Dig We Must

I never know 100% if I'm doing things in the best way.  All I ever do in gardening is to try things and see how it goes.

Sure I read books and watch videos.  But in the end it's try it out and see what grows.

I do have methods that work.  Work is the operative word, I put a lot of effort into the intensive methods I use.  Currently in the South Garden, I'm getting good results only by digging the planting bed up completely, removing all the soil, heaping it up somewhere, digging out all the tree roots...again...and then mixing the soil with compost before returning it to the bed.  This reeeeally works, I can vouch for that.  And it's time-tested, Asian farmers have produced food this way for a very long time.

Today I was out there with a hoe, hacking away at roots in the South Garden.  I'm getting just as big a pile of them as I did the last time I did this.  So far I can't get the landscaping cloth out, it's too bound up in roots....that's so not supposed to happen...LOL...some "root barrier" that turned out to be.  I'm definitely not using any more of that.

When I'm satisfied I've gotten enough roots dug out, and I've got enough compost, I'll start mixing soil for the bed and bring it all back from where I piled it all up.  I'll say this, intensive gardening is not for lazy people.  That's for sure.

Maybe someday I'll be in such good shape from all this digging that it won't seem difficult at all...well, maybe.  Does the means justify the end?  Will I turn into the Incredible Hulk?  Have I gone over The Edge?  Does anyone care?...best question of all...LOL.

My neighbor's garden looks great this year.  But of course he spends money like it's water sometimes...buys all his soil in huge truckloads, uses a power cultivator, irrigates with a permanent set of sprinklers on timers, uses a bunch of different fertilizers simultaneously, etc. Then he doesn't seem to use much of it...OK, none of my business, I get that.

Turnips Growing

Big headline...turnips growing...LOL.

Well, to each his or her own...and I put a lot of work into my gardening, so it's a big deal for me.  You can really see the difference now from what they were when I set them out...

Newly planted turnips 12/9/14

Same turnip bed 12/25/14

But of course they're still young.  I think they'll do OK, so long as the pine roots don't mess them up.  I've tried to figure out a good way to deal with the pine roots that invade my beds, but the only thing I can think of is to remove all the soil, heap it up somewhere, dig out the roots, and return the amended soil to the bed.  It can be exhausting work, but it gets results.  I've proven that.

So far I've removed all the topsoil from the next bed over, except for a little patch of onions.  Meant to take a pic, but forgot.  Now I've got to get going with my hoe and my hatchet.  I don't have enough compost right now to amend the soil, so there's no rush.

The compost operation is running slowly right now, I need to get out there and run the shredder...so I can reload the bins.  The compost in the bins was all ice cold in the morning, so I dumped them all in a big pile, mixed it all up...and now the pile is getting good and hot.  I had steam coming out when I added some household trash the other day.  There's a minimum size for a compost pile if you want it to get hot...something like three feet across and three feet high.  Anything less and you've got to run it with high nitrogen levels...that can be tricky, you don't want flies breeding in it.  I have trouble sometimes with soldier flies...they don't do significant harm and they don't carry diseases as far as I know, but they can slow a pile down quite a lot and turn it all gummy somehow.  Don't like soldier flies in my compost.  I have lizards that patrol the compost for soldier flies who come to lay eggs.  Phorid flies can also be annoying, and they also slow a pile down...plus they nip you on the face a bit.  But they're very tiny, like gnats.  I ignore them.

Right now I've got fire ants in my pile again...Solenopsis invicta.  I'll have to poison them with spinosad...again.  I'm surrounded by thousands of fire ant nests in my area, so they always come back. Spinosad is approved for organic gardening and farming.

Here's a quick tour of some container plants...been doing a lot of work with containers.

 Eggplant aka aubergine

 Pepper Poblano

 Pepper Jwala

Eggplant aka aubergine

Pole beans...just starting to climb a bit.

Lots of other stuff in the background...sweet potato, vegetable amaranth, etc.

Holding Steady

Things are going OK now, no major problems anywhere in the beds or containers.  The liquid feeding every day or so has been a huge help...you can really see the difference in my seedling trays.  I've got tiny little pots with great big plants climbing out of them.

Up till recently I've been unconvinced about liquid feeding of nutrients to crops.  I knew that's the way commercial agriculture has been practiced here for a long time, but logically it seemed as though the improvement of the soil would take care of nutrient supply more efficiently.

But a gardener is nothing if not a pragmatist.  I can see the difference in my crops no matter what they are.  About a month or so ago, I set some leggy eggplant seedlings into 34 cm pots and hoped for the best.  Now they have side shoots coming out of every node.  Bushy plants are a sure sign of health in vegetables like eggplant aka aubergine.

I've re-evalulated my methods for containers too.  From now on, I'm mixing the potting soil from older pots with compost before fallowing, not after.  This gives time for the soil microflora to become reactivated and disease organisms like plant-parasitic nematodes to die off or get consumed by predatory fungi.  Yes there are predator fungi...they ensnare nematodes, kill them, and consume them.  It's a jungle down there in the ground.

I can't decide which is better...containers or planting beds...so I'm doing both again.  If my health holds up, maybe I'll be awash in produce soon...LOL.  But no tomatoes this year.  Last year I had a huge crop of cherry tomatoes and they made me sick.  So I'm certain now that I'm definitely allergic to tomatoes and to sunflower plants...roots and seeds.  Got to be careful, they use pulverized Jerusalem artichoke in things like pasta...cramps for sure if I eat that. Jerusalem artichokes are sunflower roots, in case you didn't know.

Lots of radishes ready to pull in the container garden.  That was a good choice for planting.  They grew like weeds and the cool weather has made nice crisp roots.  Not too fond of them in soups, but for fresh eating as a garnish, in salads, or in stir fries they're very good.  As I've said before, radishes used to be very popular as a main dish at American dinner tables, but for some reason they fell out of fashion.  They're a mainstay of Asian cuisine, and also very popular in Eastern Europe. I'm growing Miyashige, Hattorikun, and China Rose.

My Jwala peppers are starting to mature now too.  The plants do very well in containers, I strongly recommend them for subtropical gardeners.  They're a good hot pepper for seasoning stir fries and soups, and they get absolutely covered in fruit any time of the year. You can find the seeds at rareseeds.com.  I've found the plants to be much tougher and more reliable than other hot peppers like Cayenne.  That could be a regional issue, my climate and soil is probably similar to the places in India where Jwala comes from.  I understand that they're a very popular pepper in India.

If Cuba opens for tourists, I would love to go there and find local varieties for my garden.  First place I'd go is a street market in a rural area.  Where I'd get the money I have no idea, but it's only 104.91 miles from Key West to Havana...how tough could it be?...something to dream about.  They have tropical jungles in Cuba...always wanted to see one.

