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.

Log Appreciation Post: Whale Carcass of The Garden

Logs are a good way to start some life in a flat area. When I think about how life forms around edges (i.e. people inhabit waterways or shady areas, fish seek refuge along root systems, we pee against trees), logs are actually a very reasonable choice for easy injection of life in an otherwise ho-hum area.

You know how they say whales decomposing on the ocean floor provide a home to a myriad of organisms? I think logs are like that. They are easy and decompose without help, albeit slower if there's more sunlight. I see logs as willing outlayers on the fringe, like avant garde artists who can slowly change norms around themselves in a flat area just by plopping themselves down there.

Maybe a month ago, I decided to develop a new area for baby plants. The area I nurse seedlings at, beside my room, has far too many mosquitoes for comfort, and I got sort of tired going out there looking like a beekeeper all the time. Furthermore, the soil there was clayish and hard. So I began to build (first by accident) a colony of logs in a separate area out front.

I don't cut the trees down myself. I take them from villages where people seem to have this habit of not wanting "things in the way" and cutting trees on whims. I began leaving the logs just by the walkway, because after a night out, moving them to a "proper tidy place" can be taxing.

So a pile of logs developed, and the grass around them began growing quite vigorously, and interesting fungus began appearing on the slowly decomposing heavyweights. I know this is common sense, but no, it's not, really. I had earlier tried to start a seed bed out of an old drawer I found in a parking lot, but that was going slow and dry. Here it was a few weeks after I started:



I started to move logs out and use them to build a supporting compost pile near my growing seed starting area. I built the pile just like I built this one out of weaving sticks, but this time I had enough logs to form "walls" with minimal effort.

Around that time, I was transferring the seedlings to little pots, and with the compost pile starting up, chickens were surely all over the place and knocking the babies over. I then used logs to secure the seedlings and press them against the old drawer. Eventually I had rows of them surrounding the drawer, growing outward, and held in place by logs.



It's not very easy to see because I've allowed this "weed" to grow over, it does a good job of protecting the seedlings from too much sun. The logs, I believe, have also contributed to the diversity of little organisms, with pretty mushrooms always coming up and convincing me of the health of the area. This log support system, and the ensuing burst of grass-herby growth surrounding it, allows me to leave seedlings during the hot days (without watering), something I've never been able to do.



You can see the drawer to the left in the above photo. Below is the compost pile, now also obscured by the weed thing, but you notice it because of the papers:



I've also placed seedlings around the compost pile so they benefit from the micro activity happening there. They are more or less hidden under the weeds. For the first time, I am able to grow tomatoes, and without fuss too!

More or less it's a system of logs-plants-logs. In some areas, where I've planted herbs into the ground, logs retain moisture as well as mulch. More on that later in this post.

In a past post I also showed how I was making above-ground mini-compost piles to be directly planted in. Well, this picture, which I posted last month--



--gives a pretty good idea of the starting point. Logs arranged on hard earth, leaves dumped inside. Continuous leaf dumping, as well as an occasional bag of coffee grounds from Starbucks (at least we are getting something good out of them!), and it was ready to grow an atsuete or annatto plant in. Here it is today:



I put the plant in and cover the root area with the bark of some palm tree that falls apart in straight pieces. Beside the annatto plant, to the left, is some holy basil. To its right are some chives I separated from a five-year-old bunch!



Above is another one of the log triangles, this time planted with the native dayap lime, with roots covered again by fronds of a palm tree.

In some cases, I actually "mulch" by placing logs around a plant. It helps especially when the plant is sensitive to getting stepped on by chickens. The plant is also provided with considerable "coolth" and moisture from the mass of the logs. After the baby is established, you can also transfer the logs to different places (until they get progressively smaller and just sort of fall apart).

Now just to drive the utter convenience of that home, I end this with a picture of a chicken tearing up a mountain of mulch I just left around the rosal plant.

Absentee Gardener Plot Startup

I've been gone from the garden. But nature never sleeps, so here are some things I do to make use of the continuous activity that happens while I'm running around. They involve preparing plots in a pretty throw-together manner:

Collecting dead plant material from everywhere. This is nothing new to my blog, but if you're gonna be around subdivisions, watch out for biomass that people are throwing away. This makes you a gatherer on the go, it only takes 2 minutes to toss those into the trunk. I mean logs and leaves.

Arranging or dumping these strategically. You want to create situations where decomposition and explosions of fecundity are likely to occur with minimal intervention. I arrange the logs (they are palm logs so they are really stringy inside) into triangles and squares and dump leaves inside, tell them to throw all compost there. Our chickens will mix them about.

