How Does Your Garden Grow?

So, I made three new posts today, if your are just tuning in, you may want to scroll down to check the earlier posts!

The one newer project that we are most excited about is our flowers and vegetables. We finally got started on all of our seeds and bulbs that we brought in from the States. One day we started working on our garden area, just digging a hole for our compost and turning over a plot of land. Lots of people saw us out there… I’m sure word traveled through the Canton. After that we started getting a lot of help. First we needed to plant our seeds. We got some seed trays from my counterpart, Secundino. Originally we were just going to do a few, but here the farmers don’t just do a few, and they were all so excited about all of our strange seeds, that the next thing you know we had planted 500 seeds in the seed trays!

So, then they decided that they needed to help us prepare the soil too… I think that they just didn’t want two gringos to ruin all of those fine seeds! So a couple of days later we all worked as a group to prepare a bunch of “camas” or beds for the seeds and bulbs. Here are some pictures of all of this fun. All in all we prepared about a quarter acre of land and plotted out where are perennials would go next to the asequia (small canal for soil conservation, so this area doesn’t get turned over), and tried to come up with an attractive overall plan. We will have Gladiolas, Sunflowers (Jirasols), and Carnations (clavels) for our flowers. Our veggies are mostly for our use, and just to see how some different varieties do down here, they include Lemon cucumber, yellow, orange and red bell pepper, basil, rosemary, Serrano pepper and Thai pepper. A little later we will grow some different squashes and maybe asparagus and artichoke.

Hopefully in a month or so I we be posting a bunch of pictures of our great garden! The big question is how all of this stuff is going to do once the rainy season starts? Roughly next month the rains will start, with the peak months being July and August. It think some of our plants will love it… others may rot. By August or so I hope to have a small greenhouse so that I can start some new plants to plant near the end of the rainy season… then grow them into the dry season… It’s all a learning experience!