On the Urban Rain Systems website, rainwater harvesting is defined as a process in which rainwater that falls onto a roof surface is collected and stored to be used at a later time. By harvesting and using rainwater we are not only reducing our monthly water bills, but also reducing our dependence on water treatment plants and dams. Let’s take a closer look at how rainwater is harvested, and explore some of its uses and benefits.
The basics
As you probably know, rainwater is harvested from the roof. Urban Rain Systems recommend that their clients select a large section of the roof for this purpose. The larger the surface, the more water will be harvested. When selecting your surface, try to avoid overhanging trees as far as possible – you don’t want twigs, leaves or bird poop in your harvested water! If you select a cleaner section of the roof it will also help reduce the on-going maintenance you would be required to do.
The next step to consider is how the water gets down from the roof into the Urban Rain Systems RainCell™ Tank. There is no way for the rainwater to channel down without gutters. But it’s not necessary to have gutters installed around the entire house – all that is needed is a single stretch of gutter with a downpipe that leads into the RainCell™ Tank. You will also need a firm base for the tank to stand on. You can use a smooth concrete base or place the RainCell™ Tank on level paving. The next consideration is whether you need a pump and the answer is usually yes. Although it’s possible to manage without a pump if you are using the rainwater for filling your pool by connecting a hose pipe to the tank, a pump is necessary for all other instances like irrigation systems and sprinklers. Once the space on the roof has been selected and the tank is in place on a flat surface, a downpipe is diverted into the top of the tank and the rainwater system is ready to start harvesting.
How much rainwater can be harvested?
The size of your rainwater harvest will depend on the size of your roof and how much rainfall there is. This is a basic formula for calculating your harvesting capacity:
1mm of rainfall x 1m² of roof surface = 1lt of rainwater
For example;
If you harvest from surface of 36m² with an annual rainfall of 700mm your calculation would look like this:
700mm x 36m² roof surface = 25,200lt of rainwater
How rainwater can be used
The most basic use for rainwater is in the garden. Watering the garden can be costly and using free rainwater to water flower beds and the lawn can be a massive money saver. Harvested rainwater can also be used in other ways:
Outside
Supplying water to the irrigation system
Filling up pools and ponds
Washing cars, motorcycles, boats and outdoor furniture
Inside
Should a 4-stage filtration unit be installed, harvested rainwater can be filtered, purified and plumbed into the house for use in bathrooms, toilets and the kitchen. It could even be used as drinking water.
Rainwater Harvesting – The Benefits
There are a great variety of benefits to rainwater harvesting. Although some people find certain benefits more appealing than others, we can all agree that the money saving benefit is probably at the top of the list. The more rainwater you use the less municipal water you need. You would usually pay for municipal water and sewerage fees that are determined by how much water you use, so you end up saving all of that. Some people are concerned with the potential of water cuts. Imagine what would happen if our water was cut… basic daily tasks like showering, brushing our teeth and flushing the toilet would become impossible. With harvested rainwater on the premises, this concern is alleviated. Since water shedding and planned water cuts are already taking place in South Africa, more people should consider looking at water saving strategies like rainwater harvesting.
To keep your good tools clean, try this quick trick.
Fill a bucket with builder’s sand and saturate the sand with vegetable or car oil.
Knock off any soil and dig the metal parts of the tools into the oily sand a few times. This serves three purposes: 1. It cleans off excess dirt, 2. It lightly sharpens the blades 3. It oils the tools at the same time.
Hang them up and they are ready for the next time you need them.
Of all the spring-flowering cottage garden flowers, sweet peas are probably the prettiest and most rewarding. But to enjoy an ample harvest of these bright and sweetly fragrant cut flowers, you have to prepare the soil properly before sowing the seed.
You will need:
A sunny spot along a fence to act as a support structure for the tiny tendrils produced by the climbing varieties. You can also grow them on bamboo or steel tepees in the veggie garden as the flowers attract pollinators like bees
Well-draining soil – a gentle slope is ideal if the soil is a bit heavy
Garden refuse like small sticks, prunings, leaves and lawn clippings
Good-quality compost
Old kraal manure
Bonemeal
Sweet pea seeds
Do this:
Water the area to be cultivated a day before you start, to make the digging easier. Prepare a 80cm deep trench in which you are going to plant your seeds. Keep the first layer of topsoil separate from the layers of deeper, poorer soil as you excavate. You can also add about 60g of bonemeal to the topsoil before backfilling the trench after spreading out the different organic layers. Digging a trench might sound like hard work, but your reward will be strong plants producing masses of flowers over a long period.
