Permaculture and cash-crops

I’ve tried to eat healthy for most of my life. I don’t always succeed especially when I’m traveling and I’m forced to eat whatever is available. One of the keys to that is planning my meals carefully as I change location. In the same breath, I need to plan my farming. In my last season, I was only interested in ‘cash-crops’. Things that would produce quickly. Not anymore. For this thing to be successful, I need to have a plan. I’ve looked at my yard and I’ve decided that I want as many fruit trees as is possible.  A part of that planning process is in deciding where to plant them. They need to some safe distance from the house so that the roots do not cause problems to the structure of the house in the future. So far, I’ve acquired seedlings for apple, naseberry, cho-cho and avocado pear. Actually, I bought the cho-cho at the market when I saw that it already had started growing.

The permanent trees will of course be supplemented by the short-term produce; we all know the importance of low hanging fruits in any initiative like this. The corn and gungo peas have served to encourage that process. I’ve replanted some of the corn grain from the original corn that the work man planted. Some corns were left on a cob in a plastic bag. When I got back to my farming endeavours, the seeds had already began growing in the bag. It wasn’t hard to transfer them to the soil. I planted them and gave them a good watering that evening. Thankfully we had some rain that same week and I’ve left them to their own demise. Unfortunately, some other workmen went to the patch to mine stones and now I have no idea where the seeds are planted. I’ll just have to wait to see where they pop up.

In the meantime, my hairdresser has provided me with banana and plantain shoots (I really have no idea what they are called; maybe they are called suckers), as well as some passion fruit seedlings. I am looking for sour sop, sweet sop, custard apple, star fruit, jackfruit (my hfh is not too keen on that one), breadfruit and ackee. I’m thinking about a June plum tree but I haven’t figured out where to put it as yet.

In the meantime, I’ve once again planted some cantaloupe and watermelon seeds. Time will tell. Let’s see how this hands-off posh farming turns out.

 

The Final Product

This phase of my farming endeavors has been a real success, despite the drought. The Irish potato has been the biggest win so far. I got thirteen potatoes from the one I planted. I reaped them about fourteen weeks in because the leaves had started to wither and I wasn’t sure if it meant they needed better care or if it was time to reap. Farmer Google had said about 18 weeks so I figured I would check to see if they were edible.I took two first.

I was careful in digging because I didn’t want to damage the potatoes so I used a gardening fork to loosen the soil and then used my hands to dig through the bucket.

They were very soft and had a pure flavor which I do not get from the store bought potato. So, you may have guessed it, I dug up the others 🙂 . They were just as delightful and worth every ounce of effort I put in.

As for the other things in the ground, I continue to reap. I had the last of the leeks, and the green onions are still going; I think I will reap them one last time in the next week and plant a new set. These ones are getting thin. I haven’t yet checked the growth of the garlic but I think they are okay. I will check on them soon. The sweet potato is still going. It seems to have stalled in its growth after I put it in the ground; the leaves were severely burnt from the sun. I am thinking, I should have gradually transitioned it into direct sunlight. Anyway, It has started sending out new leaves so I am expecting ‘big tings’ from it.

Over the last two weeks we’ve been blessed with rain so I planted some cantaloup, watermelon, and pumpkin seeds. We’ll see how these perform in the coming months.

In the meantime, how is your posh farm coming along? I hope you have been able to reap from what you have sown. Until next time…Happy Posh Farming 🙂

Transplanting Aches

I started at 6 this morning. It’s transplanting day.

I had a nice plan worked out in my head but when I first inserted the fork into the earth this morning I had to rethink my strategy. The ground was as tough as ever. Even though I had extended the patch (remember I forked the area in preparation of the transplant), I had planned to put seedlings in areas that were not forked. The hard dry soil in those areas reminded me that it had not rained in 4 weeks. I had to revert to my pre-prepared area.

Weeds had taken it over and I had to spend time removing them, but it was much better than trying to do it in the other unprepared areas. Of course, I was now happy that I had extended the patch while it rained. I am almost sure that I would not have transplanted a single seedling had I procrastinated and now needed to contend with the tough earth. That led to my first lesson of the day – As a farmer, procrastination can mean the difference between having an income or not having one at all. Had I put off the extension of the patch, my posh farm would probably have  failed before it even began.

The pumpkin seedlings were moved first, and they were relocated to the extreme back of the yard. A friend has advised that they do not require constant watering after they ‘catch’ since we want to reap pumpkins that are dry and the dry soil (not parched) will help to make them more dry and flavourful. I’m not sure if there is any wisdom in that but we’ll see. Anyway, this was the easiest part of the process. The pumpkin seedlings are big and only required me to dig holes a few feet apart. The size of the seedlings led to my second lesson – pumpkin seedlings grow very quickly. They were towering over all the other seedlings. In the end, I am expecting to have more pumpkins than this family can eat. Of course I have no clue how much my posh farm will produce but only time will tell.

