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Garden Thread 08'

So far ive picked about 8 cucumbers (plant later died) , 20 tomatoes, and 10 cayenne peppers. (However there is about 15 peppers of different size maturing on the plant. After some more steady watering, a little nutrients and trimming of dead and weak growth the plant took off. Unfortunately my first bell pepper is forming now because almost the entire plant was eaten by deers 2 weeks ago. Thankfully it has grown back quickly but is just starting to spit out its first fruit :( Im hoping to get 15 bell peppers this season!

The tomato plant has done the best by far and has been the easiest to grow. All I have done is watered THOROUGHLY and given nutrients once a week. I trimmed dead growth or yellowing growth twice in its life.

Oh and the blackberries have gotten quite large for the small containers they were in, they were watered in the morning and transplanted in the early afternoon to soil. They should take off and I expect fruit within 2 weeks. I will take some pictures tomorrow, the cayenne peppers really look greta when they turn bright green and are fully matured. (Plus the added heat the maturity adds is nice.) I am making salsa tomorrow :D
 
Jam uh Weezy I'm wondering why your pictures are not safe for work??


My garden at home only consists of about 5-6 herbs, tomatoes, eggplant, and fruit trees (white guava, lemon, papaya, mango, avocado)

In the very near future I will be working with some friends that have a very large lot of land available for us to grow food for a festival we're having in FEbuary. We're trying to get as much homegrown food as possible, but there's goingto be an estimated 4-5 hundred people there so I'm not sure how much we can do!

I'll post pics and more information when it actually starts happening (myself and the wife of the guy planning the whole thing are both pregnant so we're workign around that haha)


Any suggestions though????? The plot of land is in the rainforest area of the tropics :)
 
Dtergent said:
Mehm, I read this and remembered what you wanted to do before.


I've seen a lot of people advertising for this service this year. One person even had a feature on the front page of The New York Times! I personally installed 3 this year so I'm stoked. Maybe next year more people will want them. My new business model is compost production because it is so integral to gardens.

peace
 
When we moved into our lots they were a wasteland, hard clay soil. Been building the soil up over the past couple of years. I have vegetables integrated wtih the growing trees on the side. Out back I have vermicomposting and some experiments.

I really focus on growing trees because I need the biomass to bring the fertility up.

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View of the front of our house, used to be all brown dead soil. Now it is green all over.

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Durian tree

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Durian from seed

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Banaba medicinal tree

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Madre de cacao green manure

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Building soil in an enclosement from salvaged tree parts (from gated communities' garbage)

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Makabuhay medicinal vine (also for aborting babies) :o

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Hand washing station

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Harvested some sugarcane yesterday...
 
Just some other shots, sorry for unloading ;) We are aiming for a food and multi-use forest.

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Malabar spinach growing on some rope

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Medicinal herbs drying (we smoke them when we have coughs)

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Cashew tree failing at first

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Mung bean flower

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Before planting this little tuber which will have purple yam fruit hanging

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Kapok trees, which provide me with all my stuffing and cotton needs

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Kapok fiber. I make my period pads with them, stuff some custom-made cotton pouches. I know this sounds gross, but I compost the bloody fiber afterwards. The pouches get washed and heated for re-use. They absorb better than any commercial pad, and I can't imagine all the people putting chemical and pesticide-laden cotton inside their reproductive cavities or against them.
 
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awesome stuff Dtergent! the plants in your area are a bit different than Utah's native flora :D
 
Dtergent you're my new hero!

1. What is that medicinal herb you use for coughs? My dad has heart problems so he can't take any OTC medicine-and he is always complaining of a bad cough. There are lots of "hippy stores" (thats what I call them lol) around here so maybe they carry that plant??

2.
Kapok fiber. I make my period pads with them, stuff some custom-made cotton pouches. I know this sounds gross, but I compost the bloody fiber afterwards. The pouches get washed and heated for re-use. They absorb better than any commercial pad, and I can't imagine all the people putting chemical and pesticide-laden cotton inside their reproductive cavities or against them.

