The Garden

I must say, I'm quite impressed with myself. :) I've posted two blogs. Seriously, it takes about 4 hours here to do what I could have easily done in an hour at home on the internet. Back home I used to be able to download 1GB in an hour. Here I'm not thrilled to try 20MB! Ah well, such is life, at least there is a connection that I can actually upload with.

Ruan and Tara preparing to leave for Guayara yesterday for a day off because it was Tara's birthday. The dirt bikes are a necessary tool because the road outside the school is very hard on vehicles. Someday, in the not to distant future, the road will be paved (contractors are building up layers of dirt in preparation) and the trip to Guayara or Yata will be much nicer but until then these bikes do plenty of work.



I cleaned out the garden shed yesterday, hosed it down, and organized everything. This cockroach was one of the inhabitants. That is a true 2x2 (actual 2 inches by 2 inches - the boards you buy from the lumber yard are actually smaller than the dimensions they are named. This is the result of smooth lumber rather than rough sawn).

Thankfully, this cockroach is no longer with us...

My office... This is the garden shed. I pulled everything out and this is midaction and post cockroach era. The boards in front are left over from construction on the future girls dorm and will be used for stakes. Keila's house (& other female staff) is to the left and back near where the trees form a canopy over the trail.


Some tools, magnesium salt (found a bit more in the shed) for fertilization, tools, etc.

The shed is a few feet to my back. In front is squash, then beans, then bell peppers in the back. Two sections of tomatoes are to the right and papaya are to the left of the photo. In the far back (around the trees) you'll see some plants that are several feet high, that is Yucca (yooka).

The papaya patch with a out-of-use compost barrel. I have started a compost pile so I'm not sure what I'll do with the barrel since it just isn't big enough. Compost is going to be more of a long term project & goal and not a sole solution to the plants nutritional needs.


To the right of the previous photo. Bottom right of the photo is beans. In the back two section is the tomatoes. The farthest section in the back you might be able to make out some tall posts (don't really show up well in black and white). I just put those in last week. Given I only had a dull handsaw to use I left them long and only cut if I could get two posts out of the effort as the sun in September is harsh. I will be nailing boards between the posts which will support string that will wrap around the tomatoes plants as the plants climb. The water tank in the background is the main watertank for the school. The water is pumped up from the stream.

The banana trees in the garden.

Lettuce! I don't know what the variety is, but it does rather well. The garden shed is in the background.


The challenges for the garden is the soil, disease, and water (too little during dry season which we are in and too much during rainy season which begins around November). The soil is poor and given the environment disease is easy to come by. The Mittleider Method will take care of nutritional needs (we will be starting the weekly feeding this week I think) and weekly fungicide will help the plants. Once I am able to find a workable balance between feed and fungicide, I'm going to start planting the seeds I brought down.

For more information on the Mittleider Method visit: http://www.foodforeveryone.org/