I’ve lived outside of a temperate 4 season Canadian climate for most of my adult life being that I was a bit of a restless youth and early in my adulthood made my way over the Pacific to tropical Taiwan. One thing I did always missed about Canada was the drastic changes between seasons. As harsh and long as old man winter can be there it serves as a reminder of how much we should appreciate those summer days and warm stary nights. The blossoms of spring and the phycadelic colors of fall that break up those hot and cold (mostly cold) months complete the year with such a variety of life, well, I find myself in awe sometimes.
In Taiwan and the tropical wet and dry half and half year cycles we experienced changes no doubt. There is in fact a full on typhoon season, but they didn’t seem as drastic and I felt that time passed by more quickly or was less made into a memory marker as a result of the weather feeling more similar throught the year.
When we first visited Guatemala in March I was a bit shocked to see rolling brown hills of dried up grasses and it seemed like the plant life was in dire need of refreshment. Now, we find ourselves back here during the wet season in June onwards and my goodness how things have grown. There in an absolute abundance of life covering every inch of land with lush greens and vivid colored flowers giving me the pleasure of watching humming birds do thier humming thing by the dozens with my morning coffee.
As I am living close by, I couldn’t resist popping back over to the Yoga Forest, which I had visited in the dry season, to see how things have come along there and get an update on whether or not the wicking beds I had repored on early had held up through the heavy rains.
Please enjoy the artistically blurry photos taken with my old cracked iphone 4. We unforuntaly were the victims of a bit of a theivery a few weeks ago. You can read about the night time raid of our kitchen and my newer iPhone here on my other blog.
I was very pleased to find that the gardener and permaculture extrodanire, Cat, was still hanging around the Yoga Forest. The first thing she pointed out was how happy the fish were among the plant life in the main pond. If you remember my past post about the Yoga Forest, you’ll understand that this is the main source of water and nutrition for the wicking beds they built on the steep slopes of this valley. These beds were built to insure stabliltiy during the heavy rains and the ablilty to water the beds efficiently during the dry months.
My timing wasn’t perfect as it seems that Cat and her crew were in the process of re-fertalizing the beds. They had gotten enough nutrition from the soil and the fish pond feeding for 2 solid harvests of greens and veggies but the beds needed a better fertalizing process in order to keep up with the year round demands of the yoga class patrons and their downward dogs.
Still, the place was fresh and lush and the gardens were full of greens enough for a family and more and the beds didn't get washed down the valley during the rains. Cat explained though that these kind of more complex systems involving pipes and water regulation and boarded up beds are all well and good but they rairly hold up in production to good old fashioned simple row planting and rotation. If she had to do it again she would elimanate the sectioned off beds, plant in two solid rows along contour, weed the beds and drop the cuttings along the path and rotated planting on the rows and switch to the paths year by year. For watering, a simple flooding from the pond every few days would suffice and would need less attention. Also, most of the fertalizer would come from a more efficient compost system.
Sometimes … well most of the time in fact, simple, conventional wisdom beats out complex design in the long run. That is a good lesson to learn.
Coming up next, we get into the fermentations with a crash course on making kombucha.
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