Progress

Despite all the air pollution and tropical heat, I persisted and got some things done this morning.

It was smoky early in the morning, but I waited until about 0830 Standard Time and I was able to get outside and do some work on the overhaul of the planting bed.  I use Standard Time, Daylight Time is way too confusing for me.  The sun is supposed to be high in the sky at noon, and that's all there is to it.

First I hoed and raked the ground where the planting bed belongs, then I spread landscaping cloth over the area and weighted it down with rocks at the corners.  Then I loaded the amended soil I had piled up alongside the driveway into the wheelbarrow and ferried it to the garden.  It wasn't easy working in the hot sun, but I got all of it moved eventually.  I even mixed a couple more loads of garden soil, compost, and rock powders to add to the bed.

I wet it down a bit, then covered it with black agricultural plastic to keep it moist.  Allowing soil to dry out kills off the soil microorganisms, that's the last thing I would want to do.  Organic garden soil is a teeming community of organisms, one of the most populous and complex ecosystems on our planet.

It was 31 degrees Celsius as I was finishing my work this morning, that's toasty.  But I'm pleased that I was able to continue in spite of the heat.  I wish I could have gone out there and done that work hours earlier like I used to do, but in life you have to work with whatever your circumstances give you.  Working in the heat slows me down, but I'm not a quitter. 

I'll get the planting bed ready eventually, just like I got the others done.  This will be the third one I've overhauled this way. If it takes me a bit longer, so what?  I'm about halfway done mixing the soil, and that's a job I can do in the shade...nothing really too difficult about it...all I need is patience and persistence...and a little clean air to breathe.

At least I don't have to worry about vitamin D deficiency.  I think I got sunburned right through my shirt.

Tropical Days Are Here Again

Haven't been doing a lot in the garden lately, just stirring the compost with the fork, watering the plants as needed.  The air quality has been really poor, this is the time of year when landowners burn off dry vegetation to keep their land free of brush.

I have managed to mix some soil for the planting bed I'm preparing. It's been too hot to work in the afternoon, 33 degrees Celsius today again.  Mornings are my best time to work in the garden at this time of year, but with all the smoke around that hasn't been possible.  I start to get really bad headaches and chest pain if I try to work outside when the air quality is poor.  Today the smoke was heavy enough to reduce visibility somewhat.  When you can see air pollution, it's bad.

It's hot in the house, I have no air conditioning.  I tried opening the windows, but I could smell the smoke, so I had to give up on that. At least I got some housecleaning done, and started some seeds in vermiculite...molokhia, two kinds of eggplant, roselle, Burmese okra, and so on...all heat-loving crops.

This time of year I switch from cool-season crops like kale and pac choy to tropicals like okra, sweet potatoes, molokhia, and Malabar spinach.  The kale still looks and tastes good, but the hot sun makes it hard for me to digest.  I had some really bad indigestion last night from the kale and radish greens I put in my soup.  This tropical heat just puts too much stress on non-tropical plants.  I might have to rip the kale out if this heat continues.  I can always plant that section with long beans, they grow even better in the heat than they do in the cool season.  And they're definitely easier on my digestion.

We're supposed to have a chance at some rain later in the week, maybe that will stir up the air and clear the smoke.  Thunderstorms produce vertical mixing and dilute the pollutants that lay near the surface of the earth with cleaner air from higher up in the atmosphere.  The sea breeze in the afternoon clears the air, but I can't do anything strenuous when it's boiling hot outside.

As usual, we'll just have to see how things go.

First gardening entry...

I'm setting up a new planting bed in the garden.  So far I've removed all the soil from the bed, so now it's level with the paths.  I have the soil piled by the driveway.  I also worked over the ground and removed all the pine roots and limestone pieces.

Currently I'm mixing soil for the bed.  I don't use any kind of box for my planting beds, since I'm trying to minimize cash outlay.  I just pile the soil in a mound and mulch it with shredded landscaping debris, wood chips and wood chunks to protect the soil from erosion, solar heating and desiccation.

The mix I'm using for this bed is, by volume, roughly half soil and half compost...with a small dab of rock phosphate, plus another of azomite in each wheelbarrow load that I mix.  Some gardeners use a cement mixer for mixing soil, or a roto-tiller.  I use an ancient wheelbarrow and a hoe.  It takes me a while, but on the positive side I get to pick out chunks of lime rock and sometimes a grub or two while I'm mixing.  I usually adjust the moisture level by sprinkling the soil with a garden hose or watering can as I mix.

I used to just dump compost on the bed and work it in with the hoe, but that didn't work well at all.  I got massive root invasion from the surrounding pine trees, for one thing.  Root invasion was so thick that you couldn't stick a trowel into the bed, it was like trying to garden in a mattress.

What I do now is lay landscaping cloth over the ground before I return the amended soil to the bed, that makes an effective root barrier to keep the pines from stealing all the nutrients and moisture.

Didn't do much this morning, I was busy with household chores.  I did water everything though.  I use a garden hose on a reel, with a watering wand to get the water where I want it.  If you mulch thickly enough, it doesn't take that much water to keep everything hydrated.  We're in our dry season now, so rain is sparse or missing altogether.  It would be nice to have a drip irrigation system...maybe someday I'll buy all the plastic tubing and set it all up...or not.  The hose works OK, really.

Introduction

This blog will be a running account of my gardening efforts.

What makes that special, I suppose, is that I'm at latitude 26 degrees 37 minutes North.  That's subtropical, though some call my location tropical because it's near the sea.  We get very little frost, and it can show up at any time between November and April.  Sometimes we get through the cooler months with no frost at all.

I garden for a lot of reasons.  Most of it right now is simply to provide myself with food that isn't too badly tainted with toxins.  My body doesn't handle toxins well.  I don't have enough retirement income to buy a lot of produce at a supermarket, and I'm a vegetarian.  Besides, homegrown tastes a lot better.

I've had my disappointments lately, it's been rough in spots.  The property I use for my gardening used to be a farm, possibly in the 1950's.  The long mounds of earth are still here, even after the property grew up with pines, palmettos, cypress, and so on.  At one time it was used as a dump.  So it's not the greatest place for a garden.

Like many soils in the subtropics, there are a lot of problems.  Most of it is white sand with a lot of limestone particles, so the pH is very high.  I've noticed that gardeners in my area simply don't use it in general, they go buy topsoil.  I've never done that.

What I do instead is make compost...lots and lots of compost. This lowers the pH and turns the white sand into actual soil you can grow something in.  It takes a lot of work, I'll admit that.  But I don't subscribe to the view that physical exertion is something we should avoid at all costs.  I've always believed that you have to work at things to get anything worthwhile from them.  And of course I do enjoy gardening, so I suppose it isn't really work then is it?

Instead of boring my readers with a tedious lecture on my methods, I'm just going to post a gardening journal so you can follow along with me and see how things go.  After I figure out how to use all the bells and whistles here, I'll be posting some pics of my gardening efforts.  For the past few years, I've been growing almost everything I need in the way of produce using only organic methods...so maybe I'll be able to pass along my skills to kindred gardening spirits on the internet.

We'll see how things go.