work

Yesterday we planted out yard long beans, 16 of them spaced along a fallen pejabaye palm. The palm will rot down over the next two months adding lots of great nutrients to the growing beans: slow release fertilizer I guess you could call it. They are planted in an area I’m calling the salad bowl, a sunny spot nestled between passion fruit and black pepper with jungle on one side and orchard behind. We planted katuk and cranberry hibiscus in gentle curves and purple spinach in circles. We also have some older chilis there, peppers and tomatoes which we’ll eventually harvest and take out. This will be my main work area on the lower farm. I need to make a bench and a covered work table and enclose a space for compost bins. We have impatience started for the flowers and I want to bring in some white ginger – the flowers are delicious and very pretty, a soft luminescent white. Peter’s not so keen on the white ginger, it’s an invasive, but I think we could grow it in big tubs. I have to research other edible flowers, they add so much to a salad. We also have Malabar spinach and I need to transfer some purslane to the spot too. We cut down maybe 8 pejabaye palms to allow more light in and used the leaves for mulch, the whole area is ankle deep in palm leaves right now. I think I’ll wait for them to break down a bit more before bringing in the purslane, it’s such a small ground cover type plant it’ll struggle just now. It looks great. I’m hoping that in two months I’ll have enough to begin harvesting salad greens for the farmers’ market.
We have to plant out the same in the upper farm as well, but right now our cuttings and seedlings are too small, it’ll be at least another two weeks before they are ready. The ground isn’t prepared there yet anyway, we have to harvest most of the yampi to free up space. Ah, what lovely work awaits us.