Throwing seeds, transplanting, then growing some babies in pots. While preparing these mini-plots, you want to get small ones going. I get some herbs that are growing already, and recently got some legumes in. Ocassionally I throw some of the composting leaves in, to get the microparties started.

In the next coming days I will get some in. Really, instead of just giving up and saying, "sorry garden", about 5 minutes a day prepares me for a day or two of solid fun.

Microorganisms Move The World

They hold us up. These invisible little things do a lot of life's work for us. The soil world, our digestive world-- are run by our smallest (yet biggest) heroes!

Recently been cultivating some indigenous micro-organisms using molasses and some fungus I coaxed onto some rice.



In the first picture you will see that some fruit flies had come in before I covered it with cloth, but no harm done. In a few days I can dilute this powerful party-mixture into water and begin spreading some micro-love onto the plants.

Maggots!

Maggots break large or plentiful dead things down. And fast!

Compost piles that are not "not hot enough" will attract flies and breed maggots. That is because waste breaks down both by microorganisms, as well as insects and small animals. If you want less of them, just add more carbon-y stuff like dried leaves, turn your pile, or bury your food waste under some debris.

I quite like maggots (and worms in general), and the birds and chickens come for them as well. Furthermore, flies can bring good bacteria with them. Just know that a lot of your vinegar comes from a "mother" that was grown using bacteria from the ends of flies' legs!

Maggots are pretty amazing small creatures. Just look at their little bodies go! My brother and I found a snail dead in its shell, being devoured by a lot of small wriggling whities.



They are pretty great at doing what they do (breaking stuff down), and their poop is used further by worms. They excrete a soupy liquid that makes rotting even faster, and their activity actually produces heat. Sometimes you see a few maggots "getting some fresh air" or gravitating towards the periphery of the action to cool off. Then they dive in for more!

People associate maggots with death and bad smells. Of course they do. But maggots don't actually cause those. If they weren't around, we'd be smelling death a bit longer than we do.

Worm Appreciation

When I lived in a townhouse, I tried vermicomposting. I failed, all the time. Putting too much of the same thing in the bin, fussing over it too much, wetting it through, leaving it when I travel, ants, etc.

A farmer friend who gave me my most recent and first batch of thriving-in-captivity (sounds terrible, doesn't it) worms told me (in Tagalog): "I too made a lot of mistakes. At first I kept dumping only mahogany leaves in. They kept dying. But I realized that you have to think like a worm. You have to be a worm."

So I give them a varied diet (including an old unraveled coconut coir doormat that they love to take refuge in). I stopped stressing about the smallest details and gave them food and shelter with water, air, and energy passing freely through. I even did away with a cover.

So I now have a bin of worms, along with all the piles and pits that naturally draw them from the soil.

More Leaf Thievery

My dad used to have a term for my "stealing" other people's rubbish. Manyak, as a verb. Minamanyak mo na naman yung mga paso na basura ng kapitbahay (translating roughly into: You're maniacking the pots that the neighbors threw away). Routinely going through empty lots for salvageable materials is a habit leftover from childhood, when I had half a bookshelf devoted to "garbage".

Of course, it is most fun to steal leaves that people do not want. I use them to compensate for my lack of having a perpetually shedding forest in the yard.



My bike can carry leaves both in the basket and at the back, where a steel contraption kind of holds stuff down.

But I'm also learning how to drive now, in case of emergencies. It will probably be a useless skill once I finish lessons, gas prices being what they are. On a recent short drive home with our pick-up, I loaded the back with alibangbang leaves. Seems the stormy weather makes people scared of falling branches, so there is lots of pruned stuff for me.

Quick Decomposition Season

Rainy season has me happy as the seeds I've been tossing in the hole are growing. It's time to collect topsoil again and transplant various things.

But wait! It's also time to create a raised bed! I made a decision not to spend any money on it. But see, that's easy.



These are the beginnings of a raised bed outside my bedroom window. Now is the only easy time to drive sticks into the otherwise tough soil. So I made a border of stakes and then took long branches and wove them through. This is a good and cheap way to create a small "wall". Alternate the weaving to create tension for sturdiness.

Gino and April helped me put the initial layer of ipil-ipil leaves. These decomposed pretty fast and were soon like brown ash! Next came the leaves from Alabang, and kitchen compost. Of course, the chickens were all over it like the chickens that they are. I'm going to combine topsoil with the fiber inputs, and soon plant some vegetables.

