When we arrived in Windhoek in January, it was mid-summer. By late January, we'd decided to plant a small garden. Sweet corn, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, pumpkin, and squash. It was a gamble--kind of like deciding to plant a garden in Nebraska during late July.
We reported in May (see blog here) that our garden had grown well. Unfortunately, about that time the sun had changed from directly overhead to quite a bit further north (shading the garden during most of the day) and it started getting cold. Not cold enough to kill the plants (we haven't had a hard frost, yet--but it gets close to freezing most nights)--just cold enough to really SLLLLOOOOOWWWWW it down. I call it the 'slow motion garden'. Our sweet corn was tasseling in May, but we just harvested it today. By my count, that is about 180 days from planting to harvesting. Most folks back home in Iowa planted their sweet corn in May and are now harvesting.
I may leave the corn stalks, to see how long they stay green. Maybe corn is a perennial plant in Namibia?!
Our tomatoes were set on the plants in May, and most are still green. Today, we brought them inside to set in the window--we've done the same with some others, and they ripened in the sunny window.
We had some pollination problems with the sweet corn, but it's still sweet corn. We ended up with about 5 cups of corn to use later--it's in the freezer. The tomatoes really produced well, and the peppers did OK, but they probably didn't deserve all the water we gave them. The squash and pumpkins shriveled up long ago with no fruit. But, our carrots did great--which makes sense because they are a cool-season crop. We'll have little baby-sized carrots to eat for weeks. Carrot/pineapple salad is a staple over here in Namibia, so I guess we are set to enjoy that.
In an odd way, it feels good to be 'in sync' with our friends and family back in the States. Harvesting our garden at about the same time. Except that we're wearing our coats while we do it!
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