Jane’s Delicious Garden Blog

Well I should have kept my mouth shut. Since I wrote the last entry we have had two weeks of solid rain. We have a leaking roof, doors and windows which have swollen and won’t open/shut and a garden that is going mouldy. Enough already.

We are nearly finished shooting the next quarter of Jane’s Delicious Kitchen. Playing hide and seek with the sun doesn’t help speed things up. We should be halfway through quite soon. The layout is in process for the first section and it is looking DEE licious!

Despite being sodden the garden is producing phenomenal amounts of beans, squash, cherry toms, beetroot, greens etc. Fat green chillies are starting to turn and eggplant are plumping up. The potatoes are flowering and cabbages are bursting. Harvest, harvest harvest! I think my favourite taste from the garden right now is young gemsquash, steamed and eaten skins seeds and all. Yum.
Here are some recent harvest pics.

We have a new addition to our family. While on holiday in Kzn we were walking on the beach and a woman asked me if Tilu was a White German Shepherd. Turned out she had seen ten puppies at the vet the day before getting their innoculations. We quickly tracked them down to a family in Ramsgate and chose a little white ball of fluff. Tosca is a delight. Very independent and smart. And brave. Tilu is delighted with her new little sister and they spend hours wrassling. I dread to think what is going to happen to the garden over the next year. Once Tosca is big enough to really chase Tilu it will turn into a race track. Tosca has already started digging – and Tilu has remembered “Oh digging is fun!” Oh oh.

Back in Jhb and enjoying our fantastic climate. We really have the best weather. We have been down in Kzn for three weeks and had a very relaxing holiday – an eat, sleep, read and swim kind of break which was just what I needed.

The garden is looking luscious, we have obviously had lots of rain. It is a bit too luscious in places – my catmint is exploding, lettuce, spinach and chard have turned into seed head towers and some of the beetroot have reached soccer ball size. But the beans, tomatoes, chillies, potatoes and squashes are thriving. An ex Jo’burger friend who now lives in Madrid was here this morning. He had forgotten how quiet it was – the only thing we could hear was birds.

It is good to be home.

A quick update on the VEG project: Vegetables for Egoli Gas is growing! I visited their gardens last week and they have made great progress. After clearing the land they enriched their beds with Earth to Earth compost. (Everything that was cleared went into a huge new compost pile.) Seeds (kindly donated by Mayford Seeds) were planted just before the spring rains began. With the help of some Neutrog organic fertiliser the seedlings are looking great.

Before:

After:

Earlier this year I received an email from Annaliese in Grahamstown, asking if I would be interested in giving a workshop there if the Grahamstown Garden & Home club paid for my flight and accommodation. Absolutely! I haven’t been to Grahamstown since 1997 so I jumped at the opportunity. Keith and I both went down and we stayed on for a week as my cousin Mindy and her husband Robert live on a farm near there (along a legendary “bad road” . . .)

The morning we left Johannesburg it was below ten degrees, with an icy wind whipping the rain into a miserable day. Very unreasonable and unseasonable of Jo’burg in November. Grahamstown was the opposite: 37 degrees of dry heat. The response to the workshop had been so good that the venue had moved from a hall to a large garden of one of the club’s members. Celeste’s indigenous, flowing garden was the perfect place for the workshop.

The 40 plus attendees sat under large umbrellas while I was lucky enough to have a pergola over me (I might have melted otherwise. )


The garden club members laid on a glorious spread of cakes and snacks: tiers of luscious cup cakes, mouthwatering swirly sweet bites and perfect sandwiches. These Eastern Cape girls know how to entertain . . .


They had also organised a host of prizes, goodie bags filled with seeds, organic fertiliser, magazines etc. Everybody went home inspired and content.

Thanks particularly to: Karen for an historic night’s stay at her High Corner guest house, Anneliese and Mark for the use of their oh so comfy self catering cottage on their farm, Aloe Ridge, just outside Grahamstown and Celeste, for opening her home and garden to host the event.

We spent a few days at Port Alfred, staying at a spot right on the beach. Here is a drawing of the view.

This was an inspiring veg garden at the nearby town of Kenton-on-Sea.

We then went back to Grahamstown for a Thanksgiving dinner party where we ate huge amounts of food before braving the “legendary road” to Mindy and Robert’s farm. It is nestled in a valley with a rambling homestead.

Some of it is old and some only recently completed. Mindy and Robert hosted a poetry reading by Joan Meterlekamp from her latest book Burnt Offering. This was the christening event of Mindy’s new workshop and creative space, an airy double volume beautiful building.