Types of sweet peas
Seeds of climbing sweet peas as well as bush varieties (dwarf varieties that don’t need staking) are available in mixed or single colours including white, red, pink, lilac and purple. It’s advisable to soak the seeds overnight in hot water and to sow them about 5cm deep. Follow the spacing directions given on the seed packet.
Keep the soil moist until the seeds have germinated, and then water regularly if the top layer of soil feels dry. A mulch of compost around the plants is recommended to shade the roots and keep the soil moist for longer. Feed the little seedlings once or twice with a growth stimulant like Kelpak to make them strong and healthy. When the seedlings have reached a height of about 15 cm, you can start pinching out their growth tips to encourage bushy plants with lots of flower-producing side branches.
Harvest a handful of red chillies and cut each one along the length to open it up. If you want a milder relish, remove the seeds – use gloves if you can because that is where the heat sits! If you like it hot, leave the seeds in.
Mix 3 – 5 teaspoons of salt in with your chillies and leave them in a colander to rest for around an hour. The salt will draw the water out of the chillies and also take some of the spiciness out. Don’t worry, it won’t take all the taste out.
While you are waiting for the salt to do its work, grind two tablespoons each of yellow mustard seeds and fennel seeds together using a mortar and pestle.
Gently warm a cup of vegetable oil of your choice to a moderate temperature, stir in the mustard seeds and fennel and add the rinsed and drained chillies.
Bottle the chillies in sterilised preserving jars making sure they are completely covered in oil. Your relish will keep for around a month in the fridge.
Using EXLGel in flower beds, potted plants and hanging baskets improves plant life while saving water – a win-win situation for your plants (and for you!) It can be used in two ways; wet and dry.
Dry Application
Mix granules with potting soil or dig into existing pots and flower beds.
Water well.
The granules will absorb water and release as plant needs.
Wet Application
Mix 5g with 1L of water
Stir and wait for 10 minutes
Once gel forms, mix into your potting soil and plant.
The plants will draw from the gel as they get thirsty.
The other day I was watching the trailer of the new Peter Rabbit™ movie and it brought back memories of my own childhood, when we used to sneak into my dad’s veggie garden and liberate his monkey nuts. Just like Peter Rabbit snuck into Mr McGregor’s garden to steal veggies, it was impossible for us to resist the temptation of the tasty morsels in my dad’s veggie garden.
Sometimes my best friend Angus and I would camp out under the stars in the garden, and one of our favourite meals was a bowl of boiled monkey nuts. Instead of roasting them like most people do, our family has always enjoyed the boiled version. To this day we still serve big bowls filled to the brim as a snack at Christmas time.
On our campouts Angus and I would make a fire in an old coffee can, find a piece of grid and a pot to cook our nuts, and then sneak into the veggie garden to dig up plants to gather the nuts. We thought we were very clever, as we would pick odd plants in the rows, take the harvest from the roots and then carefully put the plants back, all to hide the evidence. But just like Mr McGregor did, my dad would get mad when he found these dying plants and scream to my mother, “Jennifer, look what your children have done!” Then we would be disowned for a few days.
We lived in a pretty remote area so there were no friends to go and play with in the afternoons. Instead we as kids were always playing in the garden, and in the evenings there were chores to be done out in the veggie garden. This part of the garden was my dad’s domain and the only area that was fenced off from the chickens and bantams we had running around.
One of our chores was to clean out the chicken litter from the asbestos runs (yes, asbestos in those days) to fertilise the veggie garden. Some of this was used as a mulch around the veggies, and some was soaked in huge drums with other ingredients to make liquid fertiliser we used to gather in watering cans.
Dad grew the most amazing tomatoes, which was his prime crop. Two plants were planted in a big fertiliser bag filled with his ‘mixture’, and each bag was placed on a structure of cement blocks onto which long poles were placed so that the bags sat across the poles, off the ground, and we would poke holes in the bottom of the bags for drainage. The plants were nurtured with watering cans of goodness-filled water, one full five-litre can for each plant every day, because tomatoes are thirsty plants. We weren’t allowed to skimp on this job or turn to the hosepipe.
