A liittle progress

Nothing seems to progress for a while and then one day you realise that the seedlings you planted are producing flowers and the house that is being built has the roof started.

In this sandy soil that I am slowly building up and that plants seem to struggle to survive I am slowly seeing results.
The sunflowers started to bloom and right behind them the cosmos and marigolds are budding.

The lemon grass has decided it likes it here and is looking lush.

The first lettuce that we have picked leaves from daily for a month now is starting to go to seed which is a good thing.
It is a red oak leaf and they are meant to do well in the heat,so I am looking forward to harvesting the seeds for next season.

In the mean time the lettuce that the Karen women gave me a few weeks ago have settled well into the cow manure enhanced bed and we are eating them now. I was surprised at how well they settled in as when the seedlings were pulled from the nursery bed they didn't have soil attached and I'm sure had many damaged roots.

The old mango trees on the land are putting out many flowers. Many of the trees look like they are past it, so we'll see how the fruiting goes before deciding whether they stay or go.

We managed to track down some grafted Hass avocados and the 4 trees we bought are settling into their new home.
So little by little we are seeing results and setting the gardens up to benefit from the next rainy season.

New house, new garden

Progress has been made on the house that is being built on the land we are moving onto in the mountains.

Every week it becomes easier to see how it fits into the land.
The views over the valley are amazing.

The garden I am working on is taking time to grow. The sandy soil has had bags of cow manure added-that should help. Gradually the plants are gaining size and I am at least able to harvest a few salad veg.

In the mean time we go exploring and I am taking inspiration from these young Karen women that are working in their market garden. We bought some mushrooms from them and they gave me 20 lettuce seedlings which are settling in nicely. In the last day we have had about 25mm rain here in the mountains. A little unusual for this time of the year but much appreciated. 

DIY seed pot

Here in Thailand I was having trouble finding ready made seed starting pots. There were the ones that hold 30 or 40 seedlings in a unit, but I only want to start a few of one variety at a time. The round seed pots were too big and besides didn't fit conveniently into my rectangular tray.
So I came up with a method of recycling my plastic milk jugs.

First I cut the milk jug off at the depth I wanted the seedling starter to be. The height I cut it to here works well to fill with dirt or to hold cut in half toilet rolls.

I then drilled 4 holes in the bottom (or you could punch a nail through), and cut the remainder of the milk jug into 2 strips the same depth as the base, with one being the same measurement as the length of the base and one the same width.
These were cut half way through in the middle. I widened the cut to about 1/8 inch.

These 2 strips lock together and fit into the base. The plastic inserts help separate the roots of the seedlings and make transplanting easier. The new seedling pots fit perfectly in the tray I had to hold them with no wasted space.

The newly acquired fruit trees are settling in. We are watering them daily now but in a few weeks we'll start watering less frequently.

Market days see many of the local Hilltribe people selling and shopping.

There are many Karen and Lahu villages in the area.

Tarantulas,Toads and Snakes

While clearing off the over grown stubble on land we are about to move on to in the mountains of Northern Thailand we have met some of the residents.
The tarantula I stumbled across while cutting the grass. He was wandering around the long grass. Apparently it is a he as the females live in their burrows and rarely wander around.
The toad was dug up in the temporary garden, and hurriedly recovered with dirt. There also seem to be a few snakes hiding out. One of them got taken home for dinner by the fencing guys.

A temporary garden has been created against the new boundary fence. The soil isn't great. It is quite sandy which is good for drainage but it will need to have lots of organic matter added to stop it drying out so fast during the dry season. I have a lead on some cow manure-conveniently sold by the bag, so that will be a start.
Hopefully the fence will keep out the neighbourhood dogs and chickens and the odd water buffalo that stumbles onto the property.
At the end is a small shade house for the seedlings.
Slowly we are filling up the garden with veg, herbs and flowers.

The temporary electricity was then installed.

