Author: Shahnee Stockigt

Like us, plants require food to keep them healthy and strong. Get your plants off to a good start with decedent, nutrient-rich soil. For plants to grow well and produce lots of leafy growth, flowers, and fruit, they need to be well-fed. We are spoilt to live in a country with a generally mild climate and mostly good soil, which allows us to grow a wide range of beautiful plants. However, this tends to make us forget that they do require a little feeding. The key to a flourishing garden is hugely affected by your soil health and fertility.

Tip: Good soil = good roots = a good, healthy plant

Food for thought: According to the Gallup Gardening Survey, less than half of the world’s home gardeners use any kind of fertiliser or plant food on their lawns or gardens. What's unfortunate about this statistic is that it means gardeners aren't getting as many flowers or as much produce as they should. And they're probably struggling with disease and insect problems that could be avoided. Well-fed plants are healthier, more productive and more beautiful.

Soil, often called the living skin of the Earth,  is arguably the most important and valuable resource we have. Soil is made from three main components, besides air and water – minerals from weathered rocks, organic matter, which is mainly decomposed plants, and living organisms like earthworms in the soil. There are many different types of soils depending on the composition of the above components. Here is s fun way to test the basic type of soil you have:

• Take a heaped tablespoon of soil from your garden.
• Wet the soil.
• Now roll it into a “sausage” about a pencil-thin.
• If it crumbles and won’t form a sausage – you have sandy soil.

Life is a Garden received press coverage to the amount of R717,736.43 in the month of November. The below spreadsheet shows the total press coverage that Life is a Garden received in the month of November.  2020.

To view the Life is a Garden – November “Redbook” actual press clippings, please click here: http://bit.ly/2WiFOgg 

Press Report of November

Marketing Snapshot

The holiday season is a gardener’s time to shine, an opportunity to show off the goods, and the perfect occasion to “uithaal en wys”, as they say in Afrikaans. This month, you’ve got full bragging rights, so make sure you’re ready to be the gardening host with the most! It’s time to let those home-grown veggies and herbs take the spotlight.

Braai buddies

With the family on their way and the charcoal ready – it’s braai time with some buddies from the garden to bring out the flavour of your food. Highlight your hard work by making veggies and herbs the hero of your dish. Here are some tantalising ideas to please every pallet:

1. Brazilian braai broodjies: Put an exotic twist on our local favourite by adding these herbs to your broodjies with a little olive oil – oregano, rosemary, bay leaf, basil, and thyme.
2. Sweet and sticky pumpkin pockets: Make little parcels from foil to pop straight onto the grill, filling them with ginger, marjoram, tarragon, and a little honey or sugar. Kids will love this one!
3. Creamy black mushrooms: A delicious sauce to baste on as you braai, using melted butter, garlic, dill, and lemon balm. Garnish with fresh chives.
4. Watermelon wanderlust: Explore your tastebuds and impress everyone with groovy grilled watermelon! Cut your watermelon into wedges, season both sides with a mixture of salt, sugar, and a hint of chilli. Season well to get that charred look and flame-grilled taste, garnish with lots of fresh mint.
5. Tomato hot pot: Hollow out the inside of your big tomatoes, mix the pulp with the following herbs, put it all back inside and then pop them over a gentle flame: parsley, fennel, coriander, sage, with a little salt and black pepper.

*Match your meat: Pair the flavour profile of your veggie dishes with your chosen meat for a well-balanced, complimentary dish.

Happy holidays is the theme and sentiment this month across much of the world. December, for some, is a time for relaxing and taking in the beauty of their summer gardens, while for others it means time to have fun giving TLC to their indoor, patio and garden plants. It is exciting to spruce up the home, patio and garden during this season of family time. Ask your family for gardening gifts that you may have eyed at your local garden centre. Plants are living gifts that will last for years in the garden – the type of gift that keeps on giving! Life is a Garden, so get the family in on it too!

Edibles

Add some zing to your cuisine these holidays with the following herbs:

Mint: A sprig of mint foliage is currently an all-the-rage addition to mojito cocktails, gin, other home-made cordials, as well as other trendy sundowners. Mint has very fragrant leaves with a fruity, aromatic taste.

This easy-to-grow groundcover prefers well-drained soils and good, regular watering. They are prized in the kitchen and as a landscaping plant in the garden.

