Monkey-Proof Organic Vegetable Cage

Monkey-proof organice vegetable garden

This isn’t really a recipe, but it’s about recipes. I just have to quote Ilaria talking about Italian Cuisine, where she writes that its “excellence is exemplified in the word ‘recipe’ derived from the Latin imperative “to procure” the best and freshest.” Well, clearly, the best and freshest is procured from your very own garden where it is grown, preferably organically – and that way you reuse, recycle and have not to worry about your carbon footprint (food-wise) too much either. Herewith an account, including pictures, of our two-year journey in the making of our very own monkey-proof vegetable cage. 

When I was growing up, we spent every second weekend and all our holidays at my grandparents’ small-holding, Lyn Avis (place of the birds) in Ixopo. They kept the usual chickens and bees obligatory to a certain idea of the bucolic life, which upon closer examination is nothing but hard work with little monetary reward, albeit it in beautiful surrounds. My grandfather was, in fact, a noted apiarist whose children still remember with awe the fact that, when presented with swarming bees, he would watch them closely, then jump and catch out of the midst of it, the queen, upon which the swarm would settle, mostly upon him. They had a vegetable garden too, and come Christmas-time, mum and grandma were always to be found in the raspberry patch planted by my grandfather’s grandmother, plucking them off with a plop from their soft vines, with the idea of trifles and raspberry jam fragrant in the air alongside. My aunty Muriel, at the big farm Mabedlana, not far away, was a gifted gardener with a formidable work force at her disposal and her vegetable garden - the size of a small paddock – generated largesse which she shared with her sister, my grandmother, Jess. 

My grandparents lived through the Depression; in the case of my grandmother, depending greatly on the produce of a vegetable garden to survive, which was supplemented by her parents taking paying boarders into their home upon the loss of her father’s work. Indeed, this was how she met my grandfather, since his brother, Brian, was such a lodger. Grandma, of the flapper generation, was one of our first working women, and held a job in Durban, to which she commuted daily by train, and this too was crucial to her family’s survival. Hence we grew up as children scratching around in the soil, foraging for food and knowing to put all left-overs into the compost heap. 

Compared to grandma’s small, fenced-in patch, Muriel’s garden was a cornocupia of delights which we loved to explore, though, like Peter Rabbit we were always on the watch-out - not for Mr McGregor but my Uncle Alan. Although we thought he’d never put us in a pie (our hopes remained elevated in that regard), his loud, sarcastic voice we preferred not to hear as we went scritch, scratch, srabble scratch in the heady black soil. 

“Eating my carrots?” he would ask, after we had furtively pulled them up, initially putting back the ones not large enough into the soil, though we soon enough learned carrots don’t transplant and hence provided evidence of our incursions. We soon learnt how to tell how large they were and could barely wait to rinse them at the nearby tap, and we ate them one after another after another, straight out the ground – no carrot since has ever tasted so good. 

I wanted that kind of experience for my children too. Ever since the boys were given Grow It, Eat It, to read, they have greatly desired a vegetable garden too. But getting there wasn’t easy. Nothing really important ever is.

This was the area, when we arrived in January 2009, so entirely overgrown with highly invasive alien ginger, that it looked like the boundary of our garden, though it wasn’t (January and March 2009):

Our garden will start just behind the left sand pile and continue until out of the picture

In order to get an idea of how high the ginger grew, you only need look at this picture, of Bernard, our shortish but not dwarf gardener taking it out with a panga (July 2009):

The ginger is over 3 metres (10 feet high)

We waited until July 2009 before we asked a delighted Bernard to annihilate the ginger (which made superb compost, when shredded, by the way), for the simple reason that I listened to my mother’s advice. Before you take out anything, she told me, go and take a good long look at what it is hiding, since, generally speaking, there is a reason why people planted something there in the first place. Well, not only does our neighbour’s yard begin below the level of ours, but through the chain link fence we had uninterrupted views of his workshop (he restores classic cars as a hobby), the servant’s quarters, a bright yellow addendum onto the garage roof and a dilapidated wooden tool shed, all of which, of course, are perfectly satisfactory to him, but not necessarily what we wanted to have on display at the front entrance to our house: July 2009.

