Rain Can

As watering cans get messed up pretty quickly (cloggages, you have to twist the rainy part off and find frogs, etc inside), I decided to use an old can for a rain simulator. My dad and his girl tried canned coffee for a bit (didn't last), and I've been keeping the cans since they look nice and sturdy. I need this now especially as we're starting tender seedlings like lettuce up and it can't be the rushing big water from pails and such.

I learned this from my helper, who used it when she was with me in the guerilla gardening of the lot behind us. She also used the same method to make a grater for cassava-- although she flattened out the tin and put holes on the sheet, then used the textured holey side to make snacks.

So you take a nail and drive it through the bottom of a can of whatever size you need (balcony farmers can do with a small cute one). I used a small nail to make tiny holes for gentle "rain".



Keep doing that until you have a good number of holes in.



It works well! I just tipped it over to the side a bit, that's why it looks like the water is bunched up (it's not easy to take photos while watering plants). The method is good if you carry a bucket around the garden watering your plants. Just submerge your can in the bucket and quickly bring it over the bed. It's pretty fun because you feel like a god controlling a cartoon raincloud.


(That's my dad in the background.)

Hot Hot Heat

The coldness has given way to a full-force onslaught of sun and serotonin (see wilting tomato plant above). I've also (today) begun (what is hopefully) a routine of waking before sunrise to tend the vegetables. I am trying to be home more as the cultivated area of the garden is growing in size (more photos of that soon!). This is thanks to our new handydude and garden-helper Jake. No longer do I live in fear that all plants will die when I travel.

There a few firsts now in the garden. First curry flowers and berries!



First mangoes (Indian ones)!



And lots of lovely little mustard and radish seedlings!





And cucumber and lettuce ones too.

Other Cemetery Stuff

Zinnia


Bouganvilla


Peeping out


Leguminous flower thing


Frog at the canal


Alugbati grown for food, behind a mausoleum, by the cemetery folk

Taking Over

Don't you just love seeing nature take structures over? My imagination presses fast-forward and vines envelop churches and buildings and trees grow out of tall walls. The fact that nature doesn't give a hoot whether something is man-made or not, just makes me laugh. A stone wall is just a straight piece of rock ready to be conquered. You can't stop the impulse.



The cemetery is a good place to observe this. People can't keep up with all the seeds falling in all the crevices. This makes it a good place to collect seedlings, which will otherwise be chucked.

Black Ginger

I've been drawn to this variety of ginger for years. I found it first among the mystics' stalls in Quiapo, among amulets and such. It is used for incantations and spells. People call it luyang itim, literally "black ginger", presumably because when you slice the root, it shows a black ring under the skin. The rest of the flesh is somewhat bluish. I got a big bunch of it on someone's lot in the province, where it was growing wild. Someone was clearing a bit of the land, and the roots were left exposed.



The root looks like a fat, non-orange turmeric. It smells incredible. Sort of minty, like a good balm. I'm not sure about culinary applications, but I attempted to make a balm out of it by drying slices, and then cooking with some oils and natural waxes. It didn't turn out as expected, but I'll keep trying.

In the meantime, I planted some of the roots, and they're beginning to grow. I can't give any info on how the plant itself looks, but surely I'll be posting more as it shoots up.

Prisoners

I mentioned last time that we have to keep a couple of chickens caged. According to Papa, it is because the free-range alpha male presence sometimes separates chicks from moms, and also he crows like a crazy fool in the wee hours of the morning. So they were demoted to a chicken cage under the kapok and coconut trees.

I generally feel bad for the two, especially the female. The male attacks her when there is food, trying to monopolize the supply. I try to supplement with grasses and berries from the garden, which they love. I have to be more systematic about bringing them there, though. Sometimes all they get is rice. We're not fattening them up to eat them or anything, apparently they are trying to keep the peace in the garden. But still!



There were three eggs deposited in the laying basket by the female a month ago, and they were still there the other day. I figured they were rotten, since she doesn't sit on them anymore. We took them and put them in some water. They didn't float, so we composted them.

Chicken Adaptation Measures

I've written before about our chickens. Now there are a lot more. It has gotten to a point when sometimes I get alarmed by an unfamiliar specimen (a former chick all grown up). I guess I also was pretty used to chick “die-offs”, during the rainy season, that the population explotion has gotten me baffled. Considering we don't feed them anything, and don't cage them (except for the only male and one companion, because he keeps crowing at ungodly hours), they are all pretty healthy.

They still, however, topple my potted seedlings over, and scatter mulch around. When they are particularly frenzied, they can run little plants over and step on them like they mean it.

I've been trying to find ways to chicken-proof my seedlings. An urgent goal is to build a chicken house and chicken tractors. In the meantime, we've had to find ways. One is by enclosing the baby plants in cages. This cage is covered with a dry coconut shell to keep out too much sun, and to make the rain or water more gentle as it falls.



