Post by glen on Jan 12, 2015 10:55:16 GMT -6
My name is Glen. I am retired and live in Las Tablas Panama. This área is tropical. Very difficult to garden here as we lack seeds and information about gardening here is very limited.
I am a home gardener and live on about an eigth of an acre lot with a cottage on it. Its hot year around here. Feels like summer year around. We have a dry season that starts in Dec where there is no rain and it is super hot. Our rainy season starts in May and it rains quite a bit and it is, you guessed it, hot. This is my first year on this lot. I have planted many Young fruit tres. Cocounuts, palms etc also. In between this I have planted veggy's. The majority is sweet potato's. We have no place to buy seed or slips so I used a grocery store sweet potato to start my garden. I have about 500 square feet of sweet potato's growing. I plan to have them growing year around. During the rainy season we had way more than we needed. Sweet potato's love the rainy season. Now, the vines look OK but they are not growing much. Nothing seems to grow much during the dry season. My intention is just to keep everything alive till the rainy season starts. Its challenge since I just have a hose that I have to walk around with soaking the Young tres etc. Very time consuming. My plan is to grow okra starting in April. Thats about a month before the rainy season begins. I will use Heavy Hitter seed. No one grows okra in my área nor do they grow sweet potato's. They just don't know anything about these crops here. I have a lot to learn. For example, I just recently learned that okra will not Bloom here during the dry season. I expect this has something to do with day length. I do know that okra will grow here if I plant in April because I have done it before. It seems to be a good strategy to get the okra growing some before the rainy season starts. I do not know if the heavy hitter variety will perform as well as claimed here because this is all an experiment but I do expect to get a good crop. I believe that okra and sweet potato should grow together fairly well also. Seed saving will be part of my plan as well. We live in a world of uncertainty now a days. I believe it is extremely important to at least try to grow some food on your lot or property. So, that is what I am doing. In a few years I will have many different fruits available right on my small lot to eat and help suppliment my small Budget. I have found out from experience that eating sweet potato's all the time is not hard for example. You can just use them like a White potato in a pinch.
White potato's cannot be grown in my environment. I look forward to posting in the future.