There are many mints to choose from, here are some popular ones:

• Spearmint for savoury dishes
• Peppermint for desserts
• Apple mint for drinks
• Chocolate mint with liquors
• Garden mint in salads, with lamb, peas, zucchini, fresh beans, marinades, fruit salads, cold soups, cheese and more.

Visit your local GCA Garden Centre to see these and other mints available.

Tip: For those of you that like spicy dishes there is even a “Hot mint”, which is also called Vietnamese coriander.

Neat to know: Young leaves are tastier than old leaves. The key to keeping the plant healthy will be to harvest sprigs regularly to stimulate new young shoots.

Did you know?: Although best eaten fresh, sprigs can be left for a few days in water, mint leaves can be frozen or air-dried.

Gardeners worldwide know that white just goes with everything and beautifully enhances the colours of surrounding plants. Great English garden designer, Vita Sackville West, started the trend in 1930 when she planted a white border at her home at Sissinghurst Castle. The border still stands today and has inspired generations of gardeners. Essentially, gardens are all about colour - the flowers, foliage, walls, gates, pottery, furniture and even artwork. Gardens are like our very own sanctuaries and they enhance our quality of life as well as helping our homes look even better!

White flowers provide a sense of coolness and calm that temper the summer heat and also glow when you view them in the evening and at night. If you are using your patio or lapa after dark, make sure you add an abundance of white flowers and silver foliage plants nearby. This will enhance your summer outdoor entertainment area while also creating a gorgeous white Christmas feel.

Here are some tips on how you can use white in the garden to create a cool, calm, and collected feel:

• Used as a border, white plants like Agapanthus or impatiens can make a small garden look larger or a pathway look wider.
• Placing white flowering plants like verbena next to a plant that you want to stand out will make the colours of that plant pop!
• Mixing white flowering plants with silver or grey foliage plants like lamb’s ear (Stachys byzantine) or dusty miller (Senecio cineraria) will create a very calm and soothing effect.
• White-flowered plants are great when paired with green foliage plants.
• White is also a good colour to use when you need to break up clashing colours in the garden, for example, white impatiens separating pink and orange impatiens. This allows the separate colours to stand out on their own.

You know summer’s in swing when the dragonflies come out to play! These glorious goggas are in fact not dangerous at all and are actually superb pest controllers with a most captivating twist. Watching these elegant insects dance around the pool is such a lovely sight indeed! Let’s discover more about this curious creature.

So why are they called dragonflies?

According to Romanian folklore, St. George went to battle and wounded a dragon while fighting on his horse. His horse was then cursed and turned into a giant flying insect, which is why ‘dragonfly’ translates to ‘devil’s horse’ in Romanian. Cursed horse or not, all we know is that the dragonfly is far from doomed and only adds value to gardens everywhere. They live on every continent but Antarctica and are welcomed for their helpfulness and grace.

A dragonfly feast

These superb hunters help to keep the fly and mozzie population in check by grabbing them with their feet and then munching away during flight. Dragonflies are excellent fliers – they can fly up and down or hover like a helicopter. Most other flying goggas don’t stand a chance against this agile hunter. A single dragonfly can eat between 30 to 100 mosquitoes in a day! There’s certainly no need for bug spray with these guys around.

Homing a magic dragon

Dragonflies need a fresh water source for the female to lay her eggs. She does this by dipping her abdomen into water immediately after mating. If you don’t have a swimming pool, they would appreciate a little water feature or birdbath too. Dragonflies are harmless to human’s and they do not bite or sting. Besides being excellent insect hunters, they are also a very important food source for other predators such as birds and fish. Just like the frog, the appearance of dragonflies in the garden is an excellent indicator of the overall health and balance of your ecosystem.

If you love Christmas, gardening, upcycling, and keeping the kids busy - you’ll be popping over this project! December is about abundance, but sadly a lot of this is waste too. So, dear gardeners, let’s play our part in reducing, recycling and remembering that we can incorporate a little green in everything. Instead of the usual cracker filled with plastic nonsense, which ends up in the bin, imagine an upcycled cracker filled with veggie, herb, and flower seeds to plant for summer! Hooray! Get the kids on board and let’s make eco seed crackers for Christmas.