Once they grew up a bit, they needed to be staked, and we couldn’t pop over to the hardware store and grab some bamboo droppers, so as a family we went out on a weekend and cut bamboo for the tomatoes (and some for my fishing rods!) A long, intricate trellis system was constructed around the tomatoes, and as they got bigger we would tie them to the trellis with my mother’s old stockings. In those days she worked in the bank and had to wear stockings and high-heel pumps to work, so there was always a supply of worn-out stockings. Nowadays we buy ties.
As the tomatoes started flowering Dad would pinch out the early flowers so that the plants grew bushy. Once the crop started, we picked kilograms of beautiful tomatoes that he would take to work and sell. His favourite tomato was the ‘Moneymaker’, which is one of the oldest varieties and is still available today. Gosh, if we picked a big one it would have pride of place on the dining room table, and my dad would tell my mother on countless occasions how amazing that tomato was.
My dad was one of the first people in our area to grow the William’s banana, which he got from a commercial grower on the South Coast. These trees were like giants in the garden (although I was quite short then). When the flowers at the bottom of the banana bunches started falling off, the still-green bananas would be cut off with a hacksaw blade and taken back to the veranda where a table was set up with layers of newspaper. We would cut off the hands and lay them down, covering them with another layer of newspaper to trap ethylene to ripen them. The whole process was controlled so that the bananas would ripen in succession.
In those days family and friends often used to visit us, and we them on the weekends. Whenever somebody visited they always left with something, be it a bag of the latest crop or some seedlings we dug up and wrapped in newspaper with a little water added. No one ever left without something from the veggie garden. Today I still garden in the same manner, and everyone always leaves with something from the garden.
The only difference is that we sow seed in trays to keep a more controlled environment, and I use the hardware store a lot more. I have the same ritual that my dad had: every day when I come home from work I go into the garden to see what needs to be done. I pick ingredients to cook with, and just spend time enjoying the garden. And as Peter Rabbit hides in the potting shed in the story, so I like to hide in my potting shed. I think I love my potting shed more than my house! It’s filled with family memories, like the concrete pots dad made for mom’s orchids, still looking strong after all this time, and quirky things I have kept from our old garden to use in my new garden today.
One of my fondest memories is the annual Easter egg hunt in the garden. Being very competitive, I had to find the most Cadbury Dairy Milk eggs. We would then torment aunty Yvonne by pushing as many eggs as we could into the exhaust pipe of her old VW Beetle, and watch as she tried to start the car, which would splutter like crazy until the eggs shot out of the exhaust. I have to say that chocolate and growing veggies is in my blood, and without them life just wouldn’t be the same!
Look out for the Cadbury Dairy Milk special limited-edition Peter Rabbit™ Milk Chocolate Egg with delicious Astros inside. #UnwrapTheJoy
A simple zucchini salad filled with fresh Mediterranean ingredients packed with flavour.
Ingredients:
250 g raw pasta 2 – 3 zucchini Cherry tomatoes Fresh basil Microgreens Parmesan cheese 1 small lemon Olive oil 1 clove garlic Salt and pepper
Method:
Cook pasta in salted boiling water until al dente, drain and rinse quickly in cold water to cool. Place in a bowl and add zucchini made into ribbons using a vegetable peeler, tomatoes and torn basil. Make a simple vinaigrette using lemon zest and 1 tablespoon of juice, 2 tablespoons olive oil, salt and pepper and a clove of crushed garlic. Pour over pasta and mix carefully to combine all the flavours. Plate up and top with micro greens and shaved parmesan.
Add sliced poached chicken breasts to make this zucchini salad into a meal on its own.
Timing is critical in growing your own flower or vegetable seedlings, so make sure that you sow the seeds during the right season for your area or climatic zone because temperature, day length and humidity can all have a profound effect on seed germination.
You can consult the information on each seed packet to confirm that you are sowing each plant type at the correct time of the year.
1. Write the name of the seeds, sowing date and batch code of the packet of seeds on a label. Use a waterproof pen or an ordinary pencil to ensure long term legibility. Recording the batch code allows you to inform the supplier if germination is poor or not successful at all. Read the instructions on the reverse side of the seed packet before commencing with the procedure.
2. Fill the sowing tray with seedling growing medium to about 10 to 12mm from the top. Firm down gently with a wooden “stamper” or similar flat-surfaced implement to level the sowing surface and remove any air pockets.
3. Carefully cut open the seed packet, making sure not to damage the smaller packet containing the seed that is held within.
