This is a small patch that I found growing in my garden. It's been growing off and on in my garden for a few years now. Te larger patches here are 2 to three ft wide
Just before the spore state.
A bad pic but I think I just need a better camera to capture all the detail.
This stuff does better at transit problem solving than some engineers.
The vid has the info on this post. Cheers!
My friend found this little guy kickin around the garden and finally got a picture of him.
His body is about 6 inch long without the tail.
Word of wisdom:
study the simple things to understand the complex.
This will be my first larger project and I'm rather excited about it all. This project aim is to reach the surrounding community and help bridge the gaps and differences between races. The goal is to turn it into a food forest but in a way that complements local ecology. Some will be left natural to preserve natural biodiversity. The Church group that owns it owns 15 foot into the creek. the creek is fresh water mostly but during high tide it's brackish. This will be a great opportunity to increase the fish population as well as the populations of cleaning organisms such as clams and other shellfish. There is one alligator that hangs out further back. I think it's probably 6 to 7 ft long. I'll have to be mindful when we get pigs and goats as gators are well known for eating animals that get near the bank. A lot of little dogs have gone missing in this state. A quick google search will bring up many headlines.
These are some fuzzy pics but this is some of the view I wake up to every morning.
Sweet potato, Hibiscus acetosella (a popular edible and my largest seller when I sell at farmers markets. Banana trees, and a lot of other stuff.
White sweet potato and regular sweet potato.
Words of wisdom.
So I was hanging out with my cat and my cat seemed to know a lot about how to move it's body. He's been training since he was a kitten. Therein is the secret to becoming a master of your own body. Train daily. Train nightly. Push yourself and don't get stagnant.
Well stuff got crazy since my last post. It's been an interesting journey. I have a new camera again!
Yellow slime mold. I hear this mold is intelligent and can learn. I haven't tested that myself yet but I do enjoy simply seeing it. My camera doesn't really do it anything close to justice. Some treat slime mold as a garden pest but I treat it like the beautiful art piece it is.
I walk this trail near daily. It's a small trail but it smells amazing. Its made out of Cuban oregano for the most part but there are many other plants mixed in.
The purple is "white sweet potato" the sweetness kicks in a little after you bite into it. The grass is lemon grass, Skeeters hate it so I try to keep a lot of it around. A hodgepodge of other plants that are edible.
Biggest garden lesson of the year so far - Put standing water UNDER the soil. Coconut shells make good bowls or bamboo can be cut to make large cups. You can use clay or other things also but just don't be the person who puts plastic in the soil. If you put the coconut shells or bamboo under the soil cup side up it holds water under the soil. Then even in a dry spell your plants will thrive while your neighbors wilt. I imagine this could become a lawn care business overnight. Imagine whole cities not using sprinklers to water their lawn or at least not often. I don't have time to get caught up in money and stuff so take these ideas and use them. I don't care if I don't see a dime from it, if it helps everyone or someone I'll get paid in the nonlinear economy in due time.
Papaya leaf! haha they turn a nice yellow when they first start to die and progress into a brown.
Word of wisdom for the day-
Follow God even when you don't understand. It's worth it in the end.
Some parts of the country have been getting an excessive amount of rain. As for FL we had a bit of a dry spell where I'm at so I decided to work on irrigation.
Most of what I have can survive a dry season due to the gardening methods I use. There are however a few places that don't hold water so well as the soil is still rather poor.
This is a utility sink I found in the trash somewhere. I made a stand for it and hooked it up to the well water. I put it in a location that is frequented frequently so it gets used often.
So where does the water go after it drains?
To water my plants! :)
Drainage waters this and allows for me to add liquid organic fertilizers such as coffee grounds. to the mix.
This bed was fairly recently planted so many of the starts haven't taken off yet. I'll have to do an update to show the progress of the bed. I didn't really take much care of this area before so much.
I set up the drain on this sink (I have another sink that has similar function) to go through this bucket first. The idea is that I'd have less chance of the lines getting clogged this way. I think I like the direct rout a bit better but a bucket is a great way to connect many lines together if you don't have all the right attachments.