Get cracking

For this DIY project, you will need:

• Some empty toilet rolls
• A few pieces of tissue paper
• Used eco wrapping paper
• Twine/string/ribbon/elastic bands
• A pair of scissors
• Light duty glue
• Colouring in goodies
• Seeds to plant

After the cracker has been cracked, you will need:

• Soil and compost
• Some sweet sunshine and water

Selecting seeds

Give your guests something meaningful to take home after Christmas lunch with a stunning selection of summer seeds for you to choose from:

• Full sun, summer veggies: Broccoli, brussels sprouts, capsicum, cucumber, brinjal, sweet melon (spanspek), pumpkin (flat boer), spinach, tomatoes, and watermelon.
• Full sun, summer herbs: Catnip, chamomile, chives, coriander, dill, fennel, garlic, paprika, rocket, and sage.
• Full sun, summer flowers: Alyssum, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemum, cosmos, forget-me-not, helichrysum, marigold, nasturtium, petunias, and sunflowers.

Elves at work

Green fingers at the ready! It’s time to assemble our crackers:

1. Wrap your selected seeds inside a few pieces of toilet paper or tissue. Tie them up with a piece of string. Set aside.
2. For a personal touch and the enjoyable element of surprise, decorate the toilet roll according to what seed is inside. Kids can draw on veggies, herbs, or flowers and decorate as desired. This also adds to the excitement as guests won’t know what seeds they got until the cracker has popped and they behold your child’s delightful loo roll artwork.

Life is a Garden received press coverage to the amount of R444,918.10 in the month of October. The below spreadsheet shows the total press coverage that Life is a Garden received in the month of  October  2020.

To view the Life is a Garden – October “Redbook” actual press clippings, please click here: https://bit.ly/2I72v3w

Press Report of October

Marketing Snapshot

The garden in November is usually filled with a rich colour palette of late spring blooms. The bold and beautiful Hydrangeas are part of this glorious mix and never fail to wow us, year after year. Their local name is Krismisroos and they remind many people of the coming holiday season. Conveniently, Friday 27 November is Black Friday - a day where many shoppers look forward to buying bargains as Christmas gifts. Look out for specials at your local GCA Garden Centre and enjoy getting ready for the festive season. Life is a Garden, so go ahead and decorate yours!

Edible - Planting beetroot

Here are some planting tips for your beetroot seedlings:

• Since beetroot mature underground, they do not like to compete with a heavy clay soil. If you have clay soil, dig compost into the top 15cm layer.
• For almost continuous harvesting, plant every 14 days.

Tip: Fertilise lightly with a 2:3:2 or equivalent organic fertilizer i.e. that is not high in nitrogen as too much nitrogen will encourage mostly leafy growth. Water sparingly since overwatering encourages leafy growth and bolting (flowering and not producing a vegetable). Beetroot also grows well in combination with blood sorrel Rubus sanguineus.

What to Sow in November

• Bright, flirty and fun - marigolds are one of the easiest seeds to sow. Find a sunny place to scatter the seeds. Cover them with a fine layer of soil and water gently for the first week to two, making sure that the soil does not dry out. If you have planted the seeds too closely, thin the seedling out when they are about 4 to 6cm high. Marigolds are great companion plants in veggie gardens.
• Chrysanthemums are fresh and cheerful. Chrysanthemum paludosum, or creeping daisy, has beautiful white petaled flowers with a bright yellow centre which are loved by butterflies and bees.

Gardening is so exciting, isn’t it? Equipped with all this knowledge, it’s time to have a peaceful, but victorious war against the weeds! After all, Life is a Garden, so let’s escape and have some fun.

Strategy

• Surprise element: Firstly, always act immediately. There is an old saying that goes “one year’s seeds, seven years weeds”. This little expression is talking about when a weed is able to scatter its seed, you will probably have weed seeds germinating in that area for the next seven years. If you are unable to remove it immediately, make sure that any flowers or seed pouches are removed since you don’t want the seed to be dispersed before you treat it.
• Surveillance: You now need to identify the weed. Identifying the weed will almost certainly assist you in finding the correct treatment to eliminate the weed. You can ask for advice at your local GCA Garden Centre. If you can’t identify the weed, determine whether it has grass-like leaves or if is a broad-leaf plant.
• Attack: Applying the correct treatment should be the easiest part of the solution… right? Well, this is often where many gardeners don’t read the instruction booklet carefully and often make the common mistake of doubling or tripling up on the suggested dosage. This can cause especially hormonally based weed killers to be ineffective, and others may burn surrounding plants and damage the environment. Millions of Rand are spent on trials and tests on these weed killers as well as environmental impact studies, which can take up to five years before the products are registered. Therefore, follow dosage rates and instructions
• Further attacks: Inspect treated weeds and where necessary, re-apply the treatment if the weed is not looking grey, wilted or shrivelled two weeks after application.
• Mission accomplished - regroup and celebrate: The weed war is over, and you are the winner!

