The perils of juicing Malabar Spinach

Today was the final day of work for my Urban Farm externship. I completed 30 hours at Econ Farm. On Wednesday we are celebrating with a Pot Luck gathering. Today we built a trellis for the cucumbers that will provide shade to the lettuce beneath. It's already starting to heat up here. We built the trellis with onsite bamboo and zip ties. 

Check out the cocoon of this moth. A literal twig house.

Look how enormously amazing this Giant Collard Green plant is in the forefront.

Back home in my own garden, the Malabar Spinach gifted to me is doing well. It grows like a vine. The leaves are thick and bright green, and slightly heart shaped. I can't seem to get regular old spinach to do anything, but this Malabar stuff is taking off. The pests in my garden are attacking nearly everything, but not this. No wonder it's a favorite in permaculture design: low maintenance! Anyway, here's the deal with Malabar Spinach-and this is only true if you are someone who cares about the texture of your food-there is something very slimy and off putting about good ole' Malabar. I tried it raw in a salad with other greens and it has a very strong presence, and not in a good way. Trying to convince myself that all green is good, I tried sautéing it. Yuck. The stuff does not cook well. But what to do? The spinach is growing like Jack's beanstalk. I harvest a bowl of it and take it to my juicer. Juicing Malabar Spinach is like some crazy science experiment. Kelly green snot, yes, snot. When you juice Malabar Spinach it comes out as some gooey, slimy, liquid snot that happens to be a beautiful vibrant shade of green, but is so offensive it belongs on a show like Fear Factor. And just so you know that I made a valiant effort, I did try to cut the green slime with lemon juice, cucumber and apple, which did absolutely nothing to offset the disgusting sliminess of Malabar juice. Malabar Spinach was my first lesson in planting only food that you are going to eat. Just because it grows doesn't mean you have to grow it!

Attack of the Crazy Squirrel

Today we completed the garden overhaul. It's been a 4-week process of harvesting, clearing, planting, transplanting, watering in, fertilizing, and mulching. Today we worked on clearing out the final bed (on the left) and mulching all of the beds with hay. 

Midway through, we were greeted by a very friendly squirrel. This squirrel had visited last week and had crawled over Terry and Alyson. Today he hung out in the garden, tried drinking my coffee, and  munched on greens.

And then used Andrea as a personal jungle gym.

Then, without warning, the squirrel climbed all over her. At first we thought it was funny and cute. How social, we thought. He followed us over to the food prep area while we made lunch and got more bold, climbing all over the picnic table, drinking from the water pitcher, and treating us like we were trees. Finally, we resorted to water defense, hoping a spritz of water would deter him. I knew it was probably a matter of time before he set his sites on me, and sure enough when I pointed the spray bottle at him he jumped on me, like the scene out of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Startled, I did my typical scream-like-a-girl dance and eventually knocked the crazy little thing off of me. Even then he just wouldn't quit, so Terry finally gave the little guy a time out by putting a bucket over him, and even then he tried to dig out! Squirrel aside, I was inspired after today's garden maintenance to spend some time in my own. My tomatoes have been victim to aphids, then caterpillars, and now a fungus. I realized after clearing out Terry's grow boxes that when plants are too full or too close together or leaves touch the soil, it's an invitation for pests. I see now that my tomatoes were in desperate need of being thinned out so that the natural predators can get in and do their thing. I moved around some plants to make room for another collard green plant, 2 new lettuce plants and 2 climbing Malabar spinach plants. I soaked seeds overnight and planted those today as well. It's starting to warm up here and I can see the top of my soil starting to turn sandy, so I covered with a layer of my compost and mulched it with oak leaves from the yard. Altogether I'm growing lettuce, arugula, 3 varieties of tomato, heirloom peppers, jalapeño, cucumber, 2 varieties of spinach, mesclun green, collard greens, lacinto kale, 2 types of watermelon, squash, sage, spearmint, basil, thyme, cilantro, and parsley. I'm also growing zinnias, 4 o'clocks, marigolds and nasturtiums. Phew, it doesn't look like that much in my garden beds, but I really do have quite a bounty growing out back!

Fruit Tree Maintenance

On Monday, my son's school was closed for a Teacher work day, this after a full week off for Spring Break....don't even get me started:) Together we worked in our garden on Monday. A full on attack on the aphids with soapy water and water blasting seemed to derail their efforts to suffocate my tomato plants. I've treated the plants a couple more times, but now at the base of one plant is a fungus. Frustrated, I finally turned to an Organicide that is mostly Fish Oil and claims to kill and prevent insects, though not harmful for bees and butterflies, as well as address my fungus issues. My Zinnia and 4 o'clocks are sprouting, as is my Seminole pumpkin squash. I had transplanted the collard and kale from Terry's place and they are all doing well. I divided my spearmint and placed it strategically around my other tomato plants. My least affected tomato plant is near spearmint, which can deter pests. I pulled up my bib lettuce that had bolted and become bitter. In its place I direct sowed spring mix lettuce.

Today at the Farm we tended to all of the fruit trees. Terry diluted worm poop and we methodically pulled back all the soil and mulch from each fruit tree, topped with fresh compost, new mulch leaves, and drenched the plants with fertilized water. Let me just say, worm poop smells dreadful-worse than any port-a-pot-worse than any killer dog fart-I'm talking stop you in your tracks odor- but the fruit trees love it more than compost tea. Terry has 23 fruit trees on the property. The majority are citrus, everything from meyer lemon, lime, calamondin, valencia orange, pink grapefruit, and page orange, but he also has 2 varieties of apple which are suppose to do "okay" in Florida, a mulberry, persimmon, 2 peach, kumquat, and an olive tree. After we fertilized the fruit trees, we gave the banana groves some TLC and cleaned up dead leaves, dropping them on the floor below to serve as a mulch bed that will eventually compost back down and feed the banana trees.