Using old hose and a knife I made quite a bit of drip line. Old hoses that leak or are missing the connectors can be quite useful. The flexibility makes it easier when your plants don't grow in a strait line.
That sink also waters this. I'll have to show an update on this one also.
So if you can link your sinks and showers up right you can water your whole garden daily with your normal activities. Just be sure to use biodegradable nontoxic soaps and cleaners. It's stupid not to anyway. Why people love to spray poison into the air they breath is beyond me. I never did figure that one out. Why they would pollute the water with such toxic chemicals is beyond me also. If your the type of person who likes to put toxins on your skin, in your food, in your hair, in your lungs, on your children, in your drinking water, then you may want to skip utilizing your waste water in this way. If you mostly don't use harmful chemicals however you could just put an option so you can send it to the yard or to never never land where all our water normally goes.
Words of wisdom
In a garden things can change quite a bit from year to year. Don't make the mistake of getting stuck in a rut. Roll with the changes. In a society so bent on permanent unchanging things it's easy to be disconnected from reality. Also gardens are not instant. I see a lot of people go and buy full size plants so they can have an instant garden. Sure that works and you can get some fruit here and there but your going to miss out on a lot of lessons that way. Your going to miss out on the process and sometimes understand that is more valuable then the food you grow.
Some of my artwork, this was taken with my computer webcam as the other is still missing.
I decided to go ahead and restart blogging even without a good camera.
Well it's been a dry season but an educational one. More updates soon to come.
Words of wisdom
What increases as you use it? Knowledge and a few other things.
Help make it happen! http://www.gofundme.com/tswy68
So in my tire planters this spring I've added ornamental flowers known as Angles Trumpet. They have a huge flower that is rather eye catching and the plant itself tends to stay a nice green. I imagine these will get about 10 ft tall which will add a "castle wall" effect for my fence line. Also in each tire I have Luffa and a few caster bean trees in 2 of them.
Things grow remarkably well out of the tire planters.
Luffa coming up, I tend to pull of the lower leafs of the angles trumpet to give more light to the new Luffa as well as to improve their appearance.
On either side of the tires I've planted Cuban Oregano. The goal is to have a green wall of it around my property to discourage inbound pests. Also I'd like to have enough Luffa so little or none of the actual fence shows. Green walls. :)
Last years Luffa tire with new Luffa coming up from last years seed.
So these tires for those of you who wish to duplicate what I've done with such success -
1. Go get tires - You can get these from used tire shops typically. They may try to charge you for them but the reality is that they actually have to pay to get rid of them. So if anything you should talk them into paying you a small amount for each tire but I wouldn't pay a dime for a tire. If your paying you got hustled.
2. Take these tires home and wash them off, preferably in the shower so all the run off goes to never never land where all our waste magically disappears and never hurts or harms anything in the process. After washing you can choose to spray with a toxic paint to get the desired color which is a great way to put toxins into the air you breath. If the price of hurting everyone around you is worth having a different color tire then go for it. If you look you may even be able to find a non toxic paint but the cost of not poisoning all your friends and family may be a few extra bucks. Are they worth it? Are you?
3. Fill tire with your compost. Bills, bank statements, letters, old paper, weeds from your garden, leftover dinners, dead animals, twigs, logs, leaf mulch, and so on. Since I only grow non edibles out of my tires I don't worry so much about what I put in them. I've even put old dog food in one and things are growing great. Be sure to pack it in the sides of the tire first before filling the middle, bottom tire first and then top. When you get to the top mound it a little as it will settle as time goes on. You can toss in a few worms, water the thing good, and or ad some ants or help them find it with a trail of food.
4. Wait a few months. If you didn't do all the above in the fall (when I should have posted this haha) just ad a flower pot worth of dirt to the top part of the mix. You can plant in that dirt and maybe that will give the rest a chance to break down a little before the roots reach it.
5. Plant your seeds or plants and forget about them. Some may wish to water a little bit in the beginning but once the plant has any root to speak of it shouldn't be an issue. Personally I just plant my seeds and forget about them, has worked for me every time so far. The lip of each tire will hold the water in the tire but under the soil safe from mosquitoes. The rain is enough to keep things going great. I can't imagine having to actually water any of these but maybe I'll water a few here and there as a test this season.