Henry Ford famously said, “You can have any colour, as long as it’s black”. Little did he know just how in vogue black would become in all aspects of design, including gardening. It never seems to go out of style. Black may not be the first colour you think of when gardening, but it is perfect to add depth and little drama. Black is bold and makes a strong statement. It looks super sophisticated and makes other colours around it pop.

Here is a list of black and purple-black plants to have fun with in the garden:

• Ficus Robusta Burgundy is a popular indoor air-filtering plant with large glossy, dark leaves and is easy to grow.
• Colocasia ‘Black Magic’, or black elephant’s ear, has very large, dramatic leaves and is well suited to a shady spot in the garden.
• Petunia ‘Black Velvet’ is an eye-catcher and looks great in the garden for both pots and hanging baskets in the sun. It is the new darling in a trend towards black-flowered plants.
• Ophiopogon ‘Black Dragon’ is a stunning black strappy grass-like perennial that looks better and better the denser the foliage becomes with age. It produces dainty flowers of pale violet with shiny blackberries. Popular for mass planting contrast or in a mixed contemporary container.

Tip: Black dragon looks amazing when planted next to the light grey leaf of Stachys byzantine or lamb’s ear.

• Ipomoea batatas, or coral bells, is of the ornamental sweet potato family. They have beautifully shaped leaves and can be stunningly paired with the lime green or pinkish version of the same plant. They look stunning when trailing or tumbling over objects and grow well in a dry shady spot.
• Heuchera, or coral bells, have deep red and purple options. Their attractive large leaves and oomph to the surroundings.

This November, Life is a Garden is helping the whole family get into the spring of things by celebrating our South African sunshine. Here’s an educational, hands-on project all about time, the Earth’s rotation, and our life-supporting sun. Get ready scientists and explorers, time is upon us!

A bit about the sundial

Did you know? The sundial is the oldest known instrument for telling time! This ancient, mysterious doohickey tracks the position of the sun using a gnomon, which is the centrepiece of the sundial that indicates time by the position of its shadow. Up until the early 19th century, sundials were the main instrument people used to tell time. When correctly positioned, sundials can even tell time down to the minute!

You will need:

1. A flat piece of wood: This is going to serve as the body of the clock. You can upcycle an old slab of wood from the garage or the scrapyard, use a tree stump, or even repurpose a tile slab. Your local GCA Garden Centre has as lovely variety of wooden décor slabs to choose from.
2. Pebbles or stones: These are going to be the hour placeholders. They can be collected during a walk, scavenged from the garden, or purchased from your favourite GCA Garden Centre. We recommend using pebbles with a flatter surface and ones lighter in colour.

Sunny Suggestion: Instead of using pebbles as hour placeholders, you could also use little succulent or cactus pots! Your garden centre has THE cutest variety of mini cactus pots and this DIY is the perfect opportunity to home a couple. If you’re going for the potted look, you could use the underside of a pot as your clock base too!

3. Paint: To paint numbers of the clock onto each stone and decorate as desired.

4.

We know that many of our gardeners have green fingers longer than their balconies can accommodate. That’s why Life is a Garden has made November all about our city living gardeners out there. You can still make your patio pop, indulge your gardening cravings, and escape the city from your stoep, here’s how:

Consider your style and space

Before diving in, there are a few things to consider: What do you use your balcony for the most? Are you more of a lock-up-and-go or do you have some time to spend on maintaining your balcony greens? Does your space get full, partial, or no sun at all? How would you like your dream balcony to present you and your personal flavour? The answers to these questions can really help you conceptualise your space to make it practical for your lifestyle. Now that that’s sorted, let’s get your urban oasis going!

