Plants at attention!

The cacao plants are picking up their leaves.  It's odd that they start out pointing down, but I think they'll all be pointing out soon.

Before picture - cardboard sheet mulching

Here is a 'before' picture from January showing the paper, soil, cardboard layering we used to try to amend the soil and kill the weeds.  Over time, we added oat seeds in too as a green mulch.  They sprung up well, but died because they couldn't get through the cardboard and get water.  Note the T posts used to hold the cardboard down in fairly high winds.

There's also an in-between picture from February here:
http://pixelfarmsalpha.blogspot.com/2018/02/cover-oats-sprouting.html

Clover prep for wheat

We finally decided it was time to till in our cardboard mulch experiment in our (small) field.  The kids had a lot of fun playing in the mud, since we had to spray it down and mix it up to keep the paper from going everywhere.  The muddy part (pictured) was several days ago.  Tonight, we all went out and spread clover seeds to grow as a cover crop / green manure.  The ground here has tons of clay, so we're trying to prepare it as much as we can to be a successful wheat field later this year.

Suddenly, watermelon!

So, somehow we missed these and thought our giant watermelon plants were fruitless.  Today, I looked around the back and found 5 watermelon, with one almost grocery store sized!

We'll let them grow for a bit before harvesting them.

Outside the safe haven

We pulled out 2 cacao seedlings to see if they can survive in the much drier environment outside the little greenhouse.  Time will tell, but it would be nice to not have to baby these so much...

Big Cacao Leaves

The leaves are getting big now, probably over 4 inches on some plants.  What's strange is that they're all hanging down!

I hypothesize this is an adaptation to help them on a littered jungle floor to pull their leaves up through the brush before opening them on top.  Whether that's true or not, I think some of them are starting to angle their leaves out some, so they probably won't stay like this for long.

We're preparing another little greenhouse like this one so we can split the group up and give them more space.  They'll also need larger cups soon!

Tiny cacao leaves

The cacao plants are growing up and getting real leaves!

Mid-June Garden Status

Status post for mid-June 2018.  Our two apple trees (a Fuji and an Anna apple) are planted and seem to be doing well.  Our tomatoes are producing fairly well, though we tied them up a bit late, so they look scraggly.  Peanut plants are getting larger.  They used to have flowers but now don't - this worries me since that's happened before, but we'll have to see how it goes.  Our watermelon plants (3 of them) are going insane, flowing off the garden bed and several feet out into the yard.  We have at least 3 watermelons so far, with the largest about the size of a large tomato (?).  Our strawberry plants (forgot a picture) have been branching out, the lettuce and snap peas have died off.  The tiny lentil plants are still growing, but not making much progress.  The grapes are a mixed bag - some are attached to the wire, while others haven't made it yet.  Blackberries are doing well, but need some grass trimming done soon.  In the back yard, our large Pecan tree is putting on leaves, but, despite us hearing about this being a fruiting year for pecans, we can't see any signs of fruit just yet.  The blueberry patch is doing ok in the dedicated peat moss bed.  Finally, the cacao seeds are rising up and starting to get tiny leaves inside.  I think we only have 2 that haven't picked up their seed heads so far.

Sorry for the wall of text; I write these in a hurry these days....

Tomatoes coming in

Our 21(?) tomato plants are starting to produce nicely.  Here's most of what we've gathered so far.  We've spent some time tying up the vines to the T posts, since they're splaying out everywhere!

Cacao sprouts

After some time in a high humidity, high temperature environment, the sprouts are growing!  We try to keep it around 70% humidity and 70-80°F.

We use a fan and grow light during the day, a reptile enclosure humidifier as needed, a heating pad occasionally, a temperature and humidity monitor from SensorPush.  We mist + water twice a day.

When we first planted them, we mixed up a high drainage mix of 50% Perlite and 50% potting soil (kids helped).  Initially, we covered them with Spanish moss to help keep things moist.