Early Spring Growing: Leaning into rapid growth

This time of year involves incredible complexity in our farm. We’re all getting a bit tired, because the calendar year— workshops, our coop market days, our kids’ activities— catch up with us. Yet it’s the time when our farm growth ramps up. Quails, chicks and ducklings start hatching, we suddenly are needing to keep up with 23 goats, the black soldier fly larvae need to ramp up, and the wave of seedlings need to be planted and cared for, harvested and processed.

Our southern hemisphere Jan-Dec calendar year corresponds pretty weirdly to the agricultural calendar.

Given that we want to be part of our broader community, the external calendar is not something we can quickly change. But there are a few things that are helpful to get us the best spring-summer growing season.

Plant a late winter brassica, carrot, broad bean, beetroot and leafy greens crop

Every year we plant out a second winter crop, that means that we more or less have volume of calories (from the root veg and cabbage) and nutrients (from the other brassicas and greens) year round. It also lowers the pressure to fill our beds, as planting is staggered. We usually have one brassica season with heavy pest pressure, and one with relatively low pest pressure. By having a double season, we extend our napa cabbage harvest and make a lot of kimchi, and then we also get a month or two where cauliflower becomes our staple.

This works because we have a relatively warm, sunny winter— in some softer parts of the city (Constantia, Noordhoek, Newlands), this may be difficult, because your daylight hours may be too low.

Plan for your onion crop (May-Nov)

If you have a large enough garden, onions are a fantastic, relatively low-needs crop that staggers the planting season a little more. In Cape Town, onions need to be started in trays in about March, and then be planted out May to bulb out in November. They depend on day-length to bulb. I dry and braid them and they last about 7 months. Spring onions and leeks cover us the other months.

Give enough time to process tomatoes and care for summer crops

Our tomato crop is an important part of our year. Usually this means that we stop our workshops in October, and our food Coop in Nov, so that I can spend time on our tomato crop, and tweak our watering to get us through the long summer.

Allow the spring wave of growth to give you momentum

“Energy” can be a bit of an ephemeral term, but sometimes it seems to capture something that other words can’t. When we feel that we’re a little bit tired, there’s something to be said for seeing and experiencing the life of our plants.

I wonder if the season is a way to expand and extend our energy, as we see growth accelerate and we get to be part of it, and literally take that energy and integrate it into our own bodies.

As the heat of the summer sets in, our plants can also look tired or get overtaken by pests. If we can stay attentive to our plants’ needs, it can turn into a way to tap into our own strength.

The cool thing is that energy, at a biological scale, is fully renewable. The challenge is that, because of the tremendous energy provided by fossil fuels, so much of our life is not lived at a human or biological scale anymore. But we can, and the exhaustion of the summer can be somehow eased by the growth of the farm. Each year it feels like a giant wave that we get to ride as long as we can. We’re not the source of the energy, we’re just finding ways to ride along.

Keep planting and keep observing

It’s tempting to plant and then stop, but I am always surprised to find space every time I walk our beds. I recommend walking your beds daily with seedlings or seeds on hand, so that you can find gaps and keep planting. When you remove a crop that is finished, plant it out again immediately.

If I see issues in our beds, I try to act quickly, whether by removing the plant or adding compost or removing pests. Small issues compound quickly. And lastly, decide where you’d like to keep plants for seed, and stick to it.

Here’s to riding the wave this season, and to the miracle of growth that we get to tap into every single year.

Sharing our newsletter

You can look back and find your favourite newsletter in the archive, here, or share an article from our blog. You can also buy our ebook on Growing Veg in Cape Town.

If you received this from a friend, you can sign up here