Don't you just love free stuff?

I had been bemoaning the fact that the grocery stores had a very limited choice of dried beans, and then walked into the expensive local health food store and saw their variety!   Wow!  Black beans, azuki beans - I was in heaven, but at 5.00 for  a little bag I didn't think buying those beans would be something I would be doing very often.  Then I started thinking about the climate that black beans grew in - well, if they can grow in Mexico - why not here? After making a batch of my yummy black bean and corn soup  into the garden went a handful of my health food store beans, and they have all come up!

 Now I am not sure if they are growing in the right season, but they sure do look healthy, I am so glad that I saved some seeds back.  How exciting - I might be able to grow my own black beans here!  then I tried with some azuki beans - same thing, yeah!

Then I started doing a bit of research on chia seeds.  Amazingly these little seeds have more omega 3 than salmon.   Well I can't grow salmon in my garden (sure wish I could!)  but..... maybe I can try some chia?  So once again I ventured into the very expensive health food store and picked up an 8.00 bag of chia seeds and a handful have now been broadcast into the area vacated by the radishes. Look at them ... no, I cant see any coming up yet either!  Oh well I suppose you win some and you lose some.:)

 we had some small trees cut down around the place, and they left us the mulch, there was a bit of green mixed in and I thought it would act as an accelerator, but it seems to have formed a mold which I don't think is a good sign.   I wet it down - put the hose right into the middle of the pile so that it got good and wet, and stirred it up a bit.  I want to get some coffee grounds to mix in - I would like some seaweed, but there is no seaweed on the beaches at the moment.

 Since everything already has a layer of hay mulch I have distributed some over the gardens.  I hope that layer of hay is enough to stop the nitrogen draw down that could occur if the mulch was placed directly onto the soil.

 This middle bed has very poor soil and I hope that once the rains come it will perk up.  We might have to invest in some chook poo or something to give it a boost.   I think everyone will complain about the smell.

 My poor pawpaw trees keep getting what I have been told is a fungus, so I went ahead and sprayed with milky water to see if that will do any good.  The pawpaws are just sitting there big and swollen and green, waiting for it to warm up.....  yummy I am looking forward to some nice ripe pawpaw.

I have planted loofah, pigeon pea and jicama from the seeds that I saved,  yakon tubers and rosella seeds were procured from  friends.   The sweet potato that I left in the ground have started to shoot up again, and there is plenty of ginger just waiting to shoot up again as soon as the rains start.

What a wonderful feeling to know that I have completed my wet season planting without buying a single packet of seeds.