The embargo was a failure, obviously. But if there's one thing our Congress believes, it's that failure is not an acceptable reason for abandoning something after only a half a century.  You have to give things time to work...LOL.

Turnips Settling In

It's been a week since I set out those turnip plants.  And as you can see from the pics I took today, they've not only recovered from transplanting, they've also grown.

Compare these pics with the ones I took a week ago and you can see the difference. So I'm optimistic this will work and I'll have some turnips to eat before long.

As you can also see, I've mulched them to protect the soil from the sun.  Without that, the surface dries in a few hours and repels water when I try to irrigate with sprinkling.  This causes the topsoil to develop little gullies and wash into the paths...definitely not what we want.  With the mulch in place the bed is like a big sponge and readily absorbs irrigation.  I've been sprinkling them with liquid feed every day.

The exact ingredients in the feed vary, and I've tried different things over the past year.  There are a lot of rules about gardening and farming here...you can't grow kang kong, for example...that's a felony.  Kang kong is a crop universally grown throughout the Tropics as a nourishing and tasty green vegetable...but it's considered invasive here.

So my liquid formula is not for publication.  It's nothing special, look on Youtube or just research online to find dozens of different formulas...all of which seem to work. The most common one is to soak compost in a sack of landscaping cloth or old pantyhose in a bucket of water.  I don't know all the ins and outs of local laws, so mum's the word on what I currently use.

The important thing is that it supplies nutrients to the plants regardless of how well the soil microflora is cooking.  It's kind of like a booster to get you through the changes in soil moisture and other variables.  You want your plants to really thrive, not just survive. Liquid feeding also boosts the soil organisms...it's all good.  I like to do it every day in small doses so the area just under the mulch stays well moistened.  That's a hot spot for microbial activity...a lot goes on there.

The next bed over from the turnips has been nearly all evacuated of topsoil so I can get at those pine roots that invaded the bed.  I moved the soil to a cleared spot alongside the driveway.

I'll keep it moist and mix it with compost when I have enough. Meanwhile I'm on a mission to clear the pine roots out of the area where I removed the soil.  Last time I filled two or three wheelbarrows with the darn things, and it looks like a similar pile of roots is growing out there again as I pull them out.

I have plans for a new container garden too.  The current location isn't getting enough sun these days...the trees to the south are shading them most of the day.  So I'm eyeing a sunny spot north of the house for some concrete blocks and containers.  That's one advantage of containers...you can set them up anywhere you want. With the right kind of cart, they're not hard to move around to new locations as conditions change.

So I'm feeling good about the garden.  I've had some days where the air was free of smoke and chemical fumes, that always makes me more optimistic.  Last evening the smoke was thick enough that you could easily see it without even going outside.  I cleaned my truck windows of dew yesterday morning and the towel came away all black from soot.  Lung cancer here I come.

But it won't spoil my optimism.  Lately I've been harvesting lots of greens...mustard, pac choy, vegetable amaranth, radish, etc.  Yes radish greens are edible, in fact I'm growing a variety that's grown just for its tops...the roots are woody and not very good.  Radish greens are very good for stir fries and soups...and also salads if you like a spicy taste in your greenery.

I have a lot of seed I haven't planted yet, and seedlings coming along.  I hope to have a wide variety of greens to eat this cool season.  That's for the nutrition and for the taste as well.  Nothing can take the place of a well-maintained kitchen garden.

Sticking With Intensive Methods

After giving it some thought, I've decided to keep going with the South Garden as well as the container garden.  Even though the landscaping cloth didn't block root invasion like it was supposed to do, the intensive method of removing all the soil from each bed after a crop and amending it in batches before returning it...that seems to really work well.

I had planned to get several crops before doing anything as drastic as overhauling the bed, but clearly that won't work.  I removed nearly all the soil and heaped it up by the driveway, and found out that the whole bed was a thatch of pine roots.  Most of it came out in chunks with some effort, and there were some impressively thick roots running through the bed.

I think this is what has caused all these crop failures.  It's the pine trees...they invade any rich soil they find and saturate it with toxic chemicals to prevent other plants from seriously competing with them for moisture and nutrients.  I remember one planting of peppers I made years ago at a different site northeast of the house...it was ludicrous...the plants reached a height of about three inches and then just stopped growing altogether.

That's why everything grows so much better in the containers...no pine roots.  What I'm planning, when I have enough compost to do it, is to mix all the soil from the bed with compost 1:1 and plant something in it that matures quickly so the pines can't essentially just steal all my compost for their own use.  Then after the crop is done, I'll remove all the soil again and heap it up alongside the driveway temporarily.  It's a laborious process, for sure, but from what I'm learning about intensive gardening and farming, it produces stellar results.  Intensive farming like this is practiced extensively in Asian countries. Certainly the tomatoes I planted that way were impressive...I got buckets and buckets of those things from just one small section of one planting bed.

My hope is that the pine roots won't have enough time to invade, especially if I go down into the subsoil and extract them all before replacing the topsoil in the bed.

The other solution would be to buy dozens of the large size nursery pots, put them on concrete blocks, and shovel my soil into those. Instead of a long mound of earth, I would have rows of blocks with big black pots lined up on them.  Somehow that solution doesn't appeal to me much.  But it would eliminate root invasion, wouldn't it?

Comments would be appreciated pro or con on this...I really haven't decided which would be best.  I tend to go with the more laborious and less expensive ways of doing things...and those pots and blocks would be a substantial expense for me.  When you're retired and living on Social Security, your choices are different.

One big advantage of pots...if I have to move, I could take the whole garden with me I suppose...assuming I don't move to New Zealand...LOL.

Well, This Didn't Work

I got to work on the planting bed next to the turnips today.  But when I tried to work the soil with the fork, I ran into a tangle of pine roots.  That wasn't supposed to happen, not after I laid all that landscaping cloth over the subsoil before returning the amended soil to the bed.

When I carefully worked my way down to the landscaping cloth, I found a mess.  The pine roots had not just penetrated the cloth, they'd attacked it and ripped it up.  That's what I call aggressive root growth, it's no wonder these pines do so well here.  I've also had them seek out the water in underground plastic pipes and get into those.  Just a small leak is all it takes, then the roots invade the pipe and make it their own.

