A Whole Meal!

So I got a couple zucchinis the other day that weren't worm infested. By this time we had a stockpile in the freezer, so I decided to make a meal out of things from the garden.

I did cheat and use one onion from the store.

Here are the green beans frying. Notice the bacon? They're southern style...

And here is my second attempt at fried okra. Shelley said they were like eating candy.

Here's the other two sides with some baked chicken fingers. When Shelley lets me cook, I have to make it count. Usually the kitchen is such a mess that it is easier for her to cook and clean up after herself than just do the cleaning after I'm done. At least it tasted good!

Petén Garden Update 2

It's been a while since I've talked about the garden. We have had a few snacks to whet our appetite, but no huge harvest to keep us eating for weeks. The worms came back to the zuchinis, but we have had a few to eat such as these: (I planted three varieties)Here are some sugar snap peas. These are the first ones which we ate raw. I have three plants and am freezing what I get from them (about three pods a little bigger than this every three days) until we have enough for a meal. I'm happy to get anything because they are supposed to a cool weather crop (of which we are not) although I got a variety that is withstands higher temps.
My first tomatoes will be ready any day now. They are Better Boy, so they get bigger than any variety I've seen here for sale and should be wonderful on a BLT. All six plants have at least one set of clusters, so I should get a nice steady progression starting next week.
Okra was made for Petén. Here's a plant that'll be ready tomorrow. Since it just started I am only getting two pods every other day, so I am blanching and then breading them before freezing so that when we want them we can drop them right in the oil from the freezer. I used Paula Dean's recipe for the breading so we'll see if Southern Shelley approves or not very soon.
And here are my first Jalapeños growing.

Of course I'm only showing you the highlights. I don't have pictures yet of my green beans, but they are Shelley's favorite thing we have growing. I am getting a handful every 4 days if there is not temp over 95 (causes all the flowers to fall off.) It is another thing being frozen. We have enough now for 1.5 meals.

I'm learning a lot and realizing that there are a lot of possibilities for our friends to grow. I show weekly pictures at the Bible Study to a very impressed group of old men who are asking for seeds. Once we get enough frozen, we plan to fix it and take as a snack so they'll be motivated to harvest on time and then eat it.

Garden Update

About a week ago we ate our first zucchini from the garden and it was delicious! Then all of them seemed to stop growing. After a rather violent storm, several were knocked off the vine and that is when I noticed that all of them were infested with worms. I removed about 12, sprayed all of my plants and am now waiting.

Here are some of the new, wormless zukes growing. I have three different varieties growing, hence the difference in color between the top picture and this one:

Other things are growing as well. Here is my first pumpkin:
And my first green beans. These are very close to being ready to harvest.

And finally my first tomato. Only one plant has started flowering. For some reason it is a week ahead of the other three plants. Now if I can just keep the bugs away...

Update from this morning. Pics of an okra flower and first watermelon growing.

First Fruits

All of the zucchini's (6 of them from 6 seeds planted directly in the container) have started flowering. Here's a pic of the first actual zucchini growing. This is just 36 days after planting. I know that zucchini is one of the easiest things to grow, but I'm still pretty proud of myself. (Oh, and this pic was the first taken with my new lens. Thanks, Mom!) -Farmer Jim

Composting

To go along with my gardening, I decided to start composting. It is not sustainable to keep importing miracle grow, so we need a permanent solution to better the soil. Plus, I hate trips to the dump and hope that this makes it less frequent. I read a lot online in preparation for this endeavor, but many items in the states cannot be found here, so we had to make it work with what we could find. The open pile is not an option for us as we already have too many bug and mice problems, not to mention dogs that will tear up anything to eat trash. They have problems with their expensive Dog Chow, but trash is always a delicacy.

I found one of these tall drums at a hardware store for Q170 (about $22). You have to be careful because many are used for paint thinner and other toxins, and then are just rinsed out before being sold second hand as brand new. Often, the partially torn off, diamond, HazMat sticker is a dead giveaway on these types of containers. I figured mixing Hazardous Materials with my compost sort of defeated the purpose. Most of the time these are used by people here to store water in.

Lucky for me, our ground is not level, so I had a nice random hill that I could prop my bin on. I drilled five holes in the bottom just on this one side and the bin sits a slight angle so that the water runs off to that side. Then I bought a Q10 plastic bowl that fits perfectly to collect the compost tea. I have another container with a spigot on it that I pour the tea into for when I am ready to fertilize with that (about once every 10 days.) You are supposed to water it down at an 8-1 ratio so that you don't burn your plants. Being in containers, the dirt quality of my garden is really important to me.

I bought a really small pitchfork to stir the pile with. The bin sits in full sun and the inside gets REALLY hot, which is important for compost. I water the bin when I water my garden. I have had a few gnats, but that went away with more dried grass and stirring. In about a month I'll buy another bin and let this one sit. I'd like to have finished compost by the end of April when a lot of my veggies will be done producing and I'll be ready to start new plants.

Watching My Garden Grow

While in the States we were trying to plan out everything we needed for the boys for at least the next year so that we could bring it with us. In that planning we were talking about baby food. Our plan is to make our own, but it is really hard to find good quality vegetables on a regular basis. Sometimes you have to walk away and come back the next week while you live on potatoes, canned corn and tomato sauce. Of course, avocados are readily available as well as bananas, but the inconsistency finally got me thinking about starting a garden.

Living in Petén is basically like a greenhouse, but with more bugs and harsher sunlight. Our dirt is REALLY bad where we are renting right now, but plastic pots are plentiful, so I researched container gardening. To buy good black dirt costs me around Q10 ($1.25) per 50lb. bag.

I ordered a bunch of seeds on Amazon and started them the first week we were back. Besides just for personal consumption, this is also research for our future Kekchi Bible Institute. We would like to introduce to the Kekchi pastors other crops that grow well in Petén besides corn so that they can have a better variety of food and better nutrition. I am keeping very detailed notes, and those plants and varieties that grow well and have a good yield will be potential for future projects.

I have 33 containers.

(Rabbit Trail: We had to put up a make-shift fence to keep the boxer out. She could very easily jump any size fence under 10', but she only destroys when the opportunity happens upon her. She doesn't go looking for trouble and is really good about staying out of things like this. I know that if left in the open however, she would readily eat every pot, spread my dirt all over the yard and chew up every flower. That is because plastic, dirt and flowers are the natural enemies of boxers and must be destroyed...)

In those 33 containers I currently have 2 varieties of okra, large tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, jalapeño, 3 varieties of Zucchini, Watermelon, sugar pie pumpkins, lima beans, little finger carrots, cayenne peppers, sugar snap peas, stringless green beans, and 3 types of onions. Some of these are better suited for colder climates, but the seeds were cheap and I figured it was worth a try. The colder climate things are growing in the shade of my banana trees.

We do not have potting soil, or seed starter containers and my compost isn't ready yet, so I just used some miracle grow in the black dirt I bought. We have NO danger of frost EVER, so that makes some things easier and everything has come up so far. I have had to kill a plague of grasshoppers, and of course some things are growing better than others. I am not a very patient person, so waiting on things like a garden is hard for me.

I am using some portable soccer goals we had made to trellis my tomatoes, lima beans, peas, pumpkins and watermelons. I used scrap pieces of mahogany to make my support for my green beans.

I found this great website with information on picking, canning and freezing everything you can imagine. We will attempt it all to see what works best. I'll update you soon- signed Farmer Jim.