Water from thin air!

After a recent A/C emergency, we had some work done including rerouting our condensation line to go directly out of the house.   The water that goes through this line is whatever collects on the coils in our indoor air handler unit. What's neat is that we can pull water directly out of the air just by using our A/C!  In an emergency, this could possibly be boiled for drinking water.  Or, for the ultimate made-on-site PBJ sandwich, we could distill it and even have our *water* produced locally.

On a hot and humid day, our A/C pulled out several gallons of water.  Pictured is a single day (morning to night) of accumulation.  My estimate is 7-12 gallons.

I feel a bit like Luke Skywalker on Tatooine in Star Wars Episode IV

Sugarcane planting

We recently found a place to buy sugarcane (Hana World market in Austin) and discovered what seems to be a not-terribly-expensive sugarcane press (~$200) on Amazon.  So, we decided to give it a try!  Planting is pretty simple - cut up the can to leave one or more joints on each piece, and plant in a trench.  Our kids helped, which was fun for them.  We hope to see sprouts in under a month, some growth before it dies back at the next frost, then a real harvest sometime next summer/fall.

 

The goal is to produce a sugar we can use in chocolate production and PBJ jam.  We've tried sugar beets before, but I'm hoping sugarcane is easier to process...

Cacao repotting and small outdoor greenhouse

Our cacao trees have been growing up and getting taller, so it's time to move them out of their tiny cups.  Following the advice on the Montoso gardens site, we moved them to larger pots (large cups in our case) and used a ~ 1:1:1 mix of perlite, compost, and peat moss. (picture only shows perlite and compost in the mixing bin)

We also needed to split out the plants to another little greenhouse, since they wouldn't fit.  We decided to try putting some of them outside.  We looked around for the right location (the mini greenhouse gets to 135F in all-day full sun!) and settled on a corner under an overhang near our shed.  The goal is to give the greenhouse full sun for either the morning or evening, where the sunlight will be less intense and the heat less of an issue.  Also, we've set up an automatic watering system with 2 misters to keep the humidity high and take the edge off the outside temperature.  100+ degree F temperature might be a challenge for cacao, as it seems they're not normally grown in weather that hot.

As before, we're using our SensorPush humidity + temperature sensor (the tiny box in the top corner of the greenhouse) to track the environment carefully.  It really helps us profile the changes through the day to help keep our plants happy :)

Garden status late July

The tomatoes have stopped producing so much, the peanuts are getting large, and we've already harvested a couple of watermelons!  The watermelon plant is taking over everything!  It's climbing the fence, blanketing the yard corner, and sneaking into the strawberry bed!  There are several more watermelons growing, including one that's hanging on the fence! (look to the right in the picture)

The other plants seem to be doing about as well as usual, though the (relatively new) banana plants put out new (large) leaves about once a week, or possibly once every few days.  It's been pretty hot here, so we water every day, sometimes twice per day for some plants, to try to keep things alive during 100+ degree F afternoons.

Big leaves, all up!

The cacao plants are getting bigger; we're  almost ready to move them into larger pots and split their greenhouse.

Peanut flowers

The peanut plants have grown bigger and I'm starting to see some small yellow flowers on them.  Here's hoping they're able to get pollinated and "fruit".

Banana plants!

I found a couple of large banana plants at the nursery today and couldn't resist.  They cost $30 each.  Gardener says they'll produce fruit if we can keep them from freezing in the winter.  If we can't keep them from freezing, then they'll come back but not produce fruit.  I don't know what variety they are but gardener says they should be self fertile.

We go through a lot of bananas at home, so I hope these produce something good to eat.  If not, at least we'll get some good experience with banana plants, which seem to be hardier tropical plants than cacao.