Events at the WCFSC during 2011.
November 2011
These notes will give an idea to the background of the West Field Studies Centre.
The Food Gardening pilot project is a joint initiative of the West Coast Fields Studies Centre in conjunction with the Habitat Council, the Provincial Administration of the Western Cape and the Brooklyn Chest Hospital, with support from the Blaauberg Substructure of the City of Cape Town.
The Course starts twice a year in April and September and runs for 3 months at the West Coast Field Study Centre based at the Brooklyn Chest Hospital.
The Course has two separate objectives. For local people it will help to enhance their nutritional intake, cut-costs, provide an interesting hobby and provide a beneficial demand for recycling 60% of house hold waste.
For the hospital patients who come from communities all over the Western Cape many of whom are unemployed the course will provide all of the above as well as training in the growing and marketing, planting according to season, height, colour combinations, light/shade requirements of bedding plants. The whole emphasis of the patients course will be improved nutrition and vital skills training to enable them to become self employed. This includes how to present themselves, how to cost their activities, how to negotiate, how to sell their products and skills, methods of gaining a competitive advantage over competitors, presentation of product, and other factors to qualify them as skilled entrepreneurs, including how to obtain the use of more land.
Note of interest, the project supplies fresh vegetables to the hospital kitchen for vegetarian patients. Sweet peas grown for the Chest Hospital patients who are being treated for tuberculosis.
Skills such as clearing and preparing the ground, fertilising the soil, learning what to plant and when, growing seedlings, controlling pests, making your own compost and vermicompost will be taught. A communal vegetable garden area will be set up and in addition each participant who wishes may have his/her own small plot to develop and experiment on.
The curriculum is available by contacting Frank Wygold, see below.
Borage with its beautiful flowers are a companion plant to the Strawberry plants. Bees cross pollinate both.
The advantages of completing the Course
- Upon completion of the course a certificate of competence according to the level of achievement in the course will be issued.
- You will be able, if you complete the course to seek employment as a gardener rather than a garden laborer.
- You may be able to start a small business;
growing and selling seedlings, bedding plants, herbs etc. - making and selling items for the gardener, such as cold frames, hot beds, cloches and small tunnels to grow plants that need protection etc.
- You will be taught how to market yourself when applying for work or starting a business.
Drip irrigation – an efficient watering system by collecting rain water from a roof, draining it into the barrels, fed by tubes into the hothouse to water the seedlings by drip irrigation system in the hot and windy summer months.
You will be allocated your own small plot where you can plant what you wish under guidance. The produce from your own plot plus a share in the produce of the communal garden will be yours to dispose of as you wish (to sell or for your own use).
The Vegetable Garden will be used to demonstrate to environmental groups;
A hot box for propagating seedlings in cold weather. Green pepper seedlings close up. Inside the hothouse made from packing cases and shade cloth all to demonstrate that with a bit of ingenuity a business can be started. Seedling trays and packets for larger seedlings.
Different methods of propagation
- vegetative
- seed
- cuttings
- layering
- grafting
Different methods of;
- bees
- mice
- birds
- wind
Different fertilisers and trace elements required for different crops and the signs of deficiency In addition special gardening courses will be run for school groups by arrangement. (This has been requested by several schools recently). This is a vegetable garden in a bag, on a concrete surface – with tomato seedlings in the slits. This demonstrates a produce garden can be grown anywhere.
Keeping animals
For those whose residential circumstances permit the keeping of livestock, an additional short course in animal husbandry will be run.
This includes feeding (selective feeding, merits of concentrate vs organic feeding) and the medicating of;
- Pigeons
- Rabbits
- Bees
- Ducks
- Geese
- Chickens
also larger animals;
- Pigs
- Shee
- Goat
- Cows
attention is paid to the best breeds for different vegetation types. Techniques for ensuring that these animals do not become a problem for neighbours and a danger on the roads.
photographs by Gavin Lawson.
Gavin Lawson.