As pumpkin is a plant that creeps along the ground, I am a bit concern that the plants will go into the neighbour’s yard. I shared the concern with a friend who has advised me to turn the plants when they get too close to the fence. I do hope I remember.

My next task was to carefully replant the pigeon peas. I didn’t write about them much in previous posts because much of the seedlings were buried under the pumpkin sprouts and I really didn’t even know that they were surviving. Well, they made it, and if all goes well I should be having gungo rice and peas from my posh farm this Christmas.

The sorrels were moved next. This was harder than sewing the seeds in the first instance, because back then, it had rained and I didn’t have to treat the seeds delicately. I successfully relocated them into the sorrel section of the posh farm and so I’m expecting that I will not be short of sorrel when they start bearing.

By the time I was finished with the sorrel I had started using my machete for support when moving from a kneeling to a standing position. That was because my legs alone could no longer do the job. I still however had the tomatoes and the okras to do.

The tomatoes were relocated to an area just for them. They are the only seeds that I actually bought (everything else is from seeds from actual fruits or vegetables), and are the most fragile of the lot. It turns out that I really did put too many seeds in each hole and now they are struggling to survive (a woman carrying eight fetuses at once comes to mind).  Anyway, now we know better. Fellow posh farmers, put two to three seeds per hole, otherwise, the seedlings are stifled – my third lesson of the day. It’s better to have seeds left over for future planting.

My fourth lesson of the day had to do with just how many seedlings and ultimately produce we can get from a few seeds. I am amazed! The handful of sorrel seeds may just provide enough sorrel for a posh drink; a few watermelon seeds left over from the eaten fruit could produce enough to share, and so on. What this tells me is that if we are smart, we should never be hungry. If we replant the seeds from everything we eat which has a seed, no one in this country should be hungry. If you do not have the space at home, start with one thing in a pot. No matter what it is, I am realizing that it can start in a pot. That may just be all the posh farm you can have right now, but it’s a start and see how it feels to eat that which you grow. Look at this photo which is showing how you can grow watermelon on your patio.

Image from http://www.mybalconyjungle.com/watermelons.html

I will do some research on this and share it with you in a future post on small space posh farming.

Back to transplanting.

The watermelons and some of the cantaloupes remained in their original location. The rest of the cantaloupes went to the cantaloupe section of the posh farm. I have to make sure that when they start creeping, they move away from the tomatoes as I am thinking that the cantaloupes may choke them.

Anyway, by this time, every limb and joint in my body ached and I was out of prepared space. I decided to call it a day at this point; I’m thinking that I could make the okra a part of the garden by putting them to line the driveway. I will need to prepare the driveway next week to receive them because right now mi tiyad.

It’s been a long day but I survived.  I want to add sweetpepper, cucumber lettuce, cauliflower and broccoli to the farm but I will need some serious help to prepare the yard for those. My back feels twisted, my thighs feel like I swam the entire stretch of the Atlantic, my eyes feel like they have sand paper in them and my hands feel like sandpaper.

Of course, they were more lessons.

1. The sun wasn’t too hot today but the day was incredibly humid. I can honestly tell you that at times I felt like giving up. I kept drinking water but I still became dehydrated. This tells me that when you are a farmer, the eight 8 oz. glasses of water per day rule does not apply.I had over a gallon of water and I am still drinking water and I still feel dehydrated.
2. I ate breakfast at 10 a.m. and spent 8 hours transplanting. My breakfast was my usual fruit plate and protein, which in the case of this morning, was a hard boiled egg. I was alone at home until after 4, by which time I was lying on the floor of the back verandah, too tired to get up or to feed myself. My adorable husband came home and found me, and literally hand-fed me lunch. The thing is, I didn’t feel hungry; I was more thirsty than anything else so I kept drinking fluids. Anyway, I learnt that when you’re a farmer, you can’t eat like an office worker. A fruit plate was not enough to sustain a hard working posh farmer.  I was doing twice or thrice as much work  physically and so I needed strong food to restore my body.
3. After I ate, I immediately found new energy to go in and have a shower. Ideally, I wanted a bath but I just needed to get clean as quickly as possible…the dirt on my skin was itching me like crazy, which was my next lesson. Dirt on the skin itches.

 

As I sit here writing this, my body still aches all over. I have been kneeling and planting all day and now my back and thighs feel like they belong to someone else. I already knew that farming was hard work, but this whole experience is putting me at a different place when I think about the people who do this every day. Every week I find I gain a new level of respect for them. They have to do this level of physical labour every day of their adult life in order to make a living. I will never be able to go to the market and haggle again the way I used to. It’s been years since I went to a real market but I used to walk away thinking I’ve gotten a ‘bargain’ for myself  after I haggle.  Now I know that what I effectively did was deny the farmer a fair wage for his/her hard work. Trust me, this is hard work…..and I am only doing a small patch in my backyard.

The next time you want to haggle, think about the farmer.