Early March we had some heavy rain (63mm overnight).The creek overflowed over and around the little road down the valley, flattening grass. I will need to mark out this top level to aid in planting as I plan to start regenerating the creek area.
March is almost over and it has been raining on most days. Most of summer has been fairly dry, so it seems the wet season has been crammed into March. From what I hear, "autumn rains" are a fairly regular event. The ground has been so saturated that it has been impossible to do much gardening. Certainly digging holes and planting trees is a no-no (ruins the soil structure), so progress has been frustratingly slow.
Even at the end of March the temperatures have been around 30 degrees, and stiflingly humid.
Wind has been another feature of March - mostly Southerlies and South-Easterlies.
The okra is starting to feel the overnight coolness (around 18 degrees) but is still producing. Most other veggies have finished, but that's partly due to the poor veggie patch we have, methinks. The Panama Berry trees have found their groove and have been producing consistently for a few months now (only planted them about 6 months ago). Around 3 per day. They need to be eaten quickly, within 24 hours, otherwise they wrinkle and start to go off. They are delicious, but the skin is tough and bitter so it is best to peel them (a tricky process) or just use the hole where the stalk was attached and suck out the insides. They are super sweet. The chickens love them too.
We wanted to clean up the veggie patch by getting the chickens (Isa-Browns) in there. But this breed seems almost useless for anything but laying. They escape the veggie patch and try to go home to their coop, and even if they don't, they don't do much scratching around. When they escape, if our dog is around he chases them, catches them, and starts to pull their rear feathers off or bites their wings. So far we've always been there so he isn't a chicken-killer just yet.
Planted a pomegranate in the bed close to the house - this soil is generally super well-drained so should be a good spot for the pomegranate. We took out a globe artichoke that wasn't doing very well. After digging the hole I discovered it wasn't as well-drained as I thought, and this, as well as the unsuitable climate, may have contributed to the poor performance of the artichoke. I added lots of compost so hopefully the pomegranate will be ok.
In most places on the property (outside of the garden beds around the house) I've discovered that planting trees in holes doesn't work well. Everything needs to be raised, and high! That means large berms, "avocanoes" for the avos, and my most recent trick, a quartet of straw bales (lucerne, actually) surrounding a space filled with compost and potting mix. The theory is that the straw bales will gradually break down and feed the plant, and they can either be replaced with new bales or alternatively just left to decompose, hopefully leaving a high mount. So far I've tried this latter technique with a banana and a muscadine grape.
I planted some macadamias just before the rainy season (i.e. end of Feb) but they don't seem too happy with the amount of rain. Hopefully they'll pull through. The peanut tree, planted at the same time, seems to be doing much better (Sterculia quadrifida).
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