I have a lot of banana trees but as anyone who has them knows, they need trimmed if your trying to make your place look classy. Fresh leafs make good compost anyhow and there is often a need to prune. Down side, the trees grow too high for me to simply use a regular knife or machete.
So after jumping or balancing on various objects precariously in order to reach these leafs I finally got “smart” and made the knife stick.
Step 1.
Get old kitchen
knives from a thrift shop, yard sale, or wherever. You could get a
new one but why be that person?
Step 2. Remove
handles. This is for knives with clear rivets holding the tang in
place.
If you hit them
with a hammer sometimes the handles will shatter off. Use eye
protection if you don't want to risk getting a shard in your eye.
Step 3. Wash them
down. The handles will frequently have goo from glue on them.
Step 4. Get your
stick. A broom handle works great but you can use a fairly wide
variety and sizes of sticks.
Step 5. very
important step. - pre drill your stick with slightly smaller holes
than your screws will fit in. This pilot hole will prevent your stick
from cracking as the screw goes into it. If a knife has 3 rivit holes
I do the middle one first and then put a screw in it. Then I can
shift the blade to the right or left to get the angle I like. Once
I've set my angle (slightly curved is ideal but I have both kinds) I
put the other 2 screws in.
Step 6. Try out your
new knife stick. I use different blades for different tasks. A quick
swish will take off most banana leafs.
A few tips.
Take leafs from the
fruiting side to help balance the tree. Fruit will frequently pull
banana or papaya trees down. Take the lower leafs to encourage upward
growth.
Take leafs and
compost them. Take leafs that shade other things.
Special thanks to my cousin and his wife for the generous donation of a high quality, lifetime warranty, super sturdy shovel.
Used some netting on the fence to help cover it in green later. This is on the path to my house.
Cherry tree there. This area needs a lot of attention. I'm digging a pond where that yellow bucket is.
I'm doing a lot of chop and drop composting during this season so everything looks rough. Started with rather poor soil but that seems to be changing fast.
This past year the canopy layer got so thick that it shaded out a lot of my understory. So the ground is looking pretty bare in a lot of places.
Needless to say I've been doing a lot of replanting of the understory. I hope to increase the diversity dramatically in 2016.
Sugar apple tree (nothing like a regular apple save for in size.) If you have never had one I highly recommend them, particularly for those with a sweet tooth.
behind all this is a pond I dug but haven't sealed yet.
Cuban Oregano everywhere! I picked about 3 bushels worth this week. It's designated for replanting at one of my other projects.
Just behind the Cuban Oregano is a fresh mound that I'm working on.
Banana and papaya are great starter crops for a new gardener.
A few fresh papaya, My trees in other areas of the garden are loaded. Sometimes when a banana or papaya puts on fruit the fruit will actually pull the tree down. It's good to correct any leans early on, the sooner the better.
You can see here that if you cut a papaya tree down it grows new branches and turns into something that more closely resembles a tree.
Word of wisdom for the day
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. ~ Christ
Even in late November the garden still has a lot of green.
I have a lot of bananas on, over 5 clusters, I haven't done an official count.
Banana flowers never seem to get old, I should start eating more of them. I failed to soak them in lime juice and water the last go around. It seems to be an important step.
Leaf mulch from the neighbors. I go around my neighborhood and collect leaf mulch. I'm still not sure why people think it's such a great idea to get rid of biomass but I'll keep taking it. :)
Chop and drop. I am doing a lot of chop and drop now but trying not to take too much off each plant as it is "winter" here. I put these branches and such on the paths fairly thick, this should help kick off extra heat on all the paths I do it to. Like having space heaters in the garden. As is when a freeze does come I have enough density to negate many of the negative effects. I still may loose a few clumps of banana or a few papaya fruits.
Banana leafs are a great way to pack down your chop an drop matter.
Seminole pumpkin flower. Often with squash flowers you can simply eat the flower. One flower can make a great addition to many dishes as it adds the flavor of the squash into the dish. I typically just wait for the fruit however but I have been known to munch a few flowers when kicking about the garden.
Nice to have reminders of the wonders of life. I find them everywhere.
Green papaya, I'm passing out a lot of these to see what people come up with. Soup, stir fry, desert, and so on. Reminds me of breadfruit on account of it's versatility.
Banana, some people like to pull the leaf down, this can damage the tree and create rot. Better to cut them. I recently made some knife sticks that allow me to get the higher ones. Just took a big cooking knife and screwed it into a old shovel handle. Made another with a broom handle. Great tools, I'll likely do a post on it
Mexican spinach from the roof. Found out it only needs to be boiled about 2 or 3 min, water dumped, and then cooked. According to wiki up to about 5 leafs can be eaten raw.
A view from the roof. The density this year reached a new peak that shaded out much of the ground level stuff. I rarely if ever cover anything during a freeze due to the density. When designing a garden I recommend burning a Luffa or something that produces a good bit of smoke. The smoke will tip you off to the key wind currents. If you design right you can take advantage of these currents.
Another view from the top. I gotta say living in a jungle is great, if you haven't done it I recommend it. Often times people aren't expecting all this when I tell them I garden.
The lights and colors do good things for the mind
I planted most these papaya by simply spitting out the seeds into the mulch.
Random photography by me :) This is a beer bottle believe it or not.
Figured it was about time to post a picture of where I'm currently living... well one of the places. I'm remodeling my place so I put a tent up out in the garden. I have been sleeping outside and I got to say it's been great. I almost don't want to move back in once I'm done. It's by sleeping in a tent that I realized that different flowers release their fragrance at particular times. The O2 content of the air is much richer than inside also. Room air tends to have a lower o2 content depending on the amount of time a person or pet is in it. It's a good idea to have at least a few plants in your sleeping area because of this.