Joan’s powerful words echoed in my head for days after, while swimming in the dam, playing with the two bright spark puppies, picking vegetables from the vast veggie garden and drinking Robert’s Green Goodness (a kick-start-to-the-day brew of spinach, lettuce and ginger juice.)

It was a good trip – and Grahamstown, we’ll be back . . .

I visited an inspiring garden this week. Earlier this year I received a phone call from my friend Brian Green, who was starting a veg garden from scratch and needed some help. Below his large property in Forest Town is a service alley, where he was planning to start growing. He had never grown veggies in his life but wanted to supply his restaurant, Il Gardino, with fresh organic produce. When I visited in March the service alley was still overgrown with weeds and creeper. It is now full of vegetables. Brian is a master scavenger and has collected boxes, crates, metal sheets and boards to create a medley of containers without spending a cent. His gravel pathways were created from leftover stones from work done on his house. Bursting from these boxes are tomatoes, carrots, eggplant, beetroot, herbs and spinach, which are all being used by the restaurant. Brian Green is now Brian Greenfingers . . .

The alley being cleared of weeds

Marking where containers will go

And the garden today

I arrived back to a busy schedule with deadlines for the next book looming. The first draft of the manuscript was with the editor while I was away and I received that soon after getting back. I needed to do quite a bit of reshuffling to get the recipes in the right order and it was great to have the clear eye of an editor to help me see my way through it. Keith and I have turned the dining room into a studio. I have been making recipes and we have been photographing them steadily since we got back. The freezer is about to pop. But Jane’s Delicious Kitchen is making good progress.

I spent one morning transplanting the tomato seedlings I had sown in trays before we left. Hloniphani had carefully nurtured them while I was away and they were strong and healthy. Not two hours after I had finished transplanting, we had a monster hail storm. Everything was so thickly covered in white it looked like snow. I always find hail so exhilarating, even though I know it is busy smashing my plants. Some of the tomatoes survived and ten days later are looking healthy and bearing flowers. Others weren’t so lucky.

Talking tomatoes, a friend of mine called to say he had some Couer de Bouef tomato seedlings from seeds that had come from France the previous year. He did not have space for all the seedlings that had popped up. As I was about to leave to dig them out of his garden, a lovely Highveld thunderstorm popped up and poured down torrents. David’s garden is made from raised brick beds and is in a corner of his garden edged with border walls. The pathways are also cemented. The downpour was so strong it had created a dam in his pathways, about thirty centimeters deep. Luckily his raised beds are high enough so they weren’t flooded too. And luckily I have gumboots so awading I went. My Couer de Bouef seedlings are happily in their new homes, in my garden and spread amongst friends. Just the way seeds and seedlings should be spread.

It was a blissful moment to arrive home after 24 hours of travelling and walk through my green oasis. It is always such a thrill to return home, especially being away when the season is changing. The leaves on the house were just starting to unfurl and are now a full blown blast of thick, luxurious creeper. Everything is green and lush. I think more particularly to my eye which has become used to the arid landscapes of Sicily. It is a harsh, dry mountainous terrain, especially going into their winter. Crops which flourish are prickly pears, olives and grapes. Vegetable crops were mostly growing under row covers.

I will miss the food – al dente pasta cooked with simply prepared fresh ingredients, perfect pizzas, crispy ciabattta, buffalo mozzarella, swordfish (I know I shouldn’t have, but I did, just once. . .) sun kissed tomatoes, sweet figs, waist expanding cannoli and gelato . . .mmmm

First thing I did when I arrived home was walk through the garden picking a huge bowl of lettuce, spinach, asparagus (still some left!) and broccoli. I might miss the Sicilian food – but I have also missed cooking my own.

Leaving Jhb airport I bought a copy of the best selling book Eat Pray Love, not realising some of it was set in Italy. I knew that many people had been raving about it and I needed a good book to read while on the road. After 24 hours of travelling via connections in Cairo we arrived in Rome. We met a couple also heading south to Naples and they offered us a lift in their hired mini. Bit of a tight squeeze but much quicker and cheaper than the train. She was Brazilian and worked for American Airlines and he was a doctor from the US. They were travelling on to Sorrento, about an hour after Naples. They were planning to eat in Naples at a restaurant famous for “the best pizzas in Italy.” We checked in our guide book and sure enough, there it was with this bold claim. And bold it is, as the best pizzas in Italy surely must be the best pizzas in the world! We had to try this spot. After bumbling around narrow, busy streets to find our hotel and check in, we found the restaurant – a tiny hole-in-the-wall place with a huge crowd outside. We took a ticket (number 73 – they were serving number 34). A couple of beers later we were in. The first surprise was the choice on the menu. They only served two pizzas! The second surprise was how delicious they were – I was expecting them to be good, but they were really really good! The secret was the locally grown Napoli tomatoes. And the locally made mozarella cheese. And the freshly made pizza dough. It was the first taste of how great the food in this region is. I remember the food in Italy being good, but southern Italy is even better. The following morning we were told that Julia Roberts had been at the very same restaurant the week before. Filming a movie. It seemed very fitting to find out she is playing the lead role in Eat Pray Love!

