Growth

How
quickly
the
garden
does
run
away
from
you
when
you
neglect
it
for
a
while



and
so,
while
T
cutlassed,

I
weeded
the
lettuce
and
the
surrounding
drains.







The
garden
welcomed
our
return























by
rewarding
us












with
the
beautiful
blooms








whose
exotic
perfume
announced
that
the
turmeric,
known
as
saffron
here,
was
ready
to
harvest

















and
in
the
next
bed,


eggplant.

Thanks

Ooooh, look how lucky we are, a surprise visit from a dear friend who brought us just what we needed. Thank you so much N and N, stay longer next time. x

To date

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.

Slash and burn

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,

which we mixed with well rotted goat manure and ashes and put in our new seed tray.
And now the rains have returned, we couldn't ask for more.

www.free-burma.org

Rain

The

rain

arrived

at

last,

it

having

been

incredibly

dry,

no

rain

for

almost two weeks. It fell heavily for a good while today and, hopefully, some more will fall tonight. The ground where we planted the first lot of beans, has been too hard to work but now it should be fine and I will plant cive there tomorrow. Miss Teeta gave us a few plants. I am glad that I weeded the carrots yesterday and T has made some new beds below the bottom French Cachou for? He has planted some squash with sticks to the right of the tree. I will sow more carrots a the weekend in the new beds on the other side of the ravine, when the moon is more favourable.

A good day's work

T and I
had a
really
good
day.
T
prepared
the
beds
and
I
planted.




100
lettuce,
65
cabbage,
parsley,
bell peppers
and T planted
the
sweet potato
slips.



With plenty of juice, ice and cheese sandwiches, I managed to spend the whole day without having to go for 'a little lie down'.

Back to basics

yesterday was spent uprooting, weeding, moling and forking, in between heavy showers

The tomato plants were replaced with a large leaf basil, the peppers were weeded and moled ready for treatment,

T had already trimmed the mango tree









and the French Cachou?!!!!???????!!!

Can't say I blame him

Oh dear

There is something wrong with the tomatoes, actually, I think there is more than one thing wrong with them.
They all look a bit droopy.

The leaves have little holes in them,

some of them are dark in places, back and front,

Some stems are yellow and dying,

and some have slime on them half way along and the stem is mushy.

some of the main stems seem to have bore holes in them near the base,

There appear to be no flowers now when there were the other day,

the name of this tomato is 'tropical'. I thought it would like growing in the tropics, but ,apparently not.
Some of the leaves look as though they have had milk spilt on them and it has dried. I know your not supposed to cry over it but still......

there are miniscule little black beasts on some of the plants and a brownish dust on the underside of some leaves.

I took the desperate measure of taking out all the bottom leaves and then moling in the hope that the air passing through might help, sort of kill or cure. T went to 'Farm and Garden' in his lunch hour to try to buy something but they told him to come back with some leaves to show them. They also said that they may have to inform the ministry as it may be serious. I don't think the beans or the cucumber look quite right either.