 4 degrees Celsius. This is because water starts to freeze at that temperature, which means ice crystals can form in and around the roots, which damages them. While you don’t need to take the extreme measures that gardeners in colder climates do, it’s worth making sure there’s a decent blanket on your beds.
Overall, the best source of warmth is living things. If you have a healthy layer of compost, mulch, or manure at the top of the soil, it’ll both serve as a blanket for the root layers of the soil and encourage things to move around and poop in there, which will sustain life over the winter.
It’s also a great time to be resetting your garden. As you dig up rocks, think about planting a succulent garden inside a rockery. For many of the bushy and ground cover succulents, if you can dig up a small section with good roots section, it will happily transplant into a rockery. If you see white spots appearing on your aloes, it’s because they’re not getting enough sun. Make sure there’s no trees overhanging them and it should clear up.
Finally, there are some veggies it‘s worth popping into soil if you’ve got a covered space that minimises the water you’ll need (or are feeding from greywater). It’s a good time to be planting onions, as well as Chinese cabbage (which produces lovely delicate leaves, like baby spinach). Swedes, turnips, cauliflower, peas, and potatoes will all do well now. Several herbs will also thrive at the moment, including parsley, thyme, horseradish, chives, mint, and mustard.
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With winter coming in and the drought extending, it’s time to be thinking about waterless gardens. This is a place that the Eastern Cape is unusually strong in.