Bursting Raised Beds

A little update on our backyard gardening- the plants have started to flower and develop fruit! This is the fun part :) 

It is a battle to keep the plants from the critters but the reward is worth the struggle. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm willing to lose a few fruits to the cause, but we will not have a repeat of last year when some unidentified creature ran off with all but the stem of our jalapeno plant (including 4-5 developing jalapenos). That's where we draw the line. 

Happy carrots in their neat little row and some lettuce in the foreground

tomatoes are imminent!!!

little baby cucumbers on the vine!

watermelon's humble beginnings

left: summer squash. top right: chard. bottom right: beans

Nature's Bounty

There is no greater pleasure in life than watching nature work her magic- transforming a handful of seeds and soil, glorious soil, into a raised bed bursting with flavor!

Gardening has taught me an appreciation for the farmers who are good enough at the art of growing food to do it for a living. It has forced me to learn patience - do you know how hard it is to wait days and weeks from the moment you plant a seed, to watching it sprout, to harvesting the finishing product?! Maddening. But alas, all things worth waiting for take time. Finally, I believe gardening brings out the child in all of us- digging in dirt and marveling at the wonder that is nature.

Herbs and leafy greens are ripe for the picking now and we are looking forward to harvesting some delicious tomatoes, summer squash, beets, carrots, peppers, maybe a watermelon or two, beans, and more in the weeks and months to come.

Viva la jardín!

Adventures in Vegetable Gardening

This summer's garden experiment has been a learning process. We planted more seeds than last year but still kept the effort to a minimum... which may explain the not so bountiful harvest :) Next year must resolve to try harder.

Nevertheless! We got some good edible produce and I believe what they say is true- if you grow it yourself you are more inclined to try it. As a dedicated raw tomato-hater for all of my 24 years of life, I am putting forth an honest effort to make myself like them (or at least tolerate them). I have faith in the powers of this method due to its overwhelming success in my quest to make myself like coffee (because I wanted to be a grown-up) and tea (because I thought it would go well with my British accent). So far, I am at the "tolerating them" stage of the process- and these little guys are playing a big role in my conversion.

Fresh picked

Sure the carrots are puny and the collards have been torn to pieces by little caterpillar-looking critters, but my jalapenos were on the fast-track to guacamole. That is, until some unknown backyard creature stole the entire plant! The mystery culprit didn't just take a nibble out of one of my beautiful, prized jalapenos, or even steal one pepper. They took the ENTIRE plant. Needless to say, I will be practicing my slingshot skills this winter in preparation for redemption next summer. Justice will be served.

Gone without a trace.

Until next time, happy harvesting.

Garden Progress

Our little seeds have come a long way since the day we received them in the mail!

They look to be surviving in the 5 gallon buckets on the back porch. All the rain and sunshine has done them well and we are hopeful for a healthy harvest in a few short months. After the labels were removed, I kind of lost track of our two types of tomatoes (cherry and gold medal) and two peppers (jalapeno and bell). So I'm looking forward to finding out which is which when they begin to bear fruit! Not pictured below are collards, kale (which I did not start from the seed but is doing well and I can't wait for mom to be able to throw in green smoothies!) chard, beets, carrots, eggplant, cucumber, watermelon, and a few others I'm sure I have forgotten!

Mystery Tomato

Mystery Peppers

Even the seeds we planted on the side of the house are making some progress. We planted these a month or so after the seed starter tray and they are starting to sprout too, despite heavy rain and poor drainage. We thought it was a lost cause but fingers crossed they continue to flourish!

Little carrot sprouts growing on the side of the house. 

Mixed Lettuce

Happy Little Seeds and Sprouts

Let the adventure in backyard gardening begin!

After stocking up on seeds from the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed company, we took a trip to Lowe's for seed starters and dirt and such.

If you're going to be paying for shipping anyway... may as well make it worth your money, am I right? 

After about 5 days we had our first sprouts... I couldn't believe we had actually done it...(cue the Frankenstein clip)... it's alive, IT'S ALIVEEEE.

The little collards that could.

Anyway.... there seems to be a new sprout each time we check the tray. The last few days have been warm, relatively speaking, and full of sunshine so we got these babies out there to try and kick start the growing process. We need to get these guys garden-ready in the next month or so to go in the ground around or just after the last frost, which is around April 20 for our region.