So I'll have to rethink my gardening plan.  No more landscaping cloth as root barrier, that clearly does not work.  The crops seem to do fine for a while, then the pine roots compete with them and they die back.  There's a pungent odor to soil that's been invaded by pine, it smells like the ground is contaminated with industrial waste.  I've learned though, that it's just the pine trees repelling my crop roots with chemical warfare.  Plants seem so lifeless to us, but put a time-lapse camera on them and you'll see they and their roots are constantly doing things like fighting with their neighbors for the sun and aggressively hunting down little pockets of richer soil beneath the surface where we can't see them.

If you lay a piece of rotten wood on the soil around your crop plants, then lift it in a few days, you'll see how the roots have grown up from below and invaded the moist wood.  Studies of this behavior have shown that somehow the roots smell things like rotten wood and grow towards them.

So I've decided to rework the beds completely between crops and remove all the pine roots...then plant crops that mature quickly so they can stay ahead of the pines.  I want to grow things I can eat, not pine cones.  They say pine nuts are generally edible, but maybe I'm not that hungry yet...LOL.  I'll leave those for the squirrels.

So next step for the South Garden...dig out all the soil from bed S3 and move it to a heap alongside the driveway again.  Then I'll purge the area of pine roots as best I can before mixing the soil with rock powder and compost.  Then I'll return it to the garden.  It's a lot of work, but it's the only way I know to get anything decent out of that ground out there.

I suppose I could buy a roto-tiller and do things that way.  I'm not a fan of noisy gadgets, though.  I'll give the matter some cogitation.

A Cool Garden

We're supposed to have a week or so of cool weather, so I decided that this would be an ideal time to get my turnips in the ground.

Golden Ball Turnips - Planted Today

I'll mulch them after they settle in a bit.  It was disappointing to find as many pine roots in the bed as I did when I dug in the compost.  I had thought the landscaping cloth beneath the soil would have kept them out.  It's OK, I dig up the beds after each crop is pulled out, so they won't be able to take over the bed...I hope.

Turnips are traditionally planted in the South in the cooler months. They tolerate poor soil and they produce a lot of food, since you can eat the entire plant.  Here in the subtropics, it's a gamble...if they get too much heat, turnips tend to be bitter and strong-tasting.

The container garden is doing fine.  Ever since I started liquid feeding almost every day, the plants seem to be doing better.  Here's a few pics I took today.

 Pole Beans 

Asian Radishes

 Pepper Caribbean Red

 More Radishes

 Purslane, Thai Basil, Pac Choy, Oregano

 Radishes...I went in big for these.

 Onion, Chives, Oregano, Thai Basil

Eggplant aka Aubergine

Everything is planted in either 34 or 57 cm nursery containers. They're set on concrete blocks and racks made of local wood.  This protects them from animals and the frequent flooding we get here...and the fire ants, Solenopsis invicta.  They get into the pots and eat the roots.  And they're extremely unfriendly.

So that's the garden, more or less, the second week of December 2014.  I didn't take pics of the sweet potatoes, but you can see some of their leaves in the last pic.

Mix Soil, Repeat

Things are moving along OK now.  I've got four full barrels of potting soil that I'm aging before using, and a full barrel of a mix I made with fallowed soil. Next time out, I'll repot those eggplant with it.

It's a simple formula, and it seems to work fine...dump non-productive containers, mix the soil with compost and rock powder to enrich it, age it if needed, then refill pots and plant anew.

As the soil dries out from transpiration through the crop leaves, I irrigate with well water plus additives to feed the roots.  Everything is organic, except for a tiny pinch of epsom salts in the water. Magnesium is very hard for roots to absorb in alkaline soil, so I splash the leaves with it too.  And as these things go with gardening it will either work or it won't.  So far it's all working very well.

I'll have daikon ready to pull soon.  Those are good in salads or as a garnish in little cubes...or in stir fries and soups.  Which root crop produces the most food?...tough question to answer.  Sweet potatoes take much longer to produce their tubers, but they're starchier and more filling...and have more vitamins than daikon or turnips.  But the turnips and radishes grow so quickly.  In four months they can produce two crops for every one of sweet potato.  And you can eat the tops as well as the roots.

I'd say the turnip is the champ when it comes to producing food by the pound.  The tops are super-nutritious and everything grows really, really fast.  And they tolerate a wide variety of soils.  So long as it doesn't get too hot and their roots don't dry out, they'll always come through.  This year I'm growing Golden Globe.  If the climate were cooler here and the soil less alkaline, I'd grow a lot of rutabaga. I really like them and they produce great big roots.  Boil or steam, mash, mix half and half with potato...delicious.

But if the weather is too hot they get strong-tasting, unpleasant to eat, and hard to digest.  So I've given up on them for a while.  We'll see how the Golden Globe turnips do.  If it gets too hot for turnips, I'll have loads of peppers and eggplant to eat.  A smart gambler hedges his or her bets so they don't lose their stake.

I've heard hedge funds are a good investment...but suppose people decide they like fences instead of hedges in their landscaping? Sounds too risky to me.

That's a joke.  At least laugh to be polite.

Catching Up

The air finally cleared up a bit, though it's been really bad at night. So I've been trying to get as much done as I can.  I have so many things I want to plant, and the hot-weather crops are mostly fizzling out.  I only get a few pods here and there on the okra, the molokhia and the Malabar spinach are setting seeds and fruit.

Been experimenting with liquid feeding in the pots...growing in containers has its limits.  The roots can only expand so far, then they run out of fresh soil to exploit and the plants start showing signs of deficiencies.  I realize now that topdressing the pots is not enough, they need compost tea or something similar to keep the plants healthy.

So far the results of my experiments have gone well.  So I'm excited about this new technique. Well, it's not really new to me, I did this in my former garden decades ago.  But by trying liquid-feed on my seedling trays, I could really see the results quickly this time.  The eggplant seedlings have really started growing despite being badly potbound.  I'm anxious to get those into larger pots asap.

This morning I was feeling somewhat burned out, so I went back to sleep and didn't do much.  I need an easy day now and then, I think. I did get into the South Garden to pull some weeds, cut back more pea vines, and check on things.  I thought the sweet potatoes I planted had died, but they've survived and some have started growing again.  I might dig some potatoes after all.  And those pea vines have rooted along with them in the bed and produced more pods.  That variety of pea, Ologwe, has been a true marvel.  I've never had anything grow so rampantly and with such determination.

Looking at my varietal selections, I realized that many of my biggest successes have come from planting crops that originated in tropical Africa and India.  So once again I saw proof that varietal selection can be critically important.  Planting temperate crops in the subtropics doesn't always work well.  Open-pollinated (OP) varieties we buy from US seed companies are usually grown in temperate locales; and as years pass, they adapt to local conditions.  Then I try to grow them here in this broiling-hot sun and they suffer with the heat...and the alkaline, sandy soil.  Most temperate farms have somewhat acidic, loamy soils or clays.