Another recent experiment was to put some plants on a bed of soil (fresh compost-- chicken magnets), and cover the blank spaces with empty half coconut shells (of which we have an obscene supply of, due to food consumption). I tamped the shells down with my feet.





That worked fine, but they need to be supplemented by sticks. I put in this small patch with stevia, some amaranth or pepper (I can't tell), tomato, and okra. I put sticks over the stevia and half-heartedly, over the rest. I did this as the sun was setting, to have a bit of a test-run with chicken behavior, and still have the night to recover little plants if they have damage from the chickens. Here's the test-run:



One shell (with bits of old coconut under) was turned over. Oops! Never underestimate the leg power of chickens. If they sense they want something, they'll throw anything about. Another family messing about with my set-up:



The next day I discovered that the morning gave renewed strength and will to the chickens. All but the stevia and one amaranth/pepper were strewn on the bed and beyond hope, and the shells were reassembled. The ones with sticks survived, showing lazy me that sticks arranged teepee-like are needed to deter chickens.

A cool thing about this coconut arrangement is that if you have a shitty watering pot (like mine) with no attachment that breaks the water down into droplets, you can aim the strong flow at the tops of the coconut shells, where they will trickle down into their bases. No worries about knocking sensitive seedlings out.

This is not meant to be permanent, however, and after a chicken-hotel is constructed, and the plants get big enough to mulch massively, the shells will come off. In the meantime, they look nice.

Permaculture at Cabiokid

I was away, again. One reason was the permaculture design course at Cabiokid in Cabiao, Nueva Ecija. The place was started by Bert Peteers, a Belgian with mad Tagalog skills (above) in 2001. It is a former rice field, with now only 2 hectares devoted to our staple grain. The rest is forest, vegetable garden, animal refuge, and sustainable human spaces. I will be writing a bit more about the course and activities in the next few days. You would be interested to know that there is another one this 28th of March, do email yapakyakap@gmail.com if you want me to send you the details.

Following Humans

One tool for plant survival is being tasty and/or useful to humans. We might (in this day and economic age) assume this means they make themselves yummy and therefore people can consciously propagate them. But your compost bin can give you surprising babies while you do nothing.



From peels of gabi (taro) and potatoes (above), babies came sprouting. From thin peels! Absurd. This means that though humans gut the root crops and stuff most parts of those into their bellies, they still propagate from our kitchen scraps, and therefore "follow" us around. Here I was planting chunks of potato "eyes" in the States, when I could get by with not more than a tiny bit. I'm kind of freaked out that the potato will rot because it's much wetter here, but I've got it in a dry spot and away from much sun. Haven't looked into growing them here much yet, and I have a feeling I can't just let it grow wantonly like I did in the US.



The gabi (above) is a different variety from the two that I've got growing.

Tagaytay

Impatiens.

The foggy slopes of Tagaytay are friendly to flowers.


Bromeliad flowers.


Bromeliad flowers too.


Some hairy ginger flower-like thing that grows super large on the slopes but super small in our garden.

Informal Settlers

I apologize again for the long absence. In addition to being in and out of town, I've also been experiencing problems with laptop battery retardation. I'm operating a laptop now without a battery, so I always need power to blog-- I can't blog in transit. That's making me a bit remiss in recording my thoughts.

But anyway, someone has taken residency near our workshop/garage. It's a little white puppy with short legs, the child of the white dog who makes frequent appearances in our garden. Here it is, resting in a relatively hidden spot before sprinting across the grass into its home.



It's a really cute thing and scared of people. I'm a bit fascinated as to how the mother-child tandem are able to work out an arrangement of living close to each other (the ma lives somewhere in our garden, I suspect), but separate, for the sake of safety. The puppy climbs into the tangle of vines and baskets, and surfaces to be with his/her mother or to eat.

One time, because of my brutish nature, I waited by its home and tried to grab the puppy to inspect it more closely. Unfortunately, it was really frightened, and half its body was inside the basket-jungle, so I would have had to tear it in half to extract it. It started crying with a voice that much exceeded its size, and the mom arrived on the scene soon after. Honestly, I felt really bad about stressing it out, but I was just overcome with curiosity. The mom was kind enough to just stand beside us and make sure I didn't harm the pup.

Often they go out together, presumably on learning lessons about hunting or foraging for food, or maybe plain togetherness. Here is a photo of the pup crossing the dangerous grass area where it is likely to be grabbed by curious residents of our home:



And here is the mom following it across:

(Pause)

A bit too late for an explanation, but I've been on a holiday break from writing here and on Yapak/Yakap. This season in the Philippines stretches out particularly long, and it's always a flurry of parties and trips out of town.

Have a happy new year, you all.