This is so awesome! Maybe you can help me with something, I'm not sure if these fibers would work or not (how long does that tree take to grow? I wonder if I could even get it out here in HAwaii?), but here it goes. So I'm pregnant (first time, scared shitless) and I really dont want to be buying hundreds and hundreds of diapers, I just think its so wasteful and, yeah the chemicals ugh I dont want to do it. I think I remember my mom just tying up a cotton clothe around my brother when he was very little but she soon gave up on that. Do you have any suggestions????
 
My mom has a garden right now growing zucchini, pumpkins, watermelons, tomatoes, and peppers. When I'm older, I want to have one as well.

Here is a picture of the peppers from June, NSFW because it's big:
NSFW:
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Thanks yew :)


CloudyHazeD, I eat durian, when I can. It's one of the best things in the world.

LoveAlways said:
1. What is that medicinal herb you use for coughs? My dad has heart problems so he can't take any OTC medicine-and he is always complaining of a bad cough. There are lots of "hippy stores" (thats what I call them lol) around here so maybe they carry that plant??

It is called gatas-gatas here. I'm not sure if you'll have it there, it's pretty much a weed. I also use the sap to make eyedrops for my dog's cataract. It works REALLY well that way too.

Does your dad smoke? Does he eat a lot of heavy food? Chronic coughs should be seen as symptoms of something deeper... it might not be best to just deal wtih the effects of something else.

LoveAlways said:
2.

This is so awesome! Maybe you can help me with something, I'm not sure if these fibers would work or not (how long does that tree take to grow? I wonder if I could even get it out here in HAwaii?), but here it goes. So I'm pregnant (first time, scared shitless) and I really dont want to be buying hundreds and hundreds of diapers, I just think its so wasteful and, yeah the chemicals ugh I dont want to do it. I think I remember my mom just tying up a cotton clothe around my brother when he was very little but she soon gave up on that. Do you have any suggestions????

The tree is tropical, I know they grow a lot of it in South America. Definitely it will grow in Hawaii. It is very easy to grow and looks like manioc/cassava when it is young. I can send you seeds if you can't obtain them. They are fast fast growers and can do degraded soil. When it is time to seed it can look like it snowed-- white fiber everywhere.

Congratulations on the babe :)

Maybe you can devise an absorbent cotton casing that is a diaper and fill it up with stuffing too!

Many people here buy used flour sacks and make them into diapers. I wore only pieces of cloth pinned together as a baby and that worked fine. Other times I was just naked in the garden or something or getting cleaned up after like a dog. I think that you need to spend a lot of time with babies anyway, more than people usually do these days.

I had a rubber mat under my lower body half when lying in the crib, that helped. On the whole the trick was to have many cloths available and just change them whenever a baby is wet. You learn a lot also observing a baby's excretory behaviors, things you might miss if you just leave a diaper on for long.


Here are some creatures from the garden:

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^ Last photo is a bunch of babies that were born on a milkweed leaf that I was rooting. Anyone know what they are?
 
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Anyone have a lot of experience with sweet bell pepper.... from the day you see the first signs of growth of the actual pepper how long does it take to mature. I personally like red.... its been 10 days and they havent grown much in size and havent changed color at all....
 
^I don't make a log or anything...but i have a sweet bell pepper plant that just started to produce fruit. I'd guess i put it in the soil maybe 4-5 weeks ago... like i said i don't keep track but somewhere around there.


my garden is going crazy...i've been eating a lot more veggies thanks to it. :) come time to re-sow i'm gonna plan it out better because it was way to crowded.
 
^^it's my impression that pineapples will never grow in ny unless you have them in a temperature controlled green house. otherwise, it is definitely way to late to plant much outside in your parts. some things that might work are perenials (so they establish themselves for next year), greans/herbs such as spinach and kale, and some root crops that can over winter such as carrots and potatoes.

remeber to use compost and plan for next year. right now is a great time to put news paper, then compost on your lawn as to prepare a plot for next year.

grow on
 
anyone know how to stop corn-worms.? i was so sad to realize about half my harvest was dust. those little bastards. most of the corns i cut cut off the top and they were fine, but quite a few the worms destroyed.


also my giant sunflower is sick....arent they supposed to produce the seeds in the middle before the petals fall off? :(
 
^^go to the root of the problem. Get monsanto to stop gmo's, then protest the federal government to end corn subsidies...

i hear mineral oil on the trussels will work in the mean time
 
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