Indoor cacao doing well

The indoor plants are doing really well, benefiting from consistent temperatures and regular watering.

In the front is a Cinnamon tree we ordered online.

Chocolate Bananas

I removed the roofing from our shed overhang today in preparation for our shed to greenhouse conversion project (yay!).  However, this sent the temperature in the tiny greenhouse skyrocketing over 107 F!  I got the mister running continuously which shaved off about 9 degrees, but the temp started rising again!

I've heard that some farms use banana trees to shade cacao trees, so I'm trying that now!  Banana and chocolate, together like they should be ;)

Cinnamon tree!

We bought a cinnamon tree on Amazon.com from wellspring gardens.  It's pretty small for now, but hopefully some time with the cacao trees in the indoor greenhouse will help it out.

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.

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....

Hugelkultur Material

We had a lot of tree work done today, including taking down 2 large Elm trees.  This wood will become our Hugelkultur core someday.