But plant an African variety like Ologwe peas...and stand back! They feel right at home here.

I've tried harvesting some of my Liberty potatoes recently.  Those originated in Cuba as "boniatos", then got modified by the plant-breeding masters at Clemson University to be more resistant to plant-parasitic nematodes.  They've grown well for me, and now I find that I really like the potatoes.  They're cream-colored, starchy, and not really sweet.  The flavor is very different from the usual sweet potato...sort of nutty as I've heard it described...very nice.

I'm sold.  Those are going to be my main potato crop from now on.

I love sweet potatoes, but the high sugar content of some varieties bothers my teeth.  So I parboil those and toss out the water.  For the usual more colorful potato, I'm trying Hannah currently.  I bought some in Whole Foods, liked them OK, and I have some nice long slips growing on my kitchen window sill right now. I'm thinking they might take the cool weather better than Liberty.  I love to try new varieties...it's a big part of the fun I have with gardening.  You have to enjoy an activity to be good at it, that's a fact.

I have some Chinese kale seeds on my kitchen counter right now that are eager to get into some soil. I can't actually hear them speak to me to be honest, but this is their time of year, so I'm assuming.  I've never grown Chinese kale, which is similar to that Italian veggie that looks like broccoli but is actually a type of mustard.  Broccoli raab, that's it...had to go look in a seed catalogue for the name.  The flowers of mustard are tasty too, but extremely hot.  I just nibble on a few of those in the garden when they show up.

Been mixing potting-soil like mad...got four big barrels of it and still continuing on.  Get ready seeds, I have nice homes planned for you guys. The salads I've been eating with my pac choy, radish greens, and purslane have been absolutely incredible.  This is perfect weather for pac choy and radish greens...cool at night and warm, not too strong sun every day.

Chilly

Our cool season has arrived with a grand entrance...the overnight low broke a record for the date.  I didn't catch it here, but the "official" low at a nearby airport was eight Celsius.  I'm still heat-adapted so I slept in for a change...the house stayed warm overnight. I confess to using a small space heater last evening while I was online.

The air pollution has been hitting me hard recently...strong chemical odors, heavy smoke, and a really strong bloom of red tide just off the coast.  Any one of those is enough to give me problems...it's another reason I slept late in my filtered indoor air.  This time of year people cut back brush and burn it...things are still very primitive here in a lot of ways.  We have curbside pickup of residential yard waste, but many don't use it.  It's a mystery to me why they don't. And of course larger landowners burn off hundreds of acres, as they've done since colonial times.

So I haven't done much outside.  I did set up more containers, and I finished getting the chipper/shredder ready for use.  I planted three 34 cm pots of mustard greens, I use a lot of those in salads, soups, and stir fries.  It's an easy procedure...mix the potting soil from recycled container soil, rock dust, vermiculite, and compost using a wheelbarrow and a hoe...line the bottom of a pot with pine twigs, cover the twigs with landscaping cloth, dump in the amended soil.

Then I plant about ten seedlings in each pot, set it on a rack of poles on concrete blocks, and cover it at night with chicken wire until the plants are big enough to hide the soil.  Some type of animal loves digging in freshly-mixed potting soil, they can really wreck my work overnight. Also the fire ants love the pots...finding your hands covered in stinging ants after pulling a couple of weeds is no fun at all.  So I rarely put the big pots on the ground to keep them away from animals, flooding, fire ants, and the back trouble I get from picking them up from the ground.  I put the smaller pots of seedlings on the carport overnight to protect them from snails, etc.

I'm enthusiastic to plant a wide variety of greens and beans this cool season.  I really think the tender raw greens fortify me, they're a good source of almost every important nutritional need of humans.  I don't eat much fruit, so raw greens and peppers are my main source of vitamin C.  I have hopes of planting more pac choy, radish greens, and mustard greens...plus chard, aurugula, mizuna, turnip greens etc.

For soups, my favorites are molokhia and mustard.  The former grows best in the hot season and the rainy season, the latter in the cool season.  But they're all good for soup, stir fry, or salads when young.  Well, no salads with molokhia...you have to cook those.

I didn't feel up to doing much today, but maybe tomorrow I'll mix more soil or start clearing brush and shredding it...always something to do.

Containers

The grass is slowing down in its growth now, and the cool season is here.  This morning it was 16 Celsius out by the South Garden.  So that signals it's time to get moving on my greens.  Most of them are very sensitive to nighttime temps, particularly lettuce and cole crops. Cole crops aka cruciferous veggies include turnip, broccoli, collards, mustard, and pac choy.

The cole crops are nutritional powerhouses, in addition to tasting really good in salads, soups, and stir fries.  Look up turnip greens somewhere and check out the nutritional analysis...it's really impressive.

I felt a little better this morning, so I got outside around eight and got to work mixing potting soil and setting up pots.  I set up three 34 cm pots with radishes and pepper plants.  It's a hassle sometimes, fussing with containers and mixing soil...especially when I'm feeling ill.  But this morning I felt enthusiastic for a change.  It's hard to stay enthusiastic when you're in a lot of pain every day...but that's another story for another blog somewhere.

I've had a running debate in my head for years...containers or planting beds in the ground?  Containers are winning lately.  My potting soil is much richer and better able to grow a variety of veggies.  But the planting beds can at times produce really impressive yields of things that tolerate the calcareous soil...like tomatoes, cole crops, and beans.  So I've been trying a little of both. After a spectacular failure with some sweet potato plants in the South Garden, I'm currently focusing on the containers. 

I might just plant the whole garden in emmer wheat to see what happens.  The grass family has an impressive ability to grow in almost any soil...in fact there's a species of African grass that is absolutely determined to make that garden its own...Dactyloctenium aegyptium.  No matter how much hoeing I do, it always comes back somehow.  Grain sorghum has always done well in that garden, so I might try the wheat this cool season...I have a nice fat envelope of seed I recently bought.

As for the containers, I have plans for lots of peppers and greens. Lately I've been planting Jwala peppers and Poblano peppers.  My favorites include Serranos, Caribbean reds, and Tabascos.  I like bell peppers too, but they are very disease-prone, so I've given up on them for a while.  In the past I have grown some very nice bell peppers in the containers...maybe I'll get back to them again.

I'm also going to plant lots of Golden Ball turnips.  I like them the best of all the varieties I've tried, and apparently European foodies agree with me...the Golden Ball is supposed to be the most popular turnip throughout Europe.  Those white turnips with the purple tops give me too much indigestion, so I just won't eat them anymore.  I do love eating rutabagas or turnips mashed half and half with potato, like my grandmother used to fix them. Unfortunately the weather is only suitable for turnips for just a few months if that.  The rest of the time they struggle in the heat and the roots get very strong-tasting and pungent.   I'll put their pots at the northern side of the racks so the soil stays cooler, or maybe plant a row of them in a planting bed.