Making the shed take over climb. I can hardly wait :)
Trash bags full of leaf mulch that my neighbors throw out. Why they throw out such good mulch has a lot to do with societal ignorance or perhaps stupidity. Either way more good mulch for me. It's funny how our culture thinks it's best to throw out valuable resources and then complains about having to work all the time. They create work for themselves. They create suffering and then have to work hard to counteract it. They act like they have no choice but in reality they have the choice to be wise with their resources or foolish. Who knows maybe they will throw away the money they earn next because it doesn't look how they like or whatever. I can't wrap my head around it but more for me :)
My first nastertium flower, I ate it. :)
Fresh bananas, I ate some and the rest are still getting ripe. :) Way better than anything I've ever gotten in a store.
So many bananas this season :) I think it's going to be a great year.
Happy gardening!
word of wisdom for the day -
A business man doesn't throw away product, at least not a good one. They use it however they can.
Well folks, it seems my camera decided to kick the bucket. So today is just a text update.
Got rainbow corn growing, kale, peanuts, onion, potato, stevia, garlic, nasturtium, strawberries, and just planted a lot of hollyhock today.
Eating fresh bananas, loquats, and greens from the garden.
Had a few cold days so my Cuban oregano got "burnt" a good bit but it should bounce back in a few weeks. Cuban Oregano is a fairly cold sensitive plant. It doesn't even have to get to freezing for it to show damage.
This looks to be the first year that I'll get mulberries from 4 or 5 of my trees and the one older tree is loaded with green berries... more than I have ever seen on it before. I'm especially happy that my dwarf mulberry trees look like they will be producing for the first time this year.
I have a lot of banana tree's that are fruiting right now also so I should be set on bananas for a few months, by next year I should have enough banana tree's to produce all the banana's I eat so store banana's will be mostly a thing of the past for me.
This may also be the first year for one of my mango tree's to produce.
In other news, spring is nearly here! This looks to be a great year for gardening. I plan to teach a few garden classes this spring.
"The garden tour" A informational tour of the garden that will leave you with general knowledge of a lot of hardy plants as well as a LOT of plant starts.
Cost - $25
Time - About 2 hours.
You get - Knowledge and plant starts that will make the price well worth it.
Skill level - "I don't have a green thumb" to advanced gardeners.
Plant perspectives -
This class is for everyone. You likely will never view gardening or plants quite the same way again after taking this class. Practical hands on training. This class presents many alternative uses of plants from a "first human" approach to understanding plants.
Cost - $50
Time - 4 to 5 hours
You get - Knowledge and skills, plant crafts, and starts.
Skill level - "I don't have a green thumb" to advanced.
This is a hands on class so wear something you don't mind getting dirty... just in case.
Just leave a comment if you would like more information about class times and to find out how to sign up.
Word of wisdom for the day.
Use those around you as mirrors to see where you need to grow.
This is this busy season so sorry for not posting as often. Good chance I won't be able to post again till after the 14th cause I got a lot goin on.
Have a great week or 2 everyone.
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Making a pond
With an island! One of the traveling folk that stayed here helped me a good bit on this recently. Another friend from Nicaragua also helped me on this pond. I asked her to name it for me so she named it "Lago de Nicaragua" which is fitting because it's right next to "little Costa Rica"
The pictures don't really do it justice.
This is a pile of dirt.
di
It's a good idea to dig to see what your growing in.
It's some crazy art like sunrises and the sea
Not to knock the big sites like the Rocky mountains, Smokey mountains, the Grand Canyon but look at the dirt! haha. I know it's different but the beauty of the earth is all over the place. I enjoy looking at nature even if it's just a leaf.
Building another hugal mound.
Art is everywhere
Banana tree make great shadows.
Word of wisdom for the day:
Take cold showers. It causes the blood to rush into your internal organs and then back out to your skin when your done. This flushes your internal organs and skin. Also the mindset required to step into a cold shower willingly is a good one to become familiar with.