View of a classic car restoration area 

But before we could spend, spend, spend on a boundary wall, we’d have to sell, sell, sell the townhouse I owned in Johannesburg. It was only in July of 2009 therefore that we finally were able to take out the ginger and put in a concrete wall, both sides of the garden, since I had identified this as the area for our vegetable garden (otherwise, I guess, we’d not have invested in the wall but various non-invasive plants to block out our neighbour’s property – a lot cheaper option though the end result would not have been (almost) instant. Given it was winter in our area, i.e., there is little rainfall, and the ground was baked dry, the company contracted for the wall quoted for about 2 days work and it ended up being 5. They adhered to the quote, but the quote for the next little bit of work we needed done was significantly increased in terms of labour costs. Here is a picture of the southern and eastern boundaries, before and after, having already cleared the bougainvillea away from the southern side (the only difference between the two pictures is that, in the first, I am closer up, and hence you do not see the neighbour’s roof) – July/August 2009.

Most of this area will become the vegetable garden, once the logs are cleared

The same view as above, just from further back once wall is up

The garden is both level enough and east-facing, and having produced a bountiful crop of ginger, we figured the spot was ideal for other kinds of culinary ginger and herbs. Now, you’d think, having invested all this time and energy already, all we need to do is dig up all the ginger roots, put in about 4 cubic metres of river sand, about the same amount of compost (we used our own, supplemented with mushroom compost), and that would be that.

Wouldn’t that have been so easy? But no, we have monkeys in our garden; one of the privileges, so they say, of living so close to the Nature Reserve – about 1km away as an Indian mynah might fly. Then again, they mostly walk, while the yellow-billed kites mantle the thermals and the louries hop like fat, ungainly rats along the branches and sometimes entrance you with a flash of their red wings as they glide to another tree. Nevertheless, the picture is there for you to ponder, the view from the family room upstairs, courtesy of my persuasive abilities with our elderly neighbour who allowed us, at our cost, to cut down most of the turpentine trees in their yard blocking the view:

The kids do have the best view, but it's so wonderful to kick the mess upstairs

Well, 2009 spring-planting time came and went, together with myriad other projects we were doing around the house, from fixing up the maid’s quarters to putting in indigenous forests and grasslands – and, well, the vegetable garden to be just sat there, becoming progressively cleared as the gardener got bored and the trailer got emptied on an ad hoc and rather desultory fashion by my husband. All the while, the area languished under the morning sun, an expanse of depressing brown dirt where once had been lush tropical vegetation. Or, at least, it kept on being reduced back to earth, the various attempts at take-over by enterprising chick weeds and grass seedlings having been foiled by the untender ministrations of Bernard, and the ‘driveway’, which used to be grass, we had allowed cars to drive upon in order to establish how large a circle we needed, and it had too become mud in the spring rains (September 2009).

Where would we indigenous gardeners be without the wonderful dietes grandiflora, a true volunteer of a plant, structurally stunning, with shy, white flowers portending rain?

The vegetable cage now takes up almost the entire length of visible wall

But by then our Middle Eastern funds had dried up. We investigated other means of keeping the monkeys away, in a half-hearted and despairing fashion, since we knew only too well how closely allied they are to us, and how possessed they are therefore of that peculiar primate need to destroy, wantonly and effectively. Don’t tell me they evolved to break everything up and scatter it around so the indigenous plants survive; methinks them plants and other animals, which apparently are wont to forage on the remnants the monkeys fling around below, simply had to adapt or die, as the world is doing around us now. Mostly it’s dying, which is why it is all the more important that we husband what resources we do have to give some things at least a fighting chance. Including whitefly, but that’s another topic entirely.