4. Fine seed, such as the carrot seed is best diluted with fine maize meal before sowing, in order to make it spread easily and more evenly and also to indicate where the seed is being sown. Scattering dark seeds on a dark surface means they are difficult to see.
5.Scatter the seeds evenly over the surface of the tray by gently shaking the paper packet from side to side and tilting slowly at the same time until the seed and meal mixture emerges in an even, gentle flow.
6. Once all the seed has been sown, cover with a fine layer of vermiculite or seedling growing medium. A kitchen sieve works well; delivering a fine, even layer. If seeds are buried too deeply they will not germinate regularly and possibly not at all. A general rule of thumb is to cover them with a layer equal to the diameter of a single seed.
7. Once again use the wooden “stamper” to gently press the seeds and the covering agent into one another.
8. Place the nametag into the tray and brush off any loose particles from the rim or lip of the tray.
9. Place the tray in a protected, lightly shaded position to await germination. Keep a watchful eye on proceedings as the seeds start to germinate. This usually takes between 4 and 14 days, depending on the plant type. The average germination time is always specified on the seed packet.
10. As the seedlings develop, keep the tray evenly moist. Drying out can cause major fatalities. Gradually move the tray into a sunny position in order ensure strength and stability in each little seedling. Watch for slugs, snails, cutworm and damping off during this time. All of them can spell disaster.
11. When 4 to 5 proper leaves develop on each little plant, they need to be planted on into seedling punnets with individual cells. Remove each plantlet carefully with a dibbler and insert into a hole made with the same implement in the punnet. Ensure that the roots are all intact and facing downwards. Firm down thoroughly.
12. Water well, immediately after planting. Allow the seedlings to develop for 3 to 6 weeks in the punnet before planting them out into their final growing position.
Start sowing and growing with one of my awesome bundles below
Few gardening experiences are more rewarding than picking home-grown edibles, and the ways in how they are produced are always changing. In simple terms, you don’t need much to start a veggie patch. The basic requirements are fertile soil, good drainage, full sun for at least five hours a day, water, a few basic gardening tools, packets of seed, vegetable seedlings, fruit trees and potted herbs. But why not venture a little further by also focusing on strong design?
It is all in the detail
Modern vegetable gardens are not merely functional, but are also designed with care and thought and meant to be seen as elegant and highly ornamental. They often boast ornamental hedges of perhaps lavender or rosemary, are filled with flowering plants between leafy vegetables, and are rounded off with espalier or topiarised herbs and fruit trees. Strong structural elements like fountains, birdbaths, lattice trelliswork, sundials and obelisks for climbing vegetables are often incorporated to provide interesting vertical detail and focal variety. Move away from the old-fashioned vegetable gardens with their rustic, angular beds and functional access paths, as you should not limit your creativity – feel free to choose any design for the layout of your home harvest, be it formal or informal. Your tomatoes, for instance, are not going to mind which design style you choose – they will rather respond to good food-gardening practices like healthy soil, companion plants to protect them, and enough water and food. To help you plan, we showcase scenes from different vegetable gardens and add some pointers to think about when planning a new kitchen garden.
Perfect places to plant
Soil preparation is very important if you want to grow vegetables successfully. There are different ways to go about it, including the conventional way where beds are marked out to the desired shape and size, dug over to spade depth and enriched with generous amounts of compost, bone meal and a general fertiliser. Another preparation technique is the ‘no-digging method’, where about 10 layers of newspaper are spread over the area in which the vegetables are going to be planted. They will smother and kill germinating weeds by depriving them of light. Next come a layer of straw, a layer of compost, a layer of granular fertiliser with chicken manure as a base (such as Bounce Back), and a layer of bone meal. These layers are repeated until the bed is about 30 cm deep, topped off with a final layer of compost 15 cm deep. After thorough irrigation, the bed will be ready for planting. Alternatively, use built-up beds formed with either treated timber or bricks. This method is suitable for areas where the soil is very poor and sandy.
The built-up beds can then be filled with a better soil over which the gardener has control, like commercial potting soil enriched with additives like compost and kraal manure. Built-up beds are also much easier to maintain for gardeners suffering from backache or sore knees! Pots are a boon! If space is at a premium, remember that you can grow almost any vegetable or herb very successfully in pots, as well as some fruits. You can choose different pot sizes, but it is best to stick to one simple design style. Place them in strategic areas as added focal points. We love (Img_9152 from 66 Valley Drive) On a pretty shelf, rows of terracotta pots house small veggie seedlings still needing some growing up to do before being planted out into the garden. This is functional, and normal procedure for a food gardener raising plants from seed. In this case it was done in a visually pleasing manner. So, when you are designing your own food garden, remember to include a pretty ‘nursery area’ as well, as you will always have baby plants to nurse along.
