Gardening

 

Among the hats I wear here at the orphanage is the hat of gardener.  I’ve been working for the past few months to make some sort of edible plants grow out of an underwatered patch of coal-dusted sand in the middle of a desert.  Unsurprisingly, I’ve had limited success.  However, below are pictures of the various small victories that I’ve had.  I’m currently working to clear, turnover, lay down new irrigation hoses, and plant seeds in all four garden-squares, so perhaps in another month or so I’ll have some other gardening things to talk about.  Oh, and the coal-covered mostly dead group of trees that we optimistically call an orchard is still...well...a coal-covered mostly dead group of trees. -D

This is me holding a Nabo plant, which is the first thing that I successfully grew from a seed that I planted.  It's taste is similar to that of an onion, but it doesn't have layers like an onion does.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a crate full of carrots that I picked from the garden.  We have slowing been picking carrots and eating them occasionally, but we finally picked all of the rest of them so that we can plant different plants there for the upcoming summer months.

This is the plot that we pick all the carrots from

This is Marcos showing me how to lay new drip irrigation tubes.

 

This is my favorite plant in the garden--the massively sprawling group of tomato plants that I have been staking and watering for a while.  They have been giving us about 10 tomatoes a day now, so that's exciting.

These are a bunch aji plants that I planted a while back, which I hope to successfully transplant in the near future.  They are pretty much the Peruvians' favorite spice, so I'm not going to be worried if these don't pan out....I've eaten far more aji that I really need to in my life.