The name is misleading; it’s more of a “Garden Report”. I’ve moved many of the plants outside of the greenhouse this season, for a few reasons:  

1. Only a few things really like that sort of heat (cucumbers, melons, tomatoes, chilis).
2. I wasn’t using all the space in the old greenhouse.
3. I don’t want the locals to think they can only grow yummy vegetables if they build a greenhouse.

But what finally sealed the deal was when the plastic on the greenhouse degraded from the strong UV we have at this altitude. It was like the warranty ran out; one day all was well, and two days later my greenhouse looked like this. So, I took the chance to redesign the greenhouse a bit, doing away with the sewn-on plastic (to reduce stress concentrations in the plastic that cause tears) and making it about half the size. I annexed a little bit more of Nas Palas’s cornfield, and fenced it all in with plastic tubes I’d removed from the greenhouse, backed up with quite a bit of chicken wire. That will keep out those marauding turkeys!

The local kids are pretty helpful and curious. Here they are helping me with the massive amount of dirt that has to be moved and dug. I’m “double digging” the beds, it’s sortof like tilling, but done by hand. Quite a bit of work, but it really aerates the soil, so you get crazy growth. I don’t have much compost from my compost piles yet, so I am mixing in mulch that Emily and I have been hauling from the floor of an oak forest up the valley a bit. The locals give us funny looks every time we walk by with the giant bags on our backs. The smaller kids aren’t much practical help in the garden, but love to dig, so I give them some tools and point them at an area where they can’t do any harm. Really, it’s almost as much work finding them something to do as doing it myself, but they seem pretty happy to be involved.

The newly aerated beds get compacted if they’re walked on, so I had to train the kids to NOT walk on the beds, even if there aren’t any plants in some of them yet. That was hard, but the older kids explained it to the younger ones in Q’anjob’al, so they now know the rule, even if it makes no sense to them. I think they just humor the gringo. Getting Nas’s cow to understand, though, is impossible; she’s trod upon my garden twice already. Her pen is inconveniently located WITHIN the confines of my fence, where Nas put it when he bought her several weeks after I built the enclosure. This is vexing to me since she occasionally helps herself to the carrots, but I can’t complain, because Nas is being nice just by giving me some of his field to do my experiments.

This year’s outdoor vegetables include:

• sweet corn (two varieties). There is a lot of corn here already, but it’s not the sweet and juicy corn-on-the-cob stuff you get in the US. I think they might get a kick out of trying this type, and I kindof miss it.
• popcorn. Yep, i just planted some right from the bag and it’s growing like crazy. The locals will flip if we can actually grow it here in quantity. They like popcorn; the Q’anjob’al word for it is yen.
• beets. Emily has some tasty recipes for these, and they give a good calorie-per-square foot return, so are a good crop in developing nations.
• radishes. They grow REALLY fast and make great gifts.
• potatoes. They’re growing like crazy, thanks to the combined hints from my dad and Nas Palas. Another good caloric return on your investment.
• carrots. Sadly, between the horse and the cow, there aren’t many left.
• onions. They are slow going.
• bush beans. An heirloom variety used by North American indians. For the heck of it.
• wheat, rye, and vetch mix interplanted with fava beans. A compost crop, to strengthen the soil for subsequent crops. One entire bed is planted in this.
• spinache. Yummiest of the salad greens, good in vitamins and iron.

And inside the greenhouse, we have:

• flats for whatever seedlings we are starting
• cucumbers! The most popular crop of last year by far, I already have people asking me when they can come by and get some more.
• some melons. We are going to try this again, hopefully with better luck than last year.
• some tomatoes, hopefully a lot more, now that we have new seeds.
• space for bell peppers, once the seedlings sprout.
• different types of chili peppers.
• an oak tree seedling I stared by accident and have made my pet project.

We’re also going to try some sunflowers that Dad just sent us; those will freak them out. I planted some last year, but the local seeds I bought never sprouted. That’s a catch-22 here: you want to use local seeds to encourage and enable the locals to grow fun stuff too, but sometimes the seeds you get in the market are expired or poorly packed, and don’t germinate.

Nas’s wife asked Emily if we’d plant some guicoy in the garden. It’s a local gourd that is pretty popular, and I guess she figures we can get it to grow. That confidence is nice, and even though I don’t care for guicoy, I’m happy to grow if for her. What I’m REALLY excited about are my ich plants. Ich means “spicy” and is generally applied to any sort of hot pepper. In this case, I have a jalapeño and a chili plant coming in. They grow really slowly here (these are holdovers from last season), and Nas loves chili, so I have wanted to give him some from my garden since the very beginning. They have flowers as of last week, so I am feeling very hopeful. I planted a bunch of new ones a few weeks ago, but they still haven’t sprouted.

Thanks everyone who’s sent us seeds, or happy thoughts, or inverted tomato growing containers. I will post more garden pictures in a month or so, when it’s really lush.