A small poor example of Hugelkultur. Poor because it has not aged yet.
So when I returned from my travels and set out to do what I set out to do, hugelkulture was part of it. I didn't know it was called that, I didn't even think of there being such a thing. I knew some design thanks to an underground lecture on permaculture and... ok so a lot more than all that. I won't bother going into all the back story but suffice to say I knew it was a good idea to build smile hills on slopes and such like that. I had been traveling in the Northwest and liked the little hills that were scattered through some of the forests. So when I returned to FL I decided to build hills in my yard. It wasn't till a year or 2 later that I learned that what I was doing had a name and was a great way to garden. I had some idea that it was a good way to garden based on my previous knowledge of systems and...
anyway the general idea of the basics...
Bamboo or other such hollow plants work great at retaining some moisture under the soil. They are good to use in hugel kulture. I put a lot of dead bamboo in my hills. Note that I said dead bamboo. Bamboo can sprout a new plant from each node, so a green one may grow if you throw it in your mound. If you have a lot of green ones you can throw a lot of oak or something and put it on top of that. Then you let it set till it turns brown. If you have the time it's nearly always better to not cover the mounds till the initial wood dries to the point where the trees they came from won't clone. After some time and experience you will learn what trees do and don't clone easy and how long you have to wait for each to dry before covering the mound. You may be able to get away with covering the mound if there is sufficient bio mass on top.
Larger bamboo can be cut into cups to place under the soil. Open side up. Fill these with mulch or whatever but something that water can get in. The idea is that they hold water under the soil so the plants can drink at will. These are great for "black thumbs" and others who haven't learned the consistency, cycles, and understanding to cultivate plants.
Really you could use anything but please use something biodegradable. Plastic does not belong in a garden. I spend a lot of time at side jobs dealing with plastics put in the soil. It's a bad idea. Don't do it.
I dig a pit that's 3 to 4 foot deep and then fill it with logs, mulch, sod, and whatever bio mass is around. It's also good to put plenty of compost. Paper (non glossy) leftovers, roadkill, leftover meat scraps from the local grocery, pee, whatever you got. I hear wood tends to suck nutrients the first season so if you "charge" it by adding things with nutrients then things work better faster.
A pit that's being filled. I call these "Earth pillars". At the location of my first project a lot of biomass was covered with white sand. So If I dig about 4 ft down and install a "earth pillar" it connects the rich layer of biomass with the above good soil. That way my trees will grow faster and stronger. I realize that not everywhere has such conditions but that's where I got the idea for the name.
I am turning a jungle into a food forest. The reasons behind it are many so I'll skip that for now and just say that I have a lot of trees I can cut down and use in the mounds. I know cutting down trees seems counter productive to being "earth friendly" but on average I plant 3 to 5 new trees for every one I cut down. Because we have forgot our duty to care for the earth we have reduced the food supply for local wildlife in many areas. As a result I feel the need to plant higher yielding food plants to increase the natural forage of local wildlife.
I've found that if I cut a tree so it splits when it falls it's less likely to come back. If you cut a tree clean then you can put a vertical x in the trunk and that will often ensure that it won't come back.
So basically how you make one of these Hugel Kulture mounds or whatever you like to call them is to-
Take all the biomass you can find and put it in one spot as high as you like. (some counties don't allow for a hill to be built over x amount of feet.)
Take all the table scraps, road kill, pee, cow turd, or whatever else you can find and put it in the mix.
Dig up sod and weeds and whatever and throw it in the mix. Cover with sand or dirt, then mulch. Fill the pit you dug the sand or dirt out of with biomass and such, Realize that these will sink down over time so build em higher than you actually want them.
Perks -
Less water input needed as it retains a lot.
Great platform for mushroom mycelium which tends to act as an extension set to plant roots. (not all mushrooms get along with all plants)
Reduces the need for pest aside and fertilizer if you use such things.
more growing space as going vertical can turn a 1 acre plot into a 2, 3, or more acre plot as far as surface area goes.
Catches water and your topsoil if you put it in a smile on a slope.
Tends to catch more water in general, sending it into the soil rather than having it run off.
Hills look pretty cool so it's a great way to turn an average looking space into an epic landscape.
Less work. All in all building these takes more work up front. It's a lot of work to carry logs and other biomass to one location. Once that work is done however it greatly reduces your need for future work. You can let these ride for many a season. If you set it up right you could will them to your grandchildren.
The season for these is slightly different depending on location. Here I see them a lot starting in the fall and this photo was taken yesterday. The green fruits are not ripe.
I note that often a tree that gives one season won't the next. I haven't been observing this long enough to call it conclusive but it looks like they take a break.
Some ripe fruit. There is a large seed in the center but the flesh is great. I spent a lot of time gathering sea grapes over the years. I was surprised to learn that the the sap is used in leather work in places like Jamaica. For tanning and dyeing. Also didn't know that its said to be from the Buckwheat family.
When the fruits are ripe you can harvest by holding a bag under (or your hand) and "tickling" the cluster. What falls in your hand should be ripe. This fruit is a favorite of ants so keep your eyes open when harvesting.
Seeds (according to wiki) must be planted right away as they don't store well for future planting. The seeds are slightly drip shaped.
I hope you each have a chance to try the fruit at least once in your lifetime.
Words of wisdom.
“No one has ever become poor by giving.” ― Anne Frank,