I rarely grow great quantities of anything.  Instead I plant a little of this and a little of that.  This gives me great variety in my meals.  If you have a choice, why not live well?  I pity those who have to get by on supermarket food...how sad their lives are.  Having lots of toys doesn't bring you happiness...good food, good music, pleasant surroundings, good company, good sex, being close to trees, plants and wildlife...now that's living.

A Tad Cooler

The really hot daytime temps seem to have exited, along with the warm nights.  It's not really chilly, but the cool-weather crops can tolerate what's happening now.

The nice thing about the cool season is that many of the things I grow during the cooler months, like mustard and lettuce, are fine for salads.  Sometimes I worry a bit about not eating raw foods during the warmer months, since I rarely eat fruit.  Fruit gives me toothaches.

So I'm looking forward to planting all kinds of salad greens.  I've already got radish greens and pac choy coming along, and today I'll probably start some mustard seed.  Young mustard greens are so good in salads...more nutritious and tastier than lettuce.  I've been wary of planting lettuce, turnips, etc., since the weather has been so warm on most days.  But the radishes and the Shanghai pac choy can take a bit of heat for a while, so they're well along now.  In fact the radishes seem to be thriving, especially since the heat eased up a bit and the sun has been losing some of its intensity.

Right now I'm concentrating on getting my radish seedlings into larger containers...they've almost outgrown their six cm pots.  I usually sow seed in a pot that's about nine cm or so, then separate the seedlings into individual small pots later.  It takes about a month give or take to get a seedling that's ready to plant in a large pot or a planting bed.  I always have trays of seedlings coming along.

Yesterday I planted some Hattorikun radish seedlings in 40 and 43 cm nursery pots, those are grown for their tasty greens rather than their roots.  The roots are edible, but they only form after the plant has been around for some time.  For roots, I'm growing Miyashige and China Rose...two varieties bred for fall harvest in temperate climes.  Everest is another good one for me, I've had very good results with that variety.  I like radishes in salads, as a garnish, in soups, or in stir fries. For a subtropical gardener radishes are a good choice because they tolerate a bit of heat and they grow like weeds generally.  Of course if you want crisp, mild roots it's best to grow them in rich soil.  The temps should not be too hot when the roots are forming or they'll be really pungent and strong-tasting.

So right now I'm focusing on getting my radish seedlings transplanted, along with my Jwala peppers.  This year I plan to keep growing sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) right through the cool season.  I have three varieties growing, and I don't want to have to buy slips again when the weather starts to warm up. With the warm weather we've had in recent years, I'm gambling that the Ipomoea will continue to make tubers in the coming months.

They are so easy to propagate.  Today I noticed that a potato vine had put down roots into one of my Jwala pepper containers.  If I snip the vine and cut it off from its parent, it will grow and produce potatoes in that pot.  So all I really have to do for propagation is set pots of soil on the racks and lay the vines from existing plants across them.  But usually I snip leaders from the vines, strip off most of the leaves and stick them in the pots or planting beds.  It's that easy. There's nothing else I grow that produces more food than Ipomoea batatas...you can even eat the greens, though I've never tried them.

Once I give the lawn areas their last cutting, I should be able to forget mowing for a few months.  Our grasses don't seem to grow during the shorter days...thankfully!  So I'll be able to spend more time gardening...assuming the air is breathable for me.  This morning I got a strong stinging sensation if I tried to breathe through my nose...no idea what was causing the irritation.  We'll see how things go...as usual.

Shift in Tactics?

I have difficulty working within limitations sometimes.  Lately my health hasn't been that great, and I've had to deal with problems in air quality.  When it's smoggy in the morning, I have to wait a few hours to work outside.  That cuts way back on my gardening time, since I'm also susceptible to sunlight and heat.

So I'm thinking about how to maximize productivity within those limitations.  I've considered raised beds, going back to just smaller containers, or pushing ahead with the very large (57 cm) nursery pots.

Right now, the 57 cm pots on concrete blocks are winning.  They're cheaper to set up than the raised beds, and they seem to more consistently productive than the beds I have in the South Garden. Another issue is the fact that the front lawn area was the only place I had that doesn't stay flooded or waterlogged through half the year. The house is built on a big mound of contractor fill, the rest of the property is level for the most part...and very wet in the rainy season. I need a garden that produces year-round, since I rely on it for most of my produce. You can't grow much in waterlogged soil...kang kong (Ipomoea aquatica) grows well I'm sure, but it's a felony to grow that here...no, I'm not kidding.  Too bad, it's very easy to grow and very nutritious.  (All right you, put down that trowel and come out of that garden with your hands where I can see them!)

So I chose the front lawn for my latest garden effort...it never floods out there.  Unfortunately so did the people who installed the drain field.  I think the effluent is leaching into my garden beds, and who knows what's settled into the bottom of that septic tank in 25 years of use?  Could be all kinds of toxic cleaners and disinfectants down there after all those medical people came here to help take care of Dad during his later years.

So this urban gardener is choosing to at least temporarily plant cover crops in the South Garden and shift back to container gardening for a while.  I plan to use a lot of #20 pots, those hold 20 gallons in case you're familiar with the Old English system of measuring.  Since soil is measured in "dry gallons", that comes out to nearly 90 liters capacity.  Most garden vegetables can really stretch out their roots in a pot like that.  I layer some pine twigs in the bottom, followed by a piece of landscaping cloth, then fill them with a blend of my potting soil, compost, some vermiculite, glacial rock dust, and pulverized rock phosphate.

As I recycle pots of various sizes, I blend in more compost and rock dust.  The seedlings I plant in that potent mix usually take off really fast.  To help them along, I layer more compost on top as they grow; then cover it all with a layer of hay, chopped palmetto fronds, or pieces of rotten wood.

I try to buy the big pots locally, but the nursery crews like to cut them with a box knife when they take the young palms and citrus out of them.  So buying the used ones from nurseries hasn't been going well.  Still, any I can buy used for five bucks is better than the ten dollars I would have to pay if I ordered them online and had them shipped. For those who measure soil in cubic yards, a yard of soil will fill about eight of those big pots.  It annoys me that local people insist on using the Old English system, even though they seem to know almost nothing about it.  They seem to universally believe that a #20 pot holds 25 gallons.  It would if it were measured in liquid gallons, like a beer keg...but soil is measured in dry gallons, not liquid gallons.  So it's 20, not 25.

