An abundance of Basil

Slowly but surely the herb and vegetable gardens are filling out. The excitement of a new season of herbs and vegetables is mounting in the Towerwater garden. The basil seedlings are competing for space. This means picking out the tender young seedlings to provide space for the others to grow, making for happy seedlings and humans alike.

The seedlings are happy about having more space while the humans are happy about the delicate taste that baby basil adds to a salad.

The vegetable garden is bursting at the seams. The boerpampoen (pumpkin) in the bottom bed has escaped the bed. It is happily putting pumpkins down in the pathways. The bees love the pumpkin flowers with up to 4 at a time per flower. Watching them at first I thought they were fighting, but then I realised they were helping each other by cleaning off the pollen from each other’s bodies. They resembled little yellow furry bees with all the pollen stuck over them.

The bee garden next to the pumpkin bed is just as busy. But somehow the bees collecting pollen from the delicate flowers seem more graceful, as they fly from flower to flower collecting pollen and nectar. The bees on the pumpkin flowers behave as though they are visiting an ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet with a time limit.

When Carel arrived with sweet potato runners, I decided that I can manage without the peppers this year and allocated the sweet pepper bed to the sweet potato. It will be my first sweet potatoes and I cannot wait.

One of the beds in the herb garden

Vegetable gardening is always exciting for me. The simple act of pulling out a carrot never loses its appeal. Meals are so much more satisfying knowing that you planted the vegetables on your plate.

With the onions harvested and cured it was time to bag and store them. I am a bit disappointed with the height of the mealie plants. Although they are very healthy, their tops only reach under my chin. I love it when mealies grow so high that I have to look up at them.

The brinjals are looking good. I look forward to the white brinjals that will be nicely contrasted with the purple brinjals this year.

Brinjals and mealies

With two beds of tomatoes in colours of green, yellow, orange, black and red; summer salads will be a feast for the eyes as well as the palate.

The bush beans are covered in young beans. My garden is already dictating the side dishes to be served for Christmas lunch. It is the best gift to walk into your garden on Christmas morning and gather the vegetables for lunch.

With an abundance of basil, I will be able to experiment freely with a basil sorbet in a chilled courgette soup as a course for Christmas lunch.