Let there be light and life

Any balcony easily comes to life with a little light! Your local GCA Garden Centre has a lovely variety of solar lights you can add to the space. Try draping some LED fairy lights from your railing with a few scattered lanterns in between your new pot plants, or perhaps hanging from a beam or two. Speaking of pots, container gardening is all the rage, especially edible ones! Using different sized pots in your balcony garden adds height and variety to the space, while also giving you an opportunity to play with different styles. You could upcycle a sweet teapot into a planter with your favourite tea time herb, or get the kids to decorate some cans and transform them into pot plants for a lovely homely feel.

Zen your den

Ditch the cold concrete and cover your stoep with some lovely faux grass. Available at your favourite GCA Garden Centre, there are a variety of soft and luscious faux grasses to choose from, and the fab thing is that you never have to cut or water it!

Life is a Garden received press coverage to the amount of R915,247.19 in the month of July. The below spreadsheet shows the total press coverage that Life is a Garden received in the month of  September  2020.

To view the Life is a Garden – September “Redbook” actual press clippings, please click here: https://bit.ly/2SBwBOi

Press Report of September

Marketing Snapshot

October is the month of flowering profusion with the queen of flowers, the rose, putting on a glorious first flush of blooms in the Highveld. In honour of Breast Cancer Awareness and Rose Month, here are some stunning pink Celebrity roses that you may want to have in your garden:

• Princess Charlene de Monaco: A beautiful Hybrid Tea rose, which has very fragrant double flowers, light apricot to shell pink in colour. It has excellent disease resistance and a good choice for use as a cut flower.
• Thuli Madonsela rose: This novel rose is vigorous, with strong roots, and disease-resistant leaves, able to thrive despite climatic stresses – just like her name suggests.  The striking two-tone pink and white blooms have a perfect hybrid tea shape but carried in abundant clusters. The colour is prominent, feminine pink and white for purity. Grows to about 1.4m high.
• Anneli van Rooyen rose: An extremely free-flowering hybrid tea that loves when the sun brings out its exquisite colour - a blend of deep cream to coral. Grows to shoulder height.
• Patricia Lewis rose: A family favourite that’s even thorn free rendering excellent cut flowers. The medium sized, pointed buds open slowly, spiralling to exhibit perfection. The glowing colour lingers between deep pink and red. A healthy & energetic grower.
• Elize Cawood rose: It's love at first sight and you won’t have to act impressed with these babies. The shimmering pearl white carries ever-so subtle undertones of soft pink. Every bloom is of a flawless Hybrid Tea shape – perfect for picking as cut flowers.
• Rina Hugo rose: A faithful rose donning classically shaped, pointed buds. It develops into full and elegantly shaped deep magenta-pink blooms. Grown to be vigorous, healthy and strong carrying its large blooms in rich abundance.
• People’s Princess rose: Named after Diana, the Princess of Wales, who was widely loved by people.

This gorgeous edible garden makes you think twice about traditional row sowing. Why not create a stylish veggie garden that serves not only as a functional food source but also as a relaxing chill space where you can share and enjoy your edibles with friends.  The best part is that you too can easily get the look, here’s how.

• Vertical landscaping elements, such as the gazebo, provides that homely outdoor room feel. With a comfy bench, this can become a favourite spot to sit and relax. The gazebo also offers the ideal structure to grow a climbing rose. The wooden tee-pees also add to the vertical element and will be very useful for many climbing plants. You could use any other pillar or frame you like to achieve some height in the space. . In this garden, the tall Tuscan rosemary has been used to fill the tee-pees and is a refreshing new twist to sculptured gardening. Beans, peas, tomatoes and many more edibles would also work wonderfully.
• The different levels in the design offer a clever way of making any space look larger and more interesting.
• The strong blue colour on the back wall is very dramatic and contrasts with the lime coloured gazebo and tee-pees. It also shows up the plants in the garden, especially the architecturally shaped grey-leaved artichokes in the bed against the wall. The blue flowering plants connect with the wall while the patches of yellow and gold pop brightly. The pink chandelier and cushion are striking and draw the eye to the seating area.

Tip: Repetition is a strong design principle that is often overlooked. Notice how the tin and terracotta pots are repeated amongst the wooden planters. This repetition throughout the design helps to enhance the overall look.

Get the look with some of the edible plants in this landscape that you may or may not have tried:

• Did you know that roses are closely related to apples, apricots, pears and peaches?