The Great Outdoors

Every opportunity I get to be out-of-doors I take it.  I would rather be working in the yard almost more than anything, one exception would be baking in the kitchen.  But when the weather is cooperating with sun and moderate temperatures, (moderate for me now is 60) I take my clippers, tarp and rake out to the yard for some fresh air and garden time.

The yard has a huge pine tree with needles that are falling all the time. Here you do not see any pine cones just lying around, pine cones are used to get your fire started so get out early after a windy day or they will be cleaned up by one of your neighbors.

The low temperatures right now are in the 40’s with highs into the 60’s.  But if the day is overcast forget about seeing 60.  The house we rented sits on a corner lot filled with trees, shrubs, a huge white rose-bush, bird of paradise, a Bougainvillea shaped like a basket (which is very popular in our area), the plant above which is huge and kind of scary and assorted flowing bushes as well as several trees that I have no idea what they are because they were cut way back before we moved into the house.

Joe followed me around with the camera while I was out on this day. And caught me enjoying a great afternoon out-of-doors.

 The grass is in need of some TLC as it looks to be more weeds than grass. But we have all fall and winter to get it in shape.

Fruits and Peppers in the Garden

We have such an abundance from our garden.  Below are just a few of the fruits that we gather each week. I am happy to say that many of my neighbors and folks on my daily walk like guava or guayaba, everyone here uses lemons on almost a daily basis so we are happy to share what our garden produces. Some of our other trees do not yet produce enough to share a great deal. I just cannot use all that we get from our garden so giving the egg delivery guys a bag full of guayaba is a wonderful way to thank them for their service and use the extra fruits that Joe and I can not eat.

We are blessed to have found a home that had a garden filled with fruit trees. Each day we pick fruits for our table and share with neighbors and friends.

The above four photos are our pomegranate or granadas.  I have made Pomegranate Syrup to use on pancakes.

These are one of several lemon trees that give us fruit almost year round. The trees have just finished blossoming and we have picked all the old fruit to allow the new fruit all the nourishment the tree can give them.

The pepper plants in the ground are not as happy as the ones in the pot. Our soil is basically sand, I am amazed anything can grow in it.

Star fruit or fruta china is an exotic fruit, sweet, juicy. Wonderful for juice but they never make it to the juicer. With only one ripe at a time it is so easy just to wash it and eat it right out in the yard. And that is what I do most times.

This papaya is located outside our fence but it started from seeds that I tossed so I think of it as mine, ja ja  They are getting close, I just hope they are sweet with dark fruit, some of the lighter fruit papayas are tasteless.

Naranjilla is another exotic fruit and I do not think its natural habitat is on the coast. This is a sierra fruit but I found a tree and am babying it hopefully soon to put it in the ground.  The leaves and stems have thorns and can cause some good pinches. You can use the fruit for juice by boiling it for about 10 minutes and then blending and straining, adding water and some sugar. I like to use it in Seco de Chivo or Seco de Pollo.

Our guava or guyaba tree seems to be always producing. I make marmalade and paste from the fruit as well as an occasional batido. The tree is also a wonderful shade tree to keep our little yard cool during those hot sunny days.

Thanks for taking the tour of our garden which is only 20 x 30 feet. Small but filled with such surprises. And smiles.

Pomegranates (Granadas)

Pomegranates are bountiful on the little tree we have in our yard. I have handed them out as folks come by because unless I decide to juice them we will never eat all the fruit. Just one section has the following fruits.

The trees are lush and green with more fruit now that they are being watered and fertilized regularly.  We may have to remove this tree when we finish our plans for a ramada and patio in this section of the yard.  I would love to try to transplant it to another part of the yard but am afraid that it will die if I do that. Anyone have any suggestions on how to move this beauty with a high rate of success?

I did plant a few seeds at the suggestion of my friend Deborah from Bahia and have what looks to be three baby trees starting up. She did tell me that grow fast so my next move is to transplant them to their own container and see how fast they really grow.