And the most important thing - water. Fortunately the land is supplied with town water, so until we can start saving rain water(for the garden) we have a good water source.
A few days ago we went tree shopping.
The start of our orchard now includes bananas, mangoes, papaya, mulberry, pomelo, lime,coconuts and kaffir lime.
Building plans are being worked on and it looks like they may start building the house in the next few weeks all quite exciting.
The weather has been great. Lows as low as 9'C and highs of around 23-25'C. perfect for working and sleeping. It'll probably get even a little colder over the next month.

Let there be light

Just before we left BC the tall cedars on the south side of our property, that we had hoped to remove a month ago finally got cut down....last minute as these things sometimes happen.

What an amazing difference. The deeply shadowed south side of the yard suddenly had a ton of sun.

We didn't have time to really appreciate it as we left before the job was completely finished, but next spring we'll definitely be enjoying the extra sun and light.

Now we are in Thailand enjoying the heat.
We had a quick visit to the land we are developing in the mountains.
Lots of weeds, which we started controlling by letting a herd of water buffalo in to graze.
The next step was to put up a fence to define the property and keep the water buffalo out when we start planting.

With the help of our neighbours the fence-120 meters- went up very quickly.

Then our newly acquired weed eater go put to work taking down the forest of saplings that were trying to take hold.

there aren't a lot of trees on the property. A few mangoes and a few other unidentified trees.
Previously the land had been used to grow tomatos. The pile of bamboo stakes and string that had been used created quite a large pile.

We only managed to clear about 1/3rd of the 1 1/2 acres, but there is always next time.

We are fortunate to be able to stay next door to the property.
I took inspiration from their garden.

We are busy working on house and gardening plans. Both seem to change regularly.

Garden to bed, sailing and garden inspired art

We are getting ready to leave for the winter.

We finished building the raised beds in the deer proof garden area, purchased some top soil and sea soil compost and filled the new beds with this mix.

Have spent some time cleaning out the summer beds and moving plants around into the new beds. Then any bare spots got sown with a green manure- a mix of field peas and buck wheat. The buck wheat may be killed off if we have frost during the winter, but the peas will keep going through to the spring. All helping to hold the soil together and protect it from the winter rains.

The buck wheat doesn't take long to get growing in the warm soil.

We managed one last sailing trip. Took the boat to the main land- to Echo Bay. Incredibly beautiful and lots of sitings of hump back whales and dolphins.
We took along lots of veges from the garden-lettuce, arugala, peas, beans, broccoli, zucchini and pac choi.

We even managed to catch the odd fish.

I have been taking inspiration from the garden this summer and have produced some garden art.

Next week we are off to Thailand where we are developing a new piece of property we are moving on to up in the mountains. I'm sure there will be lots to learn there.

Relish and drying

The end of summer ritual of making my mums relish happened a few days ago. I wish I could say that the tomatoes were from my garden. 

Unfortunately while much of the garden did great in its first year the tomatoes still look like this.

In this cool climate I am thinking there will be no ripe tomatoes with out a green house.

The relish got made and I've started harvesting seeds for next year.

I am currently drying seeds from fava beans, cilantro, field peas, arugala, pak choi, sno peas, beans and a variety of flowers.I have a corner in the house filled with various containers that contain the pods and flowers that I am drying. Every few days I go through them and sort the seeds that have dried off and separate them from the chaff. After a few more days of drying they then go into an envelope and stored for next season.

I have also been drying lemon balm and holy basil for tea. The holy basil has a lot of flowers on it but the plants didn't get very big before flowering. I'll see how that works out. Again a green house would help.
We are also trying to dry blackberries. We are using the oven for this as we don't have a food dryer.
It is a long process but seems to be working. It seems if the blackberries are frozen on a tray first then put in an oven at 140'F for 10-14 hours that will do it.
Our gas oven only goes down to 170'F. We put them in the oven for a few hours in the evening, turned the oven off over night and back on again in the morning.8 hours later the berries are almost dried.

I am making lots of notes this first season. Hopefully next year I'll know what to do different.

We have a month here before we leave for Thailand. My plans include moving plants around from nursery beds into more permanent sites.

Time seems to be running out.