In the interim, having fielded just way too many complaints about our driveway in progress, we just had to finish that off first, now didn’t we, in April/May 2010:

New driveway, the vegetable garden to right as you drive in

The vegetable cage occupies the area to the left of the photo

Anyhow, after much debate, finally, this year we decided to go for broke, and since we had already spent so much time and energy – and money – on preparing an area for a vegetable garden, we figured we had best just finish the job, even though it was expensive. But we hopefully anticipate recuperating the initial costs involved by means of savings over the long term, not to mention the tangible, daily benefit of better tasting food, particularly leafy greens which our diet was somewhat deficient in – somehow the wilted, bitter produce you can buy at the stores never excites my culinary imagination much. And at least my husband is a handy man, so labour costs were negligible. The rest of the garden is going indigenous, so the monkeys are free to stuff themselves on what they used to eat.

Fem enjoys researching anything, and, having realised the CCA of the green poles intially under consideration contain both copper and cyanide, which will leach into the soil, albeit over an extended period, he decided that in the interests of true organic gardening, to purchase the bitumen-coated poles, which are anyway also slightly more water-resistant and so likely to handle our summer rains better. He designed the structure and then ordered the necessary lengths and widths of black, tarred poles from a company specialising in telephone poles (we have major termite problems in South Africa and hence plain old wood would just not do). He then hired a trailer to pick them up (his 4x4, bought second-hand upon Faran’s birth, has proved astonishingly useful). 

Each pole is dug into the ground by about 600 to 900 mm, courtesy of Bernard, though Fem did not trust the job of tamping in the soil surrounding the poles to anyone else, he wanted the poles both level and secure (and yes, he is a perfectionist). No other foundation was used apart from hard earth, the clay content in our soil is high – you only have to ask the gentlemen installing the concrete fence how very high it is; the poles, when new, tend still to be a little wet, so in a short while, if you use concrete, you have a small space in which the rain can be trapped and start to rot them; finally, a structure without foundations can be built close to an adjacent property, otherwise, we’d have had to seek permission as it would be seen as a permanent as opposed to temporary structure.

And so we finally begin, with cubic metres of compost and river sand already double-dug into our clayey soil

Who needs gym when you are constructing a vegetable garden?

His design has a roof with an apex, which mimics our roofs and that of our neighbour, which is a pleasing aesthetic to contemplate, but the main reason for it was to ensure the leaves from the surrounding trees had a chance to float down and fall; he did not want to create a shade-cloth effect with rotting leaves.

Yes, it's large - but for subsistence farming, larger would even be better

For the netting, he went for weld-mesh, often used for fences, on the basis that it would be sturdy enough to handle a troop of monkeys jumping around upon it, as they will do, though they do prefer the kids’ trampoline. Our area is typically very wet in the summer (with one of the few natural forest areas in the country) and everyone we spoke to who had used shade netting found the area became too moist and humid for many of the underlying plants; after all, almost all your herbs and vegetables prefer at least 6 hours of sun a day (hence the need for an east- or north-facing plot in the southern hemisphere). Finally, weld-mesh just does look so much neater.

The neatest vegetable cage I ever saw

Fem figures now that only a monkey wielding wire-cutters will be able to get in, however, that does not stop the troop inspecting all the corners assiduously on a daily basis, and he figures he’ll have to go and neaten the edges just to be sure. However, Fem delightedly informed me the other day, the first day the cage was fully enclosed, after about 200 hours of labour by him, that he came home to find the entire troop of about 40 sitting on top of the cage, looking mightily disgruntled with the current state of affairs.

Fem has spent almost all his spare time, two days every weekend and a hour or so daily, after work, over the last two months erecting this 120 m2 monkey-proof vegetable cage, 15 metres by 8 metres (45 by 24 foot). So, hopefully, having kept the monkeys out (and, unfortunately, most of the birds too, which is a mixed blessing since they eat worms and such-like, and we are already finding our little patch of earth invaluable as a culinary resource. Faran’s 8th birthday was even a vegetable-garden planting party – but more of that later.

Our planting party: such fun.

From this initial beginnings, our garden is growing, so do look at our Vegetable Garden in Pictures or click on the label: Organic below and you will see our garden as it is growing seasonally. 

Happy (Organic) Eating!

Kathryn