After morning coffee and before 2nd breakfast (smoothie time), M or I will walk about the place to gather up the ready to eat fruits or vegetables. We hang the racks ripening bananas or plantains from the middle landing. Some times the really ripe ones drop off into the "vivero" (nursery.) We harvest everything except the potatoes. Lilo kindly does that for us. He planted the spuds on a very steep hill and he has the technique to dig them up.
Our fruit trees and the pineapple plants are bursting with life. We are harvesting small white-fleshed pineapples (so sweet), star fruit, guavas the size of baseballs, bananas, and our first guanoabana! Our Vitamin C intake is fantastic.
Last year, M created a rudimentary “vivero” (nursery) by wrapping “saran,” a loosely woven green plastic shade cloth around the posts that support the landing that leads up to our 2nd floor front door. It has been a handy place for him to start seedlings of papaya, guanoabana, tomatoes, Moringa. He started cuttings of oregano and lemon verbena that were given to us. M is very good at germinating seeds. This season’s tomato plant was started from seeds from tomatoes that we bought from the Vegetable Guys. Those tomatoes aren’t very tasty. They are red when I buy them and hard as rocks. After about a week, they ripen, however, they still don’t have much taste. Generally, I’ll make tomato sauce with them.
We have heard from several of our friends who have grown tomatoes without much success. Some people have better luck with cherry tomatoes. We were surprised and pleased that the tomato bush has produced about a dozen good-sized fruit. The fruit have to be picked while they are still green. If we wait until they are red, our creepy, crawly neighbors will feast on them. Or a naughty hen will fly into “vivero” and peck at them. The hens are banned from the vivero, yet, they can’t resist taking a dust bath in the planting boxes. We leave the tomatoes in a bowl on the kitchen island and it takes about a week for the fruit to ripen. They are pretty tasty and better than the “store bought.” Though not quite the red rich taste of the homegrown tomatoes from Carmel Valley.
Over the past few months, M has experimented growing basil, mustard greens, garlic greens. Those plants struggled with a southwestern exposure with this area receiving a lot of direct sunlight. Even with the “saran,” tender greens suffered from over-exposure.
Seeing our friends with greenhouses where they grow arugula, kale, spring onions and herbs, we decided to try it ourselves. I really enjoy a fresh salad almost every day. We are buying green leaf lettuce from the Vegetable Guys. They say that it is organically grown, however, we suspect that they just say that because that is what we want to hear. Ticos tend to do that sometimes. They want to please the gringos. The only way to guarantee that the greens are organic, is to grow them ourselves.
The first step was designing and building a greenhouse. M looked at our friends’ setups, researched on YouTube and consulted various websites. He is very good at doing his homework. Jorge, our neighbor, is a very successful in building structures that have effectively grown all sorts of vegetables. With Jorge’s guidance, M decided on an arched structure made with PVC pipes, wrapped in black saran and located on the east side of the house under the 2nd floor balcony. It took just part of a day for them to build the structure and get it partially “wrapped.” M designed an entry door (made of PVC) and built it. It was so very handy having his new battery powered DeWalt drill that we brought back from California in December.
The tables are made of “melina” wood, a fast growing, hardwood, native to India. Our property used to be a melina tree farm. Very large melina trees grow along the edge of the property and last September, M had one cut down next to the garage. The long and wide trunk was left to dry and a few weeks ago, Lilo ably cut it into planks with his trusty chainsaw. Now with the tables built, M is composing a potting soil. Lilo and he gathered up dirt from the bottom of a dried pond up the road at Don Amado’s palm farm. Then they stopped by Don Amado’s cattle coral to pick up dung. M has been working a leaf compost pile for several months too. And the ever helpful Lilo built a dirt sifter. It’s 3’x2’ tray with a wire screen bottom. The dirt is placed in the tray and 2 people shake it and the finer soil drops out. It’s a little labor intensive but it works well.
Now it's time for M to do what he loves and germinate those seeds to grow delicious leafy greens. I can't wait.
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