I also tried juicing the seeds, it worked well adding them to the blender and giving it a quick buzz for about 20 seconds. Pour into a strainer and uses a spatula to squeeze the juice out of the pulp. It was delicious and this is an easy way to use the fruit.

Carambola (Star Fruit – but locals call it Fruta China)

Yesterday afternoon while sitting out in the yard I looked up to see several almost ripe star fruit just staring down at me.  My friend Eva said to add them to a regular salad for a special kick. That sounds like a lovely way to eat the bounty from our yard.

There are several bunches of little pink flowers along with a few very tiny little fruits. It is so much fun to search in the branches to see if any of them contain fruit. It looks like we will have five very nice ripe fruit in the next several days and then several more over the next month.

What a treat!

Horseradish Plant is Thriving

About two months ago Liz and Bill visited and brought me a beautiful horseradish root. I actually cut it in half as I could not part with the entire root and planted the one half in the ground at the beginning of one of my flower beds. I held out little hope that this would grow here after reading several accounts from other more experienced gardeners than myself that theirs never even came out of the ground here on the coast.

Below is a picture from March 24th where it started to sprout.

The photo below was taken a few days ago.

I actually don’t think I gave this plant enough room to grow but with our yard as small as it is, well I guess this will have to do for right now. I did a bit of reading and found out that the plant can grow to almost two feet high, is a perennial and will continue to grow for three years. The leaves can also be cut and eaten raw and have the same spicy taste as the root.

I am now researching how to can or somehow preserve what I hope to harvest..Just another day at the little house on the costa..

Trying My Hand at Planting

I wanted to share with you a few plants that have started to spring up in my garden. First and foremost a special thank you to Liz for bringing a horseradish root on the plane with her when she visited a few weeks ago. I cut it in half not wanting to ruin the entire root and followed the instructions I found on the internet. I planted it on an angle and it has started to grow. Now I am not sure that it will continue to thrive here because of how warm it is but I have faith that I am supposed to have a horseradish plant.

Next to the horseradish plant I planted several cloves of garlic. They are springing up but again I am not sure they will do well in this heat so I am going to clip the tops and add to salads for a nice garlicky hit.

I have also planted a few knobs of ginger and again they are starting to sprout so keep your fingers crossed that they will grow for us.

I also planted the seeds from a Hawaiian papaya – they tend to be a bit sweeter than the big ones. I know they need to be thinned out but I just cannot make myself destroy these little babies just yet, maybe next week I will be ready to pull them up.

I have several dill plants that are doing their best to make it. We could sure use some fresh dill for my mother’s chicken soup recipe.

Now here are the bouganvilla plants that I cut from beautiful red-flowered plants growing on the fence of Vista Azul. I planted them months ago before the rain started and they did nothing for so long I thought they were dead. Look at those beautiful red flowers, these have the long spikes and will be added security on our wall on the street side of our property.

Well, off to re-pot all my potted plants. Max our neighbor brought me two huge sacks of soil from his farm. It is so black and rich I know my potted plants will just go wild for it. Now all I need is that old straw hat my Dad would wear in his garden…………….

Plant Stand

Several months back I watched a garden show that Joe had downloaded for me. They made this wonderful fountain with garden tiles that got me thinking. We really don’t want a water feature in our small garden but I did have an asparagus fern that has grown out of control and was dragging on the ground.

So voilà !

These are floor tiles left over from the renovation of our bathroom.

What the Garden Looks Like Today

We really have not made a great deal of changes to the garden, well I guess I need to take that back. We have had to chop down dead branches on almost every tree, cut foot long grass from the entire area and now pull weeds but have not put a great deal of money into the yard only time and hard work. So to look back on the garden and then look at today’s photos you would say we have done a great deal of work cleaning it up. First what it looked like beforehand, this was the first time we had seen the property back in May.

I look back and you can’t even see the fence at the back of the garden it was so overgrown.  Here are todays pictures.