Easy and comfortable access
Pathways can be as simple as putting down a thick layer of bark mulch, gravel or straw, or they can be more sophisticated, such as paving with bricks, pavers or tiles. What they look like isn’t too important, as long as they give you easy access to weed, feed and harvest your home-grown edibles. Do not make them too narrow, as a food garden requires more
maintenance and attention than other part of the garden.
Support structures to please
It is inevitable that every bean should be given a pole to lean on, but it need not be a boring stick. If you know you are going to be planting beans, peas (and sweet peas, which should be growing next to beans and peas!) every year, plan for pretty and sturdy removable structures like obelisks and tepees. Also think about pergolas, arches or other support structures that will allow permanent plants like grape vines and granadillas to attain their full glory. It is also important to erect and plant the latter in a setting where the shade they might cast will not harm seasonal vegetables that need sun.
Other focal points
Adding a large central focal point like a ‘fountain of life’ centres the design of any garden and adds an ethereal and mystical quality. From a purely aesthetic point of view, it also makes it easier to plot out a formal planting bed design around it. If you do not want to go this big, try something smaller, like a central bird bath or perhaps a pretty container with a lemon or bay leaf tree planted in it, or just a large rock or a sundial.
Thinking about the harvest. The difference between an ornamental garden with a variety of perennials growing permanently in one spot and a vegetable garden is crop rotation. With the exception of certain edibles, you cannot plant the same crops in the same spot year after year. A practical way to help you decide where to plant what is to divide the vegetables into three basic groups and regularly alternate the areas in which you plant them. This will ensure that your garden soil remains healthy, and will prevent pests and diseases that target a specific host from becoming too much of a problem.
Root vegetables such as carrots, turnips and beetroot require light feeding and can grow in relatively poor soil. The bean family, which includes peas, requires more food in the form of compost and fertiliser, but at the end of the growth cycle their root systems return nutrients to the soil. Leafy and fruit vegetables such as lettuce, tomatoes, mealies, sweet peppers, spinach and cabbage need very fertile soil and regular feeding in the form of liquid fertiliser.
Slow-growing crops such as rhubarb, asparagus and artichokes remain planted in the same spot in the garden permanently and do not need to be moved around.
How to add colour in a vegetable garden
Over the years gardeners have realised that vegetables grow well when accompanied by certain herbs and flowers, which is called companion planting. This concept allows the designer of a modern food garden the freedom to be creative! The beauty about pretty plant companions (including useful herbs) is that not only are they an environmentally friendly way of keeping harmful insects out of your veggie garden, but they can also help to prevent most plant diseases. It is also a design ploy used to add colourful flowers and different leaf textures to a conventional food garden. Insect-repellent plants with aromatic foliage or flowers include lavenders, scented geraniums, lobularias, wild garlic (Tulbaghia violaceae) and catmint. One also wants to attract pollinators like bees, moths and butterflies by planting sunflowers, roses, cornflowers and sweet peas, to name a few. And then there are those, like nasturtiums and violets, that lure harmful insects away from vegetables. Ornamental garden plants can also be used to ‘doctor’ the soil, the best known of which is marigolds. Another useful way of adding pizazz to a food garden is planting ornamentals
with edible flowers, such as daylilies, hibiscus and pansies.
Protection against wind
A food garden needs protection from the elements, and first prize is to enclose it with walls. If this is not possible you will have to think about other means of protection, especially in dry and windy areas. One way is to fence your vegetable garden with quince trees. These can be pruned into a hedge and their golden-yellow fruit will ripen in late autumn, when it can be canned or used for delicious quince jam or jelly. Another good fencing option is pomegranates, which are once again available in nurseries. The plants are hardy, easy to grow, tolerate heavy pruning and will supply you with ample amounts of beautiful, juicy fruit.
Our Team is ready to answer any questions or concerns that you may have. Feel free to get in touch!
Office Hours: 8:00am – 16:00pm
If we are not available then email us and we will get back to you as soon as possible. hello@tanyavisser.com
