Gardening 2024

[Chiefsmom]

I envy you Chiefsmom.   You have this very rare substance called............ soil.   Oh Lordy, wouldn't it be swell.  Still, we have a rare substances to you, or at least I think so called......   cocopeat and seaweed meal.   Newsflash:   Cukes don't care for blazing hot/sandy loam/ salt environment, HOWEVER, change one variable, and make the soil rich with seaweed meal and make it retain water with cocopeat, and Voilà!  It Lives!!  It's a-LIVE!!  

Ok, so this year's projects are twofold:   Water Spinach, and Chayote aka Cho-cho.   Water spinach is fairly easy to grow, except it is super-invasive, so much be contained somehow.   It is illegal to grow in much of the U.S. because it just takes over.   Tasty stuff though, and will keep a few people alive.   

Chayote is in the gourd family, but tastes like a squash.   It can be eaten raw, and is cucumberish, or fried, mashed, and I like making fritters out of them.   Traditional use is in soup as a tasty filler.   Once established, one plant can feed a family.   Well.......... not feed them if that's all they're eating, but as a side dish it really delivers.   

Since those of us down here in the Caribbean see the same things you all do -- that is to say everything going to crap at an alarming rate, we are determined to grow landfood --  breadfruit, sweet potato, tomato, cukes, pumpkin,  chayote, etc., and harvest mobile MREs (feral chickens) and harvest seafood (fish, spiny lobster in season, conch in season, whelks (Turban snail), etc.). 

I envy you also all the berries.   Berries take a hell of a lot more work than most people realize.   Not just letting a bush grow and the picking it.   Strawberries, especially (which, I guess aren't technically berries, but who's counting?)

LOL  Loved "Mobile MRE's"
Sorry it's been so long.  Busy little bee.
I will say black caps (black raspberries are exactly that, let it grow and tons of berries.  No work.  In fact, the wild ones seemed to prefer you leave them alone.   But all the domestic ones, yeah, pampered babies.  LOL
You have a lot of seafood available?  That I could live on.  Not the snails.  Not sure I could do it.
Yeah, Sand isn't good for much up here.  Except blueberries.  Can you raise them down there?

So, on to a lesson I learned, thanks to some of you here.  NO MORE AUTOFLOWERING SEEDS!!!  At least for me, for outdoor growing, which is all I do with Marijuana.  
This is why:   My Hindu Kush:

[Image: https://denyignorance.com/uploader/images/Hindu.jpg]
 About 1 foot tall.   Very Very dense, but disappointing!