‘To have every person in every town and township all over South Africa growing something that they can eat – like a green revolution,’ is Pat Featherston of Soil for Life’s vision.
The good news is that Soil for Life is having an open house at the ‘mother’ garden at Soil for Life headquarters in Constantia located at Stables Lane, off Brounger Way, Constantia, Cape Town 7800. This will be on Saturday 7th February from 09:00 to 15:00. (For more info call 021 794 4982.)
Pat Featherstone is the founder of Soil for Life. Nancy Richards witnessed the dream take root and reported on this in Annette Kesler’s Showcook blog:
Lovedalia Tsewu has done some market research. She checked out that a bunch of spinach at Shoprite is approximately R12. But it’s likely to be limp and wilted having spent some time in transit, cool trucks and handling depots. By contrast hers is plump, bursting with flavour and fresh picked from her garden. She sells her bunches to her neighbours for just R5. Lucky neighbours.
Lovedalia (left) with her friend Ntozi in her neatly laid out yard has made a living out of vegetable gardening. (Right) The Tabernacle team determined to grow big and strong.
Lovedalia is 61. From Gugulethu she is one of over 700 home gardeners growing fresh produce in their back yards and stoeps. Each and every one trained by Soil for Life – an organisation whose mission is to get all South Africa growing good and healthy.
She started out growing flowers, but began producing vegetables just over a year ago after her neighbour, Nicola Maputa suggested to her that she try growing something more practical. She has not looked back. From one small patch in her back yard, her garden is now an empire spreading right across the yard and down the narrow passage alongside the house. It has become her living. And her life. She takes us to visit her neighbour Ntozi Makune whom she’s inspired to start a vegetable garden of her own. Interspersed with pathways, Ntozi’s is neat and tidy as a pin, a showcase.
(Left) Evangelical Nicola has filled every inch of available space with new growth. (Middle) Rudi Samuels proud of his Bishop Lavis food garden. (Right) Irene Jacobs is never short of a container for her veg.
Nicola has only recently moved to Guglethu from Langa so at this stage her gardening area is small and cramped under the washing line between the back yard dwellers and next doors wall. Tumbling out of a hotch-potch of containers, it is nonetheless a paragon of fertility. There are strawberries, garlic, feverfew, chives, celery, an avo and a mango tree and a catalogue of herbs, including tansy. Tansy? ‘I use it as a tonic,’ she says, ‘it strengthens the heart and lowers high blood.’ She pulls out some old egg boxes from the shade in which she’s germinated cancer bush sprouts from seed. Nicola is a gardening evangelist, the Margaret Roberts of Gugs – and since undergoing SFL training herself a few years back she is now an assistant trainer with an enthusiasm that is infectious.
We were on a tour of some of Soil for Life’s graduates and award winning home gardeners. They’re live in Bishop Lavis, Philippi, Gugulethi, Heideveld, Khayelitsha – among Cape Town’s poorest communities where fresh food is often at a premium, and unemployment is sky high. The awards are traditionally made at Soil for Life’s AGM. As many of the gardeners who are able to make it squeeze into the wooden ‘boomklass’ at the headquarters in Brounger Way, Constantia where there are speeches, celebrating, a hearty meal and a chance to look around Soil’s own inspirational ‘mother’ garden. Lovedalia had walked off with top honours last year, named as Home Gardener of the Year!
Amongst the others that we visited on the tour were joint first prize winners in the New Home Gardener category, Rudi April and his wife Faizlin. Their twin gardens laid out end to end each measure 1m x 2m – SFL’s recommended starting size. Indicating when they first took up the trowel, Faizlin’s beans are labelled September 2014 – and they’ve already grown enough harvestable produce to feed way more than just their family. Since an accident at work some years ago that left him disabled, Rudi has time on his hands – and his garden has given him a new focus on life. He recruits his eight yr old daughter Laaiquah to help him out and his two year old son Thaakier has his own sprouting seed tray.
Also in Bishop Lavis is Irene Jacobs. Her shaded garden is a breathtaking model of creativity. Not for nothing did she win ‘Container Gardener of the Year’. Vegetables burst with life out of old toys, boots, tyres, a toilet bowl, a suitcase – nothing that’s been discarded escapes her. She lifts the lid on an old chest freezer to show how she’s using its dual compartments to store her compost materials – vegetable peels and other kitchen waste. A two litre cool drink bottle filled with dead snails in water she explains is the making of a muti mix she uses as a pesticide. There’s much to learn on this tour.
Finally we get to visit a group of relative newcomers to the Soil philosophy, the Rastafarians at the Marcus Garvey tabernacle in Phillipi. On a plot of abandoned land that had once been a dead, dry tangle of struggling weeds, a committed team have turned, tamed and built up the soil next to their hand-made hall and already the planting is way above ground. They’ve used whatever they could lay their hands on to work into the soil, cardboard, old bushes, dead grass – their plans to grow know no bounds and their energy is tangible.
Also learned on the tour is that this way of gardening can be life-changing – and that in Nature, nothing is wasted. All organic matter goes straight back into the soil with the added bonus of practical, cost-effective waste management. But the simple overriding principle of Soil for Life is that healthy soil produces healthy vegetables which in turn make for healthy people. Pat Featherstone extends her teaching to the home gardeners to include the health benefits of good nutrition. If her vision can do so much in Cape Town’s poorest areas, just think what it can do for the nation.
INFO: visit Soil for Life T 
+27 (0) 21 794 4982 or check their facebook page Soil for Life
The ‘mother’ garden at Soil for Life headquarters in Constantia is open to the public daily: Stables Lane, off Brounger Way, Constantia, Cape Town 7800. Soil for Life’s OPEN GARDEN is on Saturday February 7th 9am and 3pm.
This article by Nancy Richards first appeared in Annette Kesler’s Showcook
NANCY RICHARDS 083 431 9986 nancyrichards@intekom.co.za
Photo Credit: JOHN-CLIVE 083 226 9907 info@johnclive.co.za
