Anticipation
Well I imagine for a lot of our readers, you are anticipating the coming winter, and splitting the last of the firewood for the coming season. Our situation is a bit different. We just moved to a small cottage in a little village in Colima, Mexico. Just a couple miles from the coast, this is a tropical monsoon climate — lots of rain from June through October, then very little for the rest of the year.
We caught the end of the rainy season, moving here on October 2nd, and believe me when it rains it pours. Lots of lightning too, which I love. The heaviest rains come at night, so the lightning can be spectacular.
One of the first things we did was cut the weeds off our lot — with the help of hired machete wielders, who ignored my please to cut the weeds into pieces. Why? We just pile them here to burn… Well NO! we don’t burn weeds, we compost them. Make soil. ¡Oh Si! They understood completely. Then proceeded to cut the weeds at ground level, as they always did.
They know about composting, but don’t think it’s worth the trouble, when there are places nearby that have migajon — rich soil they dig for garden use. Now migajon is a bread paste/dough used for craft work and food (not exactly the same recipe I hope) — but how that applies to soil I haven’t yet figured out. In any case, it isn’t terra preta, and only retains its fertility for a year or two, then needs enrichment. Why not use compost? Too much work, they say. Add manure when needed.
Well compost is a lot of work, but I think when combined with biochar, it will be worthwhile, because the biochar will help ensure the nutrients in the compost are available for the plants, rather than leeched out after the first good rain.
So today I turned the small compost pile (it was about three cubic meters, but continues to shrink) which I am watering as needed and turning weekly. There is another pile with large uncut weeds, coconut shells, woody branches and such that will be mostly long-term compost, though for now one of the iguana’s is living there. (Our black iguana’s are another story…)
So I’m anticipating this small compost pile will be ready for use by the end of the year — we have temperatures in the 90s daily, and lows in the 70s, so the compost works pretty fast. And more exciting, I paid the herrero today to buy the materials he needs to make us a 55 gallon drum based charcoal/biochar kiln/retort. It should be ready Saturday, so I’m anticipating that too.
I’ll try to get some of my photos ready to illustrate a follow-up article for this, to show our works in progress. Meanwhile, I’d appreciate any comments or advice — have any of you tried organic gardening in a tropical or especially monsoon-tropical climate?