fun day.

26 Jan 2010

I had great fun yesterday! FYI, I’m typing this in a strange British accent, as that is the voice in my head. I got to shell dried beans of various sorts, and hammer a few of them to bits to check on dryness. If they are down to 8% moisture or less they will shatter, not smoosh, and they are sufficiently dry enough to go into storage. We treated our struggling mangos again. They have problems with shoot borers, mango weevils, and anthracnose. This is our last ditch effort to save them.

I also experimented with a technique to harvest seed from jalapenos. Supposedly if you put peppers in a blender with water and blend, the flesh and bad seeds will float and the good seeds will sink. I had near disaster with the blender, as a rubber gasket was missing. Jalapeno juice went flying, but gladly not too far. It is also necessary to do this is a well ventilated area, and not breathe in when you open the lid. It rather burns your lungs. Good seeds did sink, but many still got stuck in the fleshy smoothie up top, and then getting the seeds from the bottom was also a chore. I decided the technique was not worth the effort. I could have cut out the seeds in less time. Perhaps it would work if you had a lot more jalapenos and a much larger blender? On the upside Kevin and I decided to save the smoothie juice/sludge to put in a homemade pesticide—a natural irritant!

Kevin and I did an experiment with air-layering on many of the fruit trees. You find a branch that you like (many variables and pretty subjective) and cut about 1/3 to _ the way through on a diagonal. Dust this with rooting hormone, cover with a clod of moist soil, and wrap with plastic with twisties on each end. The idea is to get a new plant, encouraged by the rooting hormone and the vascular system that still supports the small branch. Because we have grapefruit and lemon trees dying, we’d like to get new trees going if possible. We have to wait 6-8 wks to see if it worked.
As a side note, the rooting hormone is pretty intense stuff. It can be absorbed through your skin, and can give women really terrible menstrual cramps. We used a long paintbrush, and I let Kevin handle the stuff mostly. I took a shower immediately afterwards, and will wash those clothes before wearing them again. Kevin inadvertently handled a fair bit of dioxin as a kid working, and is pretty aware/cautious about things at this point.

Probably the most fun part of yesterday was climbing in one of the avocado trees. Many of the fruit trees have anthracnose, and it’s destroying the fruits that are in season right now. So I climbed up, in, around plucking out the bad fruits. Hopefully the tree will spend more energy on the fruit that is still good. The avos on the tree are already 2 lbs, and supposedly they get up to 4lbs by the time they are ready to be picked in mid Feb. YUM!

I also finished reading a novel, Mukiwa, that I found on a shelf here. It’s about a white boy growing up in Rhodesia, his participation in the wars, exile for reporting on the Fifth Brigade, and return to Zimbabwe much later. I’ve read a book about a young white girl growing up in Rhodesia/Zim, Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight, but Mukiwa covers a larger time frame and is more comprehensive. Really they are just different books with different styles. Mukiwa is considered a S African classic, and a definitely enjoyed it-- especially as a break from reading about seeds or theology.

Recently my camera “has been missing,” to use the SA lingo. I may have just misplaced it, but I’m beginning to get worried that it’s been stolen. I’ve been using it to take pics of the pest problems for my own learning, and if I left it somewhere in the open it very easily could have sprung legs and walked off. If that’s the case, I hope they return it.

Cheerio! Emily