Boy can I see a difference. And we have just begun…wait until we put in some furniture and I finish with making planters on the sidewalk…

A Tree Planted in Clemente

Yes, I know what you are saying, another tree! One of my readers, Yusuf said that a fig tree would be a good addition to my grove of already mature trees, it would grow fast and would produce some fine fruit. I could not agree more with the fruit part, but yet another tree.

While living in Playas the guardian of our rental home, Oswaldo would come by and bring me bags of these wonderful fruits. I became quite creative in my use of them besides just popping them into my mouth. One day I wrapped bacon around them and put them in the oven, cooked them until the bacon was crispy, what an excellent breakfast. Then I made jam using cinnamon sticks, star anise and the panela sugar it was exceptional. And the neighbors like it as well.

Right now I need to finish pruning the trees, decide if I want to keep the grass or rip it up and bring in good soil and some manure. Then I can decide where this tree will be planted, where I will put my herb garden and what flowering bushes I want to plant to cascade over the fence…my biggest problem is the amount of space I have in this yard…all these trees…I want paths under them, I want flowers around the trunks and well you see I am in somewhat of a bind in trying to figure out what the next step would be.  Now I am turning to my friend Keith who has a great deal of experience with tropical trees from his own Florida garden. The past few weeks have not been great for getting much done because of the festival and so many other distractions. Maybe this week Keith and I can sit down and come up with a plan. Joe and I (well I did a lot of standing, moving  branches not really trimming) trimmed back the dead wood from the one tree. Joe also trimmed up all the trees so it is possible to walk around without having your hair pulled out of your head. There are only a few branches left that are too high for Joe and the huge guava that is at the back of the yard, not sure what we need to do on that.

Fredy just told me that he is getting soil for his papaya farm and if I wanted to order some good soil he would be happy to add my order to his and have it delivered to my house. An offer I have taken very serious and put my order in the same day.

Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated!!!

El Jardín de Árboles Frutales

One of the many projects I have planned over the next several months includes the garden.

There are several sticks holding up limbs probably when they were laden with fruit the last time. It really makes the yard look unkempt, they must go!

With its 13-14 fruit trees (I am not sure if the palm tree happens to be a coconut palm that is why I am not sure about the number), in a space 33′ wide by 21′ deep. Some trees have so much dead wood the tree actually looks like the entire tree is dead, then you look at the branches that are so intertwining that you don’t know where one tree stops and another starts. For all of that they are all bearing fruit, are flowering and actually look like they are doing pretty well. What will happen when they are fertilized, watered and trimmed regularly, I should have more than enough fruit.

This is the cherry tree, my one neighbor goes crazy for these little fruits.

The pomegranate has several fruits as well as flowers.

Look at the bunches of mandarina on just this one limb, I hope my neighbors are willing to help eat these when they get ripe, because it looks like there will be way too many for Joe and I to eat.

So many flowers, if all of these flowers become limons I will be able to supply the entire neighborhood for months.

I have started a garden plan in my mind, so far it looks like we will be trimming up the trees to be able to walk underneath them, top them off so that we can reach the fruit without having to higher a cherry-picker ha ha. Next we are considering removing all the grass and amending the soil with soil from the mountains and manure.  Then the real fun part starts, I would like to put gravel and winding paths made from brick like a little garden under and around the trees, plant flowers around the tree trunks, add a table and chairs to the septic cap and put a herb garden in on the one side and plant azaleas on the road side of the yard. One of my biggest dilemmas is whether I should plant several different colors or just pick one fabulous hot color for this spot. The herb plants that I brought up from Playas don’t seem to be doing that well, but I have seen many plants at the market in Charapoto so hopefully I will be able to replace those that don’t make it. And I know my friends Mary and John (hint hint) will help me with some seeds or fledgling plants because their choice of dill, rosemary, chives, hot peppers and so many more are just doing beautifully in their patio garden along with their exceptional assortment of tea and miniature roses.  I think both John and Mary have green thumbs, I just hope my garden looks half as nice as theirs when we have done some work on it.