Garden: October 2007

T having secured a 'proper' job for the foreseeable future, the garden has become my sole responsibility.

Rising to the occasion, I forked a new bed, where the carrots have just finished, for the eggplant seedlings. This variety is called 'Black Stream'. As the rest of the carrots are harvested, more beds will be made for eggplant.

Glancing across the ravine, I am pleased to report that the cabbage are looking like cabbage,

and so, hopped across to weed the new crop of okra which are bearing already. I love them at this stage, all new and fresh and green and slightly furry.

We had to take out the peppers which seem to have the same wilt as the tomatoes, I think it is a fungus, anyway, let's see if these Kuroda carrots will be happy here.

T's cucumber and squashes look o.k. although they seem to be ignoring the nice sticks he gave them.

The pumpkin, seeds from one that was given to us by our lovely neighbour over the road, is enthusiastically climbing the French Cachou tree.

My supervisor, on his day off, keeping his hand in and transferring lettuce seedlings and mumbling something about how he'll have to fork more beds for the eggplant after work if I don't get a move on.

The day before yesterday, we got up early and were in the garden for 6 a.m. This was important as we wanted to plant some more dwarf beans, in the area that T had cleared and forked, at the top of the land on the other side of the ravine, before the sun came over the mountain. The beans that we had planted there already seemed to be doing quite well, despite my reservations about not 'thinging' the soil. I like to break it up and make it nice and soft and relatively stone free. T says 'here in Grenada, we just make a hole." which is what we did and sowed 3 beans in each one.

I think the variety is 'Pet' as that is all that is written on the side of the bag, together with the number 99221

Here is where we planted them, it is nice soil, a bit heavy in places and moist underneath despite the recent lack of rain.

T moved on to clear the next piece of land, just below me, whilst I made the holes with my cutlass and planted the beans. Like most farmers here T is of the 'slash and burn' school of thought. As well as deterring the mosquitoes and sand flies, the smoke smelled lovely as there was some old dry cinnamon wood in amongst the bush.

I was happy to see he had spared these baby coconut palms for me.

This is the new crop of tomatoes. This variety was recommended to us by the ministry of ag., It is called 'Heatmaster' and whilst doing better than the original crop, which was 'Tropical', there are still some problems. I might just give up on tomatoes.

The new okra crop however, is doing splendidly. We had to thin it out and transferred the excess plants to another spot, T was a bit heavy handed when sowing, but all are thriving. Okra loves to grow here and 12 plants can provide at least two pounds of fruit every other day and keeps well in the fridge if bagged carefully. It sells in town for about $4.00 E.C. a pound.

The new crop of sweet potatoes have also picked up nicely. This variety takes 6 months to mature so we have a while to wait yet.

In theory, if you click on this next picture and zoom in, you should be able to see a rough plan of what is growing and where.

The new carrot beds are on thr right hand side and the seeds are safe from sun and heavy rain under some coconut palm leaves, until they get established.

There are secret, hidden places in this garden too. One day soon we will go and explore.

Here are the lettuce all happy and behaving. I don't know the variety as we bought the plants from the nursery up the road and forgot to ask.

That is large leaf basil in the beds behind.

A round of applause please for the first harvest of carrots.

These are 'Kuroda', which taste delicious.

and this is local celery, I don't know if it is actually celeriac, the leaves are used in seasoning.

Finally, T bagged some the wonderful soil from the drains, the ones in the garden I mean, that have been there since Grandpa's time and are for when the rain comes, not the nasty kind,