Tom on Permaculture
November 9, 2010 Posted by: TOM
One of our many side projects has been to create gardens to help supply the cafeteria at the field station. This falls under some definition of "sustainability" (whatever that means now), with locally produced produce and all that good stuff. Erin does the nice and pretty gardens that you so often see here--she feeds the two of us throughout the year with her work AND is able to donate a significant amount of tomatoes, sweet peppers, arugula, and radishes to the cafeteria. She spends a great deal of time starting plants indoors from seed, weeding, setting up cages and trellises, mulching, watering, and planning what crops should be where and when, etc.
I've been taking a slightly different approach and try to maximize production while limiting my effort--although the guys who work with me have commented that I would probably kill anyone who messes with my bananas. At the moment I've got five or so "crops" going. In no particular order, here they are:
Bananas-My inspiration for growing bananas came from seeing them around the island and in Nassau growing in a variety of locations off of grey water. Water often is a very limited resource here (not as bad at the field station due to our catchment basin) and so it is important to minimize waste ("hey, that water you used to wash vegetables is perfectly suited for now watering my bananas!"). By the cafeteria I diverted the pipe from a "soak away" sink that is used primarily for rinsing off items (potatoes, carrots, lettuce, hands, etc.) to water an area where I planted bananas. I did a similar thing with the wash water from the linen room. Starting with about 12 banana suckers (each plant sends up a number of suckers to replace it; after each plant fruits it dies; you can cut off the suckers and plant them in new places), I now have around 30 plants in various stages of development. Most of the suckers came from friends and are of the same type of short, sweet banana, one of the suckers (which is spreading prolifically) we pulled from the "wild" and it has more plantain like bananas. I planted the suckers in February and six of them have already "shot" (i.e. flowered and now fruited, it takes about 3 months for them to ripen; it can take anywhere from 9 to 18 months for suckers to grow up and shoot). Throughout the year I mulch around the bananas, but for the most part I leave them be.
Papayas-I started growing papayas accidentally. We cleared an area that had been a tangle mess of bush, and before I had a chance to do much with the space papayas started to grow. We had some "wild" plants nearby, so my best guess is that birds spread the seeds. My first thought was to let them be and see what happens. Papayas are a pretty hardy crop, so they fit perfectly with my minimal effort style of growing. I have now become a bit more interested in the plants and have begun to practice a bit of "chop and drop" agriculture. I've read about this online while researching permaculture, the basic idea behind "chop and drop" is that plants contain most of what other plants need to grow, if you chop down the weeds and/or other plants around your crop of interest the best thing you can do is to leave them piled up around your crops where they can decay and fertilize. We've already had a few papayas from these plants, and while neither Erin or myself are big fans of papaya in general, it is quite nice to eat fresh fruit just off the tree.
Basil-Erin already grows quite a bit for her cooking and making of wonderful pestos, however, I wanted to make some available for the cafeteria. Outside one doorway I've built a stone raised bed garden for the kitchen staff to use. Inspired by a garden I saw at a hotel in Eleuthera I decided to plant some basil and let it continually self seed (often people will pinch off the flowers and prevent basil from going to seed; I decided to just let it go and have even helped disperse the seeds). From an initial plant which Erin gave me I now have several small plants going. I water and weed occasionally, but for the most part the plants are growing on their own.
Hot Peppers-I love hot peppers (Erin does NOT, though she does grow a variety for me) and the Bahamas is home to a number of its own varieties. For a number of years I've had some local hot peppers growing with mixed success. In the raised beds I built near the cafeteria I planted some seeds from one of my earlier plants along with some plants from one of the women in the cafeteria. One of the great things about hot peppers is that they actually grow for a number of years in the right climate (such as ours) and require minimal attention once they are going. They also look amazing when full of peppers in various stages of ripening from green to yellow to orange to red. Some of the plants have caught on nicely and just today I had a rather large harvest from two of the plants. In the past I've played around with making my own pepper sauce (something Tabascoian). I've started freezing my harvest and combined with some of the cayannes Erin grew for me last year, I intend to make a large batch of pepper sauce which I'll make available for all in the cafeteria.
Pigeon Peas-The pigeon pea is a great multipurpose crop. In the Bahamas pigeon peas are featured in the classic dish peas 'n rice. We buy a large number of pigeon peas annually for the cafeteria (peas 'n rice is on the menu), which seems silly given that they grow quite well on San Salvador. After a little research on the pigeon pea I learned that they are a useful crop for compost and mulch (they fix nitrogen), are quite tolerant of drought and poor soil, grow for three to five years, produce at least twice a year, and really require very little effort. Additionally. the peas can be stored for a long time once dry. Sounded like a great crop for me, plus apparently chickens love them-I have visions of raising my own egg laying chickens (Erin wants to as well, its just a matter now of finding the chickens). I knew that the step-father of one of the kitchen staff grew peas and so I asked her if I could get some seeds. She brought me quite a few the next day. I've since done my initial planting and have several pigeon peas growing (starting in September). Word on the street is they start slow and then grow very fast after a few months (must be the long tap root). I planted them in some areas of poor soil, with good sunlight and occasionally good water. I've also been mulching around them with more "chop and drop".
That's all for now, but I do have a few water/garden related schemes in the works, if all goes well I'll report on them in a few months time.