Maybe if I habitually drank a lot of whiskey, that kind of vague measuring might make more sense to me...LOL.  Call me picky, but being off by five gallons seems significant to me.

The new crops in the 34 cm pots are growing well.  I've got Miyashige radishes, Pac Choy Shanghai, Bangladeshi eggplant, Clemson Superb okra, molokhia, Evergreen onion, and Jwala pepper plants coming up. Those are all plants that tolerate heat well...it's still hitting the 32C/90F mark almost every day lately, with overnight lows around 24C/75F.  Never used to be quite this hot in October years ago.  I'm glad I didn't plant the cool-season crops like lettuce yet.  I tried some White Lisbon onion seed, but the seedlings seem to have mostly died.  I guess I'll wait for cooler nights and more temperate days to plant things like lettuce and kale.  For now, I'm thinking of sticking to my okra and peppers and such.  Some years it never does get that cool during the shorter days...just have to wait and see.

I refuse to call this "Fall", even though the transplanted people from northerly climes insist on it.  Temps of 32C/90F are not "Fall" weather.  People are infuriatingly illogical.  This is the end of the rainy season here, not "Fall".

Transition

It's time to plant seeds for crops that will mature in late November and early December now, so I'm getting my radishes, pac choy, etc. started.

I haven't done a lot, the air in the mornings has been very irritating...so I've been staying indoors during the best hours to garden.  Not sure what's causing the irritation, but there's a strong odor of chemicals before the sun heats the ground and causes the stagnant air to rise.  I don't deal well with sun and heat, so I'm just working in the shade on containers or getting caught up on infrastructure repairs like sharpening the flails on my chipper/shredder.

I did get three varieties of radish planted...Miyashige, China Rose, and Hattorikun...all in containers...plus pac choy, more okra, pepper Jwala, more molokhia, and onions.  The bulb onions I planted withered away, but the bunching onions (Allium fistulosum) are subtropical and they're doing fine.  I bought what I thought was fresh seed in Home Depot, but when I put on my reading glasses and read the packet fine print it was all 2014 seed.  Those are seeds grown in 2013, so they might not be any good.  Note to self...read labels before buying!!!!  The seeds I bought at the hardware store were all labeled 2015, so those should be fine.  I hate it when I get a container or a planting bed all set up, plant the seed, and absolutely nothing happens.  That's why I favor using small pots to start seed, then transplanting.

Daytime temps are still hitting 32 Celsius (90 F), so it's difficult to get some young plants going for harvest in November and December.  So I'm hedging my bets and planting both cool-season and warm-season crops now.  It could be freezing cold in November or roasting hot...no way to know.

I get all my veggies from the garden, so I have to be careful to avoid dead spots in the harvest and failed crops.  The only produce I usually buy includes things like potatoes, garlic, ginger, and occasionally onions just because they're cheap...LOL.  I don't have good luck with bulb onions, but I keep trying every year.  I have had good results, but not often.  Generally I stick with a lot of faithful standbys like bunching onions, pac choy (I grow the sub-tropical Shanghai variety), mustard, blackeyed peas, long beans, kale, radishes (the big ones), turnips, chard, sweet potatoes, broccoli, molokhia, Malabar spinach, oregano, basil, etc.

I'm sure I forgot lots of things in that list.  I'm getting so I'm lost without my gardening notebook.  I strongly advise keeping one, nobody ever remembers it all.  The notebook will help keep you thinking in orderly ways, too.  It's invaluable for crop rotation.  After all these years of gardening, I rarely remember what I planted last in each bed.  That's why they invented paper and pens, computers, and all the rest, folks.  If something doesn't grow well in your garden, don't keep planting it year after year just because you think you should. 

There are so many different varieties and species of edible plants, don't fixate on what they have in those microwaveable dinners in the supermarket...especially if you're gardening in the subtropics.  Don't be ethnocentric about things either...purslane is super-nutritious, incredibly easy to grow, and very good if prepared well.  It's used as food all through Latin America, Europe and around the world. Calling it a weed and refusing to eat it is just stupid.  In Spanish it's called verdolagas and they sell it in bunches in Latin-American street markets.

Time to go look for the mail, I like to keep to a regular routine...helps keep me from going over the edge...LOL.

Pea Takeover

The peas just keep right on growing.  I expected them to slow down by now, but they seem bent on taking over the whole garden and the surrounding lawn.  Instead of working themselves up to a big set of pods, this variety has been giving me a steady harvest of delicious peas.  You can find them at rareseeds.com, look for Ologwe peas.

The past few days I've been setting up 34 cm pots with okra, pac choy, and onion.  It's raining every day now, so I don't have to spend time with the watering hoses.  My rain gauge registers about a half inch a day...that's a little over a centimeter.  Today there's a tropical wave over us, so as it passes we'll likely get some substantial downpours.

Some types of seed last longer than others.  I'd like to plant radishes now, but first I want to test my old seed.  Radish seeds will sometimes stay viable for several years if they're kept dry, even longer in the fridge.  At three or four dollars a packet, I don't like to buy replacement packets if I might have viable seed left from previous years.

Of all the radish varieties I've planted, two stand out for me...Everest and Hattorikun.  Everest grew very well and the roots were mild and crisp.  I just noticed that the description in the seed catalogue says that they can be grown year-round in the Tropics, so I might order a packet of those.  I don't have any left-overs.  I always thought of radishes as a cool-season crop, but some varieties seem to have remarkable heat-tolerance. The roots on Everest are about twice the size of a large carrot when it's time to pick them.

Hattorikun grew right through June in a pot, but by then the greens were tough and inedible.  Hattorikun is grown for the green tops, not the roots.  Radish greens are good in salads and stir fries, I'll vouch for that.  Just treat them well if you want the greens...otherwise they'll be tough and bitter.  People are like that too, I've noticed.  I've seem more than my share of bitter people.  Radishes are one of the easiest crops to grow in a garden, but they do best in a rich, loamy soil...like most garden vegetables.

My Evergreen onions in the South Garden have divided into lots of little onion plants.  Suits me...I think I'll dig them up and replant the little ones in containers.  They seem to do best in my containers where the soil is richer.  All those years of amending my potting soil with compost have given me a black, mucky soil that grows just about anything...except cucumbers and squash it seems.  I've given up on those, they reach the point of making fruit and then die.  It could be RKN, root-knot nematodes.  They're very common in all my garden soil.  I try to favor nematode-resistant varieties.

Guess I'll go try to upload some pics I just took of the peas and part of my container garden.  I keep forgetting how to set the exposure on the camera, my memory has problems lately.  I'll get it eventually, I've only had the darn thing for a dozen years now, and I still don't really know much about it.  For some reason gadgets aren't fun for me anymore like they used to be.  But I manage somehow.

