Higad Time Again

Thanks to this blog, I've been able to track "seasons" in the garden. Higad season has been happening constantly from July-September, and they are munching away right now! Here are some photos.




Eating my nice Ilocos cotton seedlings, among other things:

Tapilan and Some Corn

Hey hey, what do you know, the tapilan or rice bean have finally popped out. I planted them in somewhere and forgot about them and overhead, some cute yellow flowers started to poke out. I thought they were munggo, but when I grabbed some and opened up, found they were actually rice beans.



Since I only planted one in, I got a paltry harvest, but pretty good for no effort. They came out stubbier than the usual tapilan, and I definitely will be planting these in again more seriously.

I'm pretty busy now and have been trying to keep a decent nursery for less busy times. The chickens are still a challenge-- when you don't want to feed them, you can't cage them in (as they forage for food), but the payoff is really that they scratch the floor endlessly and eat stuff. These corn seedlings were nipped always by the chickens.



I tried to cover them with a badminton racket, but that didn't really work out properly enough.

July Higads

During this time of the year, and somehow with the rains, come the onslaught of itchy, hairy caterpillars (higad) of many shapes and sizes. They are under leaves, over leaves. They are most bastardous when they are eating low plants (ankle-level) because your feet get itchy. This itch can persist until you are wearing shoes and sipping soup in some fancy restaurant. Or just wearing shoes in general.

Higad season is happening right about the same time as last year. Some suggested chickens would help, but they don't eat the crawlies. Someone told me that cows die from eating higad, but that sounded like speculation.

Sizzling Time and Lot Notes

Ho ho ho it's summer again, when I sit in the shade and sometimes all the leaves go still. When I eat some aratiles while walking around the garden. When the plants start to have issues and hang their heads low, there is only so much you can do. Well, there is, if you have a lot of time. But if you don't, you take note and make sure you do something more appropriate before the next summer rolls in. My lesson is trees, trees, trees and biomass, biomass, biomass. Often throughout the year I forget how harsh the summer is (I am usually travelling at that season).


(I have supplemented the hard earth with coconut shells in the squash area for moisture and coolth.)

Chickens are still running about free, so this is something to consider along with the heat.

I've started to cover the soil near the compost pile with compost and newspaper, to give me some more plots that are closer to my water source and main area of work. These need to be further covered with palm leaves and large branches to keep the chickens from tearing it apart into a chicken crime scene.



I've already put some chili, coleus, talinum, and corn in. They don't show too properly in the photo, as they are quite small there. Sometimes I hack the coconut leaves off a certain portion of stem to accommodate a plant poking through the newspaper and all. This keeps chickens out and unable to do their dance on the plant.

I'm trying to concentrate on growth around small trees, but I'm not home everyday to water stuff, so...



Just a bit about our soil. I guess I should shed some light on the yet-to-be-cultivated parts of our lots, which are grassy and tough. We have two lots, each approximately 1000 square meters. They are attached to each other but form an S-shape (if you stretch your imagination far enough). Our house is far back, when you walk inwards from the street. There is no back yard.

The original soil close to the house was generally a bit of clayish topsoil mixed with broken shells. This is because our home was a former capiz mini-factory. We thus had lots of grit in the form of smashed capiz, which is pearlescent and can wound you if you're squeezing the soil. More importantly, as I might have mentioned before, the entire two lots we live on had to be raised due to surrounding flooding, and thus we dumped it over with swimming pool excavate. So we have some shelly soil and LOTS of poor, rocky subsoil.

Our "home lot". The constraints are mainly that trees cannot be grown across the very middle and front of our home for security reasons (Good visibility is desired of any trespassers-- yes I know it sounds paranoid.) Stand in the middle of the garden during noon and you will see how intense the heat is-- like being in a soccer field. There are some ways around this that I will get around to soon.



As you can see, for most results we do things by planting along edges (walls, existing trees). I am trying to create more "edges" to give plants shade and increased moisture instead of being left smack in the middle of grass. It takes time. Papaya is good for this, as it grows fast and can be beside a climbing bean.



The open grassy area on the home lot is regularly grass-cuttered, and this biomass is usually not going back into the soil. I think the chickens have been a help here, as they are running and crapping all over the place.



I have been taking inspiration from the okra (above) growing along the right side of the garden. In spite of the heat, and perhaps because they are in a part of the garden that wasn't bothered by the grass cutter so much (with sugarcane debris and legume compost), they are growing quite vigorously. They do well and protect things like tomatoes and flowers from the intense heat. Our tomatoes among the okra are doing fabulous-- the others in somewhat bare contexts have wilted in surrender.





The mung beans have flourished and are now bearing pods. They are in the same area as okra.





What about the other lot? It has a few trees, and you can see nice things happening without much effort. The grass is allowed to thrive moreso there (it is far and costly to cut the grass all the time). Some are taller than myself. Now there are some leguminous trees sprouting, as well as a few leguminous vines overtaking the grass (not visible in the photos).





