Banana Circles in Florida

Last month i was helping a friend get a food forest started on 2.5 acres in southern Florida. We planted two banana circles. One with six banana plants and the other with seven.

First we dug two big holes, putting the dirt from the hole into a mound around the perimeter.

Then we started filling them with mulch. Lots of leaves, logs, branches...whatever we could find.

LOTS of mulch!

We bought a truckload to compost to mix in with the very sandy soil. Then we bought some bananas: saba, mysore, dwarf cavendish, apple, orinoco, and two plantains!

We trimmed the leaves since the roots were trimmed to transplant. We used some bamboo stakes to support the bananas until they can regrow some roots and hold themselves up. We used the leaves to temporarily keep the hot sun off the ground until we could get some more mulch. 

The month before, we had found a vacant lot in the city with some abandoned banana plants growing on it. It was apparent they had been growing there for several generations. They were very overgrown and we had to use a machete just to get to them. But it proved bananas could grow and fruit in this climate with absolutely no care. The ones growing next to our mulch pits should do even better. We didn't know what variety it was, but it was obvious they would do well. We picked six good size plants that would barely fit in our work van and transplanted them to their new home.

One of the circles ended up with seven bananas and the other with six. 

Some of the corms we planted already had shoots forming ready to grow. These 13 bananas will multiply. They could even be fruiting by the end of the year, but by next year for sure.

I can't wait!

Insanity

People bought these bags of mulch for their yard, filled them with mulch from their yard, then threw it away!

Organic Lawn Care

Most people don't need any or just have way too much lawn. If you have a piece you can't live without, you should read this article before you put any toxic chemicals that will poison your surroundings and maybe you and your family too.

Organic Lawn Care For the Cheap and Lazy

Parasitic Wasps

At the end of last June i found this caterpillar on a dogwood tree next to my garden in Kentucky. It has some pretty good camouflage, and looks just like the twigs around it. That wasn't good enough to hide from a parasitic wasp. She laid her eggs in this caterpillar and it was being consumed from the inside. I guess that makes it hard to go about your business as a caterpillar. Instead of munching on leaves of the dogwood, it was almost completely stationary for several days on this twig.

Later, towards the end of October, as i cleaned up the garden i found several parasitized tomato hornworm caterpillars clinging to the dead tomato plants.

I found many more cocoons on the ground underneath these caterpillars. These caterpillars had their life cycle disrupted by the wasps. They didn't go on to eat more of my tomatoes plants or complete their metamorphosis and eventually lay more hornworm eggs on next years tomatoes.

By relying on nature's diversity to deal with pests, we welcomed these helpful wasps into our garden. If we had used some toxic poison to deal with the hornworms, it surely would have killed the wasps and who knows what else. 

The Drought Fighter

 Extensive article about Paul Kaiser of Singing Frogs Farm and how his use of several permaculture techniques and principals allow him to run his farm profitably.

Singing Frogs Farm

Singing Frogs Farm

Paul Kaise

The Drought Fighter

Poo to Peaches

Another cool permaculture Kickstarter ending soon:



We need a simple book to help kids (and adults) understand the how's and why's of composting toilets. It looks like this will be that book but it needs your help to get funded.

Rocket Mass Heaters!

 Only a week left to support Paul Wheaton's Rocket Mass Heater Kickstarter