While telling this story to friends, I realised I had mangled the title and was referring to it as Eat Drink Pray. I have decided Eat Drink Pray is an appropriate title for the week we spent on the Amalfi Coast. My book will never sell in this region – everybody already grows their own vegetables, everywhere. In the smallest corner, on rooftops, on staggeringly steep terraces there are vegetables. The last of the summer crops are at their luscious best. So eat we did. With gusto. Not once have I had to ask a single restaurant to bring me salt, pepper, balsamic or any additional condiment. Every meal has been perfect. Even a fast food paninini from a train station in Sorrento was fresh and tasty. And from fast food to two star Michelin dining. The wedding dinner was held at Palazzo Sasso’s Rossellini restaurant – I lost count of the number of courses around seven.
http://www.palazzosasso.com/en/palazzosasso/hotel-palazzosasso.php

Eat Drink Pray. This is the land of limoncello. A sweet, tart liqueur made from the peel of a variety of lemon only grown on this southern section of Italy. Every little shop sells its version of limoncello. And every courtyard of every home has lemon trees. They are grown up a trellised support, so the fully grown lemon tree forms a shady roof of a terrace, with lemons hanging within easy picking reach. Free tastings of limoncello are offered from many of the little breweries along the winding paths and alleyways. A shot of icy cold, fiery liqueur is one way to keep the legs moving up steep hills.

Eat Drink Pray – and pray I did. The narrow road which winds its way along the Amalfi coast is cut out of the sheer cliff face. In some sections I was looking out of the bus window, straight down to the Med, hundreds of metres below. The bus drivers, with cool mirror shades and hefty arm muscles, swing their passengers around corner after corner, hooting at oncoming cars (and other buses) to move out of their way. Sometimes there is no room for two vehicles to fit past one another and one has to reverse until there is an inch more space. We invented a game called ’spot the car without a ding.’ On average only one car in twenty is free of scrapes, scratches, dings and dents.

We are back in Naples for a few days. We will be visiting Pompeii, Vesuvius and Capri – and will without a doubt return to the hole in the wall restaurant for more of the ‘best pizza in the world’

A crazy, romantic friend has decided to get married in Italy so we are leaving tomorrow to go to the Amalfi Coast. My ‘to do’ list is gradually being done. One of the things that has been adding to my busyness recently is the VEG project. Vegetables for Egoli (VEG) began when I was asked by Simon at Egoli Gas if I could help install veggie gardens at their head office premises in Milpark. A few staff members had been growing some veggies here and there and he wanted to allocate one area for these aspiring veggie gardeners and help them grow more vegetables. I had recently returned from filming in Zimbabwe, where I had seen the success of the SCC’s (Swedish Co-operative Centre) smallholder farmer programme in action. Their method of study circles to spread information, mobilise farmers and create enthusiasm was core to the project’s success. I suggested to Simon that instead of me helping install vegetable gardens, why didn’t we see how many people were interested and rather use the study circle approach. This way I would not only be teaching how to grow veg, but also providing them with the tools to spread the information to their families and communities. He loved this idea and the project soon snowballed.

Instead of just a few guys who were planting some mealies and pumpkins on a spare patch, we had more than 30 people who wanted to learn how to grow vegetables. And more came from the management sector than from ops. What had started as an idea to help a few people with some vegetables, has turned into a very successful corporate and team building exercise. I have been holding a series of workshops with the team leaders and providing them with the material they need to pass the information on to their teams via study circles.

On Saturday members of the project gathered with their families to start clearing the land – nothing like a morning spent clearing dusty black jacks and monster bug weed to bond a team. A couple of sponsors have come on board to help them start their garden: Neutrog are providing organic fertiliser, Mayford are giving packets of seeds and a huge pile of organic compost is already on site, donated by Earth to Earth.

Before any clearing started:

After the clearing:

Clearing in progress:

Families helping:

Hard work!

With some of the team leaders:

Everybody was delighted to discover raised beds under all the growth. They even found a few carrots and onions – somebody has been here before us!

Discussing finer points of compost:

Last week we said a sad farewell to our 14-year old Shu Shu. She was a beloved member of our family.

RIP Shu Shu.