It seems a good joy to mulch over the front lot and wait until it rains for some massive rottage, but for now I don't have the time, energy, etc. do to this, and we are enjoying the butterflies on the vine flowers.

Along the wall of the other lot there are "angry" bouganvillas.



Next time I will perhaps profile the trees on the other lot and the home lot to give a better sense, as I am posting just low-level shots now. Trees are the best and easiest things to grow (especially if your garden time is erratic), and they deserve more attention here.

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.

Higad Season Again

The good thing about blogging about your garden is it lets you see patterns and cycles. These days, we're seeing the yearly higad invasion of our garden, just like last year's August wave. The guyabano is also fruiting again, about a month earlier than it did in 2007. I can't wait until people can aggregate garden and farm blogs to pinpoint the effects of climate change certain crops and locales.

Although it's not so bad outside my room now that the mucuna vines are gone, the itchy worms make you paranoid in the garden. You walk around more cautiously than ever, afraid of a ninja higad that is waiting for the right moment before it drops on your shoulder, in your shirt, unleashing little hairs that give you welts and won't quit until you get small red dots from scratching.

You find them under leaves, and when you're walking and look down, you see their droppings, usually dark "pellets". Below you can see one eating an oyster mushrooms, and it's turned the poop off-white. It's funny! (On the lower mushroom you see the droppings pre-mushroom eating.)



I am trying to find meaning in their existence. Is it rainy season, a season of regeneration, and is nature trying to keep me from intervention in the garden (while at the same time providing fertilizer in the form of castings)?

I can't really think of any predators to this moth-worm (the chickens won't eat it), but if there are any, I might need to develop their habitat to keep the prey in check.

In any case, I go on, trying to co-exist with these creatures.

Dealing With The Schizo Summer

Things to do with weather have been getting really weird. My garden is not excluded.

Not only has this summer been searing hot-- we are supposedly going to have a lot of rain due to La Nina. This means weather extremes and awkward days for the plants.

My garden has highly crappy soil, due to the fact that it is made of dumped earth from swimming pool excavations. We had to adjust the level of our lot because the street was raised, and it was starting to cause flooding during rainy season. Obviously, the existing soil does not have much absorptive qualities, being made of mostly clay and rock. How do we get plants to survive this scourge? And how do we maximize the coming rains? At the same time?

To start, I've been dumping more leaves on the ground than usual. (Stealing bags of leaves is a good preoccupation. I don't understand why people get rid of them in the first place. They sweep their yards up, and, as a consequence, have to water many times over because evaporation is quick on a bare area.)



This is actually perfect, because it keeps the soil from getting parched, and it will also decompose into topsoil when the rains come. Narra leaves smell like tea. That is another plus. I am also heavily mulching trees. Look at this revived banaba:



I've also dug ditches and holes in the ground to gather water. Our gutter flows out into a canal (a little moat, if you may) surrounding our house, and this occasionally floods into our garage. So from this canal, I've dug a trench into a hole, so water may flow in, and eventually sit and seep through.



Lastly, I know it's not a good time to start making plants root, but I'm trying really hard with a few. One is this pandan. I'm using an enema bag for that "gradual release" effect (although the drip rate could be slower, but I guess no one wants to have a day-long enema). Moisture. Through an anal tube. Great stuff!

Beautiful Destruction

One of our avocado trees is harboring some fungus or leaf miner. Whatever it is, it will go away once our soil gets healthier.

Such is life-- poor soil and low amounts of beneficial microorganisms make the present plants die to provide more moisture and nourishment for the next generation.

In the meantime, enjoy the patterns and whirls.

Updates! Chestnuts, Manga Chupadera, Durian, OMG Higadz

And so my chestnuts continue to burst through their hairy coverings to expose those frilled-up first leaves. They are growing out in a quite exclamatory manner, all three of them. In a decade or so, I will probably have enough nuts to feed a single miserable person hiding in a dark closet on Christmas Eve. I took the seeds from the side of the road at SEARSOLIN in Cagayan de Oro.

I also have quite an abundance of Manga Chupadera seedlings. Yes, those small sweet ones that are also called supsupins, of which you can stuff three or four of into your mouth. They grew out of my compost pile, which had considerably overflowed during mango season. They are funny seedlings, with three or four stems growing out of a single seed.

The durian seeds are also looking pretty good! The babies look strange. They look like little monsters.

But really, what everyone has been talking about back here, are the itchy caterpillars or higads. They go through this horrible hairy phase before becoming moths. My eggplant-plant, once full of promise and all that, now looks like a cheap umbrella would after running into a hurricane and a teething pup. It has also eaten a lot of the vines I was supposed to use as green manure. If it's any consolation, they leave a lot of frass (caterpillar poo) behind, which is supposed to be quite nutritious. Ah, the give-and-take of nature.