 The onion bed is in the right foreground, half-buried under pea vines.  That stuff that looks like weeds in the left foreground among the pea vines is weeds.  It's hard to get in there and weed the pathway with all those pea vines sprawling around.  The weeds are mostly Dactyloctenium aegyptium, which incidentally has edible seeds. Africans use the seeds as survival food when their grain crops fail.

 This is just one part of my container garden.  The big plants are okra Clemson Superb, the vines are sweet potato Liberty and Porto Rico.  That big spindly thing is an okra plant that's lost its leaves but still makes pods. It's the variety William Woys Weaver calls "Stubby".  It's also known as "Old Fashioned Okra".  Sometimes the pods are as fat as cucumbers.  They're spiny, but tasty...good fried or in soup.  Some kind of fungus destroyed the leaves.

This last pic is a shot of two pots of sweet potato vines, Porto Rico in the foreground, Liberty further back.  These are all 57 cm pots set on concrete blocks in this part of the garden.  They hold about 20 dry gallons of soil.  If you don't know what a dry gallon is, don't blame me.  I try to use the metric system as much as it's practical.  I don't like fractions, rods, furlongs, two different miles, fathoms, pecks, bushels, four different gallons, etc. Metric is so much easier.  In metric the 57-cm pots are about ninety liters give or take.  That's a lotta doit.

Intense Heat Abates

Those intensely hot days when the heat stayed oppressive throughout the daylight hours may have gone.  We're getting slighly cooler weather now...still hot, but not like it was.  Each day the intensity of the sunlight wanes a little bit as we move toward equinox.

The peas continue to grow.  They're sprawling over half the garden now, with no signs of slowing down.  I've been picking enough peas for a meal every few days and they are outstanding...never tasted better.  It makes me feel sorry for the people who have to rely solely on supermarket produce.  You have to have your own garden, or know someone who does, in order to develop an appreciation for food.

I pulled out the eggplant. I kept getting sick from the fruit, I think the variety I was growing had too much solanine.  Seems I have a sensitivity to solanine.  I'm laying off Solanum tuberosum for a while, they have solanine too.  That's the common white potato for those who have a phobia about scientific names.  There must be a name for that...people who fear dictionaries, books, and online search engines.  They seem to rely totally on "what people say".

Also I'm going back to a method of composting I used decades ago at a different house.  It's called sheet composting.  Instead of a bin or pile, you lay the plant debris and other biodegradable trash in a layer on your planting beds and cover thickly with mulch.  The soil beneath improves as the material breaks down, and the plants can often extract nutrients directly from the trash with the help of micorrhiza which grow in association with the plant roots.  I'm just trying it for a while, until I can get back to making compost in bins.  I just haven't kept up with things lately, and sheet composting is much less labor-intensive.

The mulch is coming from a sunny spot on my property where a variety of weeds, sedges, and native plants grow in a little meadow. I just go out there with my sickle and harvest a cartload of hay now and then for mulch.  After the grass stops growing, I'll probably get back to making compost the usual way.  This time of year I have to spend too much time mowing to keep up with the gardening...I don't have a big rider-mower.  Lately I get out of breath just doing light work around here.

The okra and the other hot-weather crops like Basella are doing well. I do love my okra.  Tonight I made a nice stir fry with Basella, okra, Jwala peppers, pinto beans, and rice.  Some of the okra plants are so tall I have to bend them over to reach the pods.  Okra is a tropical plant, and when the cool weather comes I'll switch to other crops like mustard and string beans.  But even though the heat is hard to deal with, I'll miss my okra.  It's my favorite of all the vegetables, but I've learned to change with the seasons, just like the plants in the surrounding woodlands do.  September is a good month to plant onions here, and who doesn't like onions?  I'm going in big with White Lisbon this year if all goes well...can't have too many onions.

Flooded

The work area where I set up containers got flooded, so I moved everything to the higher ground by my shop building.  So of course the rain quit and it's been dry ever since.  We don't seem to get those afternoon rains as we did in years past, the climate has changed in some way.  The winds always came from the southeast in the warmer months, now they're predominantly westerly.

But I try to adjust to things.  This morning the air reeked of chemicals that stung my nostrils, so I waited for a breeze before going outside to do my morning gardening.  It was hot of course, due to the late start, but I kept on.  I finished ferrying nearly all of a big heap of potting soil to the shop in the wheelbarrow and turned a compost pile.  By then I felt close to collapse, literally...so time to quit for the day. Lately the heat index has been between 100 and 110 during most of the daylight hours.  I got that from the TV weather report, which is all in Fahrenheit.  In Celsius that would be 38 to 43 degrees.

I would much rather go back to my old schedule of starting work around 0600 hours, but that just gives me asthma attacks now with all this pollution.

I've noticed that the boniato aka Cuban sweet potato are outgrowing all the other sweet potatoes.  That reinforces my view that to do well at subtropical gardening you have to grow subtropical varieties. Seems obvious, doesn't it?  Yet nobody seems to follow this path. Instead they grow cold-adapted varieties in a brief window of cool weather between December and March and tell everyone you can't grow vegetables in "the summer" here.

People are so strange, I'll never understand them.  I keep hoping they'll wake up and realize that there is no "summer" or "winter" at this latitude and wearing woolen jackets with ties is just plain dumb when you live in a subtropical climate.  Oh well, you can't fix stupid, can you?

Personally I like the warm-climate veggies better.  They taste better and they're easier on my digestion.  Last night I used my molokhia with a little vegetable amaranth for soup greens.  It made a great soup, much better than a soup made with cabbage or kale...and much more nutritious as well.

The cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata) are really going crazy out there. The first picking is about due, and I'm anxious to see how this variety, Ologwe, is going to taste.  They had better be good, I'm going to have a lot of them to eat.

I know, I should take more pictures.  This heat discourages me from doing that.  I'm having trouble keeping up with things around here, the grass is knee deep in spots again.  When the heat index is over forty degrees Celsius, it's actually a little dangerous for me to go out in the sun.  I don't deal with heat well anymore.

As the teachers used to say in school when I was a kid..."Little by little all things are done."

I finally got around to snapping a pic of my peas (Vigna unguiculata).  That bush in the left center background is a Thai eggplant.  The vines haven't started bearing peas yet, I think they're still growing.  It was a lot of work to blend all that soil with compost and rock powder in the wheelbarrow, but obviously the tactic works, so I'll likely be doing more of it.

