Gardening | What to plant this Spring: Cherise Viljoen

well it is officially Springtime and the perfect time to get your garden ready for a vibrant and thriving season let's share then some essential tips on preparing your garden for spring from composting and fertilizing to pruning seed sewing and planting well to speak more on this let's welcome hotot shariz fun shares a very good afternoon to you um well it is that time um perfect time that is for gardening so for those who want to spruce up their Gardens where does one start this month I mean what are the top favorite plants and flowers to go to well oh that is a tough question for a horticulturist I think that for now vegetables definitely vegetables and herbs start feeding ourselves from our Gardens those would be my top plants and then anything with a pretty flow now that the cold snack that we've all been in is Has Lifted we can start putting plants is they can really make use of the warmth in the soil to grow to perform for us so some vegetables herbs and pretty flowers that's definitely my go-to at the moment and the next thing I do is the first thing I do as soon as the weather warms up is I go to my compost bin all my compost heap I hope everybody is taking their kitchen scraps and making a small compost pile or bearing them straight in the ground or doing whatever they can to not put their waste into our dustbins and into our landfalls but to put their organic waste back into their Gardens even if you only have a pot or uh some indoor plants you can still make a little bit of compost and I go and I turn the compost and really get it activated and going in the heat you know little bit of water or in in the case of cap time less water less water let but I'm going to ask you shes to slow down a bit because some of us don't have the the green fingers necessarily so when you talk when you talk about just uh composting where does one begin and how do you then make sure and you prepare then you know for your garden using compost sure so compost is really for me any green material not necessarily something sharp if it's acidic for us oh no all right we'll Tre we'll see if we can try and get shares back because many of us would really you know do good by taking some of those tips of course Sharice are you still there I believe you're still there maybe can you start from the top just responding to that um answer around composting sure so I was saying any kitchen scraps not meat and not anything very acidic it's a vegan Affair so so no meat or proteins but anything vegetable that your off Cuts or your leftovers you can start by putting that in a in a pot or a bag or a heap or a p in the garden and let it finish decomposing and once once it's gone back to its natural state that decomposed organic material is really beautiful to use to feed your plants and to plant vegetables in so we don't throw anything away as gardeners we put it all back in the garden now we started talking a little bit about uh you know growing vegetables many people are not opting to eat healthier more organic and grow their own vegetables I mean what's best to look at this time around where do they start um if you wanted to plant a little garden um for yourself so the best things to use are parley it's dark green and it's it's a herb but it's really good in all sorts of foods very easy to grow carrots and radishes root veg like that very easy to grow really they're not fussy about soil or water they're not difficult at all and then leafy veg like marro spinach um even a little bit of lettuce can be very easy to grow and they're more complicated things you can grow butternuts and pumpkins but you need more skill sometimes uh you could grow green peppers quite easily even eggplants or bringel so you can decide what level you're at but definitely start with a green leafy Veg it's very good for us to eat those kinds of things with our meals fresh as fresh as possible um for those that have have you know animals that roam around their Gardens what are just some of the tips they can look out for you know to prevent of course and to in fact manage their Gardens that way I tend to make wire cages yeah um I have um not so much a large animal like a cow goat sheep but I do have cats that like to go in my veggie boxes and so I just find anything again I make uh pyramids of Twix to protect my plants I find old bits of wire I've even used a bucket that I've cut the top out of and put that over while they were young um in fact I wish I could walk to the front of my garden and and show you how it's wild with its protection and my best thing is to use Acacia Thorns um and I put those Thorn branches all across my veg the veg will go through but the animals leave it alone shice let's leave it there for now thank you so much for those tips shice Fon is a horticulturalist of of course it is uh that time of the year where lots of people want to spruce up their Gardens