It's time for a garden and chicken update. Here's a shot of a part of the vegetable garden area. Growing here are yard long green beans, aloe vera, black amaranth and two types of hot chilies. A vanilla orchid is growing up the metal post just right of center in the photo above. The orchid just started to bloom for the first time. It sent out a flower stalk with seven buds. The flowers open for only one day and require a special bee for pollination. I'm not sure if the required bee is here so I have been hand pollinating the blooms. I watched several youtube videos on the topic and I'm giving it my best shot. The first one I pollinated didn't work, but it looks like the second one might be a success. Hopefully we'll get a few vanilla beans in the future.
The raised garden beds are producing radish along with a lot of radish greens, collards and kale. As plants are harvested I sow more seeds in the bare areas. I'm hopeful, that in a few more months these beds will provide most of our vegetable needs.
Here are the left two paddocks in the chicken area. The plant growth is excellent! It's actually very overgrown and I need to chop some things down so the future chickens will be able to walk around.
This is a shot of the right two paddocks. The area in the back is pretty bare and is preventing me from getting the hens. The daily rains are picking up and the plants are beginning to grow faster but it looks like I'm still several more months away from having chickens.
Mario just finished planting 15 coconut palms along the lower part of the stairs and all along the internal road. He also planted 10 cacao trees from seeds that I germinated. All of the plants are protected by chicken wire and bamboo cages. The first year we lived here we planted many coconut palms along the stairs. Only one remains, all of the others were eaten by some mysterious animal. Hopefully our new plantings will be protected and will produce abundantly in the future.