The whole question of national food security has me thinking a lot about local food security. Sure, we've got wildish vegetables growing around (as you see below new crop of uray cousin, spineless kulitis). But perhaps some more deliberately cultivated ones can supplement the household.



I've transplanted a lot of duhat seedlings (lining the wall of the plot, in the first picture), as well as mahogany. I shall collect more from around the garden and surrounding areas. Maximum tree planting is about to ensue, whether I own the lot or not. We need more trees!

On Leaf Thievery

But then again, it's not stealing unless someone's complaining.

I should have had the common sense to know this, but smaller (or "crunchy" and easy to pulverize) leaves are better for urgent garden conditions, as they decompose much faster.

I have been getting bags of larger and more durable leaves of narra (they smell so good) from subdivisions. As I observed them still whole many months later, I decided that next time acacia leaves would be ideal, as they are smaller and are easier to decompose.

But ipil-ipil leaves are even better. These nitrogen fixers are fast-growing and considered as a pest by many who are trying to "beautify" wasteland-like situations (or, most lawns and all that) with ornamental plants. Essentially, the land is asking for these many-seeded, leaf-shedding, supersprouters to colonize your land because it doesn't have enough biomass.

Recently, me and the partner in crime went scouring the areas for leaves and old construction material. Aside from lots of marble and colored glass, we were able to harvest ipil-ipil leaves that should turn into soil even faster, now that it's raining.



It was also a good day for stealing seeds, such as this Manila palm bunch.

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!

All Your Topsoil Are Belong To Me

Collecting loose topsoil from under piles of leaves tides you over well until your compost pile is ready. It's sense that is common. Why on earth did I have to go to India to start doing this?

Encouraging Fecundity in Asphalt Country

(We have our little ways.)

Being back in San Francisco from a six week mini-journey through India, the amount of concrete surrounding me is still disorienting. Since then, I've been on a quest to lay the foundation for "humanizing" a particular street by putting some organic matter around the trees that line it.

The trees are of an unknown variety to me-- and to my "consultant", who lives on the street-- and apparently have lost all their leaves due to a phenomenon known as "winter". (In the Philippines, we have none of these four seasons, only wet and dry for us, and those are getting all messed up by global warming)



Said trees are planted in dry, hard patches of soil, which need some formerly-alive material to bring some microbial activity about. Incidentally, the apartment landlord seems to think that composting (as well as recycling) is unimportant and doesn't provide segregated bins for anything.

Food waste is then collected. After all, having them end up in landfills is just a waste of the process that all living things (even evil people and such) gift the Earth with-- decomposition into "new" and useful matter.



Using whatever tools were available (in this case, a large spoon), I dug the soil up, which was almost like 5-year-old sand left in a jar. It was horrible. Anyway, I just dumped the stuff in . I figured that putting twigs in would make it a lump, which in turn would attract too much attention.





So I left the plots to decompose and will be checking on it on Friday. Hopefully some herbs and flowers can color it up! Stay tuned. See photo below if you can spot one of the plots. (PS- I was not able to return to take photos of the place. Maybe sometime this year!)

Lazy Person Composting

Okay, my compost isn't an open pit, it's just an open dump. It's because I am too lazy to dig, and I do enjoy just dumping the vegetable scraps in random parts of the garden.

Mostly, it's beside the duhat tree, a mess like this:



The white blobs are palitaw (glutinous rice snacks covered in grated coconut) that went bad. See the durian shell? And various other things, including seedlings growing out from fruit scrap that we toss.

So I use the beautiful black compost when I transfer the seedlings out into pots:



I will have an abundance of fruit in about 10 years. Just you wait.

Oops, Did I Just Say Pee Is Good For Your Plants?

It's generally taboo, but many gardeners in the know secretly pee on their plants. For ethical purposes however, upstanding gardeners do not sprinkle on the leaves of edible herbs. Generally.

Now, I am not saying I feed my plants urine, or urinate on them. I have a career and a possible illlustrious future to safeguard.

I will, however, say that an unnamed person's pee has graced this yet-unidentified fat, healthy, and hydra-headed plant:

















Compare its leaf growth and height to these three ones, which were planted even before it. I grew all of them from seed. The un-pissed on ones haven't even hydra-fied out at all! They are timid, though they get the same soil and sun:

















Of course, the latter are three plants sharing one container, but I have investigated and found the single plant's roots have not creeped to the left-hand side of its receptacle. I have no side-view photos, but the lone one has grown way (like waaaay) taller! And it's even about to flower bright pink lovelies:

















Feeding your plants urine requires polite discretion and one other consideration: dilute in water, as too much nitrogen is too much of a good thing, I'm afraid.