I'm already learning all sorts of things, mostly from the internet (thank you, Google) but also from co-workers who are backyard gardening veterans. Seeds and their sprouts are like little people, they have personalities, preferences, enemies, and friends....

1. Identifying seeds and their sprouts. Before this project I couldn't tell a carrot seed from a chard seed. But now I can! And their little sprouts too.
2. Apparently beets do not transplant well... uh too late. We'll just have to give it our best shot.
3. Eggplant seeds take longer to germinate than any of the other seeds we have in our tray... come on little guys, don't be shy!
4. Some plants like lots of sun (tomatoes, peppers, etc) and others prefer the cool shade on a hot summer day (carrots, collards, and chard). Some need stakes for support (maybe the eggplants and peppers) and some like a good old fashioned trellis (get those tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini a-climbing). Which plants are companion plants and help each other grow, taste good, or ward off pests.
5. Some seeds can't be planted too deep, just barely covered by dirt will do just fine for those carrot seeds!

And lots more. I feel like this is the most exciting part, watching the sprouts pop up one by one, but I don't anticipate being bored at any stage of the project... especially when the harvest begins and I throw that fresh cut chard leaf into a smoothie!

To be continued...

So far and in chronological sprouting order...
collards, chard, beets, cucumber, carrots, and zucchini, and cherry tomatoes
waiting anxiously for our watermelon, eggplants, tomato, and peppers! 

Friday Garden Fun

After weeks of dry season plant watering (something I can attest is quite the uphill battle...) it was finally time to do something a little more fun! Brian brought some seeds from a tree I forgot the name of and we all huddled around a Tupperware container top to extract the seeds from their pods, prepare one bed and some bags for the seeds, and finally plant and water them! The trees will hopefully be used in next semester's agroforestry project.

Efforts to water are going to have to step it up a notch but with renewed enthusiasm in the garden and a water spicket recently installed closer to the garden, I think we can handle it. We also planted some bell peppers and other mystery seeds in another bed after pulling out a whole bed of these sad looking little carrots haha.

Rancho Mastatal

This week we went on a field trip to Rancho Mastatal, over 325 acres of land bordering La Cangreja National Park in Puriscal, Costa Rica. The property is owned by a couple from the states who decided to move down to Costa Rica to establish a living and learning center for sustainable and responsible living, building, agriculture, permaculture, aquaculture, etc. in the tropics. After a tour of the property and endless questions from the ever-curious minds of UPEACE students, they treated us to lunch prepared from the foods harvested on their property in their ample outdoor dining space... and it was DELICIOUS! After a bit of down time to hang out with the ranch residents and lay in hammocks, we took a hike down to the river to work off some of our lunch. Finally, all sweaty and smelly, the 16 of us piled on the bus for a 2.5 hour ride back to UPEACE... silver lining, I've never been so thankful for AC in my life...

Exploring upon arrival. So many books!

Black and white kitty surrounded by color! Taking a mid-morning siesta. 

The nursery

seed saving stash

long dining table to the left, guitars at the ready for meal time serenades. 

The owners' daughter hammock chilling... not a bad life. 

Earth oven for bread-making

Permaculture Magazine voted this facility world's best composting loo.... Congratulations!!

Tim and some UPEACE student checking out the compost finished product...

One of the living structures on the property, made of bamboo and local woods. 

little guy spotted on the river hike. 

Weeding has never been so fun

Yesterday was the first "meeting" for the Upeace Garden Club. It consists of a good amount of land with 5 or 6 beds for crops, a whole hillside destined to be an agroforesty project, papaya trees, pineapples, cassava, a tiny avocado tree that sprouted by accident from a seed in the compost pile, and much more! However most of what has grown over the break... weeds. A handful of us spent the 2 hours weeding what we could of the garden, cleaning up, and watering some plants that needed some love. Despite the temperatures, biting ants, and drudgery... I actually had a lot of fun chatting with other Upeace students, getting to know them, discussing ideas for the garden's potential, and learning a little about small scale agriculture :)

And then we found this massive cockroach that was thanfully already dead, gross but kind of cool at the same time haha