Lately I've been focusing on my containers.  Some of my favorite warm-season crops like okra and sweet potatoes produce much more reliably in potting soil.  For the past few days, I've been yanking out unproductive plants and dumping the soil on plastic sheets for storage and fallowing.  I also cover with agricultural plastic for moisture conservation.  Plant pests like RKN, root-knot nematodes, go dormant in dry soil.  I want them to stay active with no plant roots to feed on.  This simple tactic seems to be the best nematode control I've used.

I just might give up growing carrots.  They tend to grow slowly and get infested with RKN.  I had one really good crop in the South Garden, nothing really worthwhile since then.  I've tried about a dozen different varieties, but carrots might just be a crop better suited to higher latitudes or higher elevations.  I don't believe in working against the grain, so to speak...not without good reason. Carrots aren't my favorite vegetable anyway, they tend to bother my teeth with all that sugar.  I just use them sparingly in soup now.

Sweet potatoes are a much better root crop under the conditions in my area.  They grow like weeds here.  This year I'm growing three different varieties...Sumor, Liberty, and Porto Rico.  I know how to spell Puerto Rico, that's the name the variety goes by...no "e".  I like Porto Rico, but it's exceptionally sweet, so it bothers my teeth if I eat too much of it.  I'm pinning my hopes on Liberty, which is a variety of boniato, a Cuban sweet potato.  It's been growing like mad, very healthy vines...haven't tried digging out any tubers yet.

My next-door neighbor ripped out everything in his veggie garden and rolled up the fencing.  That's customary here.  I've always grown year-round, however, and had no trouble with crop failures.  In fact I much prefer the warm-season crops like okra and long bean to the cool-season crops like kale and mustard.  My neighbor likes to grow tomatoes and melons mostly...I don't grow either one of those anymore. Tomatoes are toxic to me and melons are too sweet.

It's not easy to garden this time of year, I'll give you that.  This afternoon it's been hanging at 35 degrees Celsius for hours, and it's as muggy as a sauna.  That's 95 in Fahrenheit for those who cling to obsolete ways of doing things.  If I do anything outside in the evening, I wait until the sun nears the horizon. Otherwise I just give myself a headache.  Wouldn't be much point to gardening if I die of heat stroke and can't eat any of it. 

I've been cooking my veggies from the garden in soups mostly.  I do love a good soup made from okra, green onion, molokhia, sweet potato, and long bean picked fresh from the garden.  I use a wide variety of things in my soups so they're never quite the same.  This time of year soups keep me hydrated.  After the first liter or so, water loses its charm...when it's 35 degrees you need a lot of water each day.

Sun and Rain

The rainy season is going strong lately.  This morning I tried to do some mowing, but got rained out by a heavy downpour that popped up without warning from the TV radar.

The peas look good.  I got 100% germination and the plants are starting to shade the ground a bit already.  I really should mulch them, but with the lawn areas all overgrown, it's difficult to get to everything.  Air quality in the early morning continues to be very poor, there's always a definite odor of smoke during the night and early morning.  I have an idea why there is trash burning going on every night, but I won't get into that in this blog.  We have trash pickup at the curb here...recyclables, garbage, and yard waste in separate collections once a week.  So there's no legitimate reason to burn trash.  But it's very widespread here nevertheless.  As someone once said..."You can educate people, but you can't fix stupid."

The okra is doing well...great big leaves and thick stalks.  They don't seem to grow in the sandy soil in the garden, but do extremely well in my potting soil.  It's probably a pH thing.  The "soil" here is about 95% calcareous sand from the look of it.  My potting soil has loads of humus from all the compost I'm mixed with it over the past forty years or so.  I got a lot of it originally by gathering up soil from an old abandoned homesite I found in the woods, so gardeners before my time probably added compost and manure to it as well.

Humus plus sand equals soil, the equation seems to be as simple as that sometimes.  You can make humus by cooking compost, so there you have it.  Speaking of compost, that open pile I started when I didn't finish sharpening the flails on the chipper/shredder was steaming like mad last time I dug into it.  This time of year the rain keeps an open pile moist enough to make it practical, so maybe I don't need to shred everything first.  Running the shredder gives me sinus headaches, so I'm always happy to avoid cranking it up.  I do need it to process the woody material, so I'll have to finish work on it soon.  Woody twigs and branches break down on their own, but it takes years.  I chip and shred them all and use the chips as mulch.

I do have my problems sometimes.  Right now I'm dealing with some chorosis in my Basella and sweet potatoes, not sure why that is. I'll have to look into it, something could be attacking the roots. Chlorosis is a loss of green color in leaves with the veins showing as darker against a pale background.  I'll try spraying them with seaweed extract before trying anything drastic like dumping a container out to look at roots.

My disabilities hold me back or I'd do a lot more.  My legs don't work very well at all anymore and I've had respiratory problems. But I don't have the sense to give up, so I keep at things.  It's what I've always done.

When I make my vegan soups with molokhia and other pickings from the garden, I know it's all worth it.  You can't put food on your table with wishful thinking.  Perspiration works better.

Update on the Peas

It's only been a few days, but the peas are all up and growing with large leaves fully spread out and catching the sun.  Things do have a way of happening very rapidly in tropical sunshine if conditions are favorable.  I'm looking forward to harvesting them and using them in the kitchen, lately I've been eating a lot of pinto beans and I could use a change of pace.  I'm about halfway through a 25 pound sack of the pintos.

I've had to do a lot of watering.  It used to be the case that there was no need to water the garden much at this time of year, because it rained almost every day.  But things seem to be different now, our rains come in spells, interspersed with dry periods that last for a week or more.

The rains cool my house in the evenings, if the air isn't too smoky to open the windows.  I used to leave the windows open all the time during the rainy season, but that's no longer possible.  It makes life very unpleasant at times when you have no air conditioning in your house and you can't open the windows.  I survive with cold showers.

The molokhia is growing very well as usual.  Planting the right varieties of veggies is an essential part of subtropical gardening. Right now many of my older plants like peppers are struggling in the heat, but the Vigna and the molokhia are growing very rapidly with no problems.  That shows the wisdom of proper varietal selection for the current conditions.  I pick a colander of molokhia leaves every few days from just two plants in 34 cm containers.  I like them best in soup.

My hope is that I won't have to completely rework the planting beds once I get them all rehabilitated and shielded from root invasion with landscaping cloth.  It only takes a morning or two of adding compost and mixing with the fork to amend a bed for a new crop.  The trick is to get out there and do it, lately I've not been feeling up to it...might have had a little heat exhaustion in addition to the usual bronchitis I get from the smoke.  I do work outside, but I run out of steam very quickly lately.

This time of year...what gets done, gets done.