Home Gardening: A Day in the Life

It is clearly my time of the day, a cool calm encouraged by the gradual looming threat of rain to a particularly dry season. Mornings wake me up with zesty enthusiasm and a new quest for discovery.

My current notable trails are:

1.       Passion Fruit shade

2.       The Moringa Kickstarter

3.       A Grape New Tea

4.       Project Build: Pool Afternoons

Passion Fruit Shade

From our home location, about a year before Fresco Life came to be, the back garden area came in for much blistering afternoon sunshine and interest from our new pups Sparkle and Jack. Single handedly they pawed away the only two productive plants in our yard: a local basil and a tree mint (tea-zam) bush.

I brought new attention to the area by installing our first shade cloth over the backyard and fencing off this whole area from the dogs. This cloth lasted about a year and a half before rips from the load of palm seeds and branches rendered it a streaky mess. I took out most of the palms and made a new installation this time with grommets and tie straps that gave it a more sturdy, professional look.

Heidi happily got into planting her seedlings and we had the garden flourishing in no time. Somewhere about that time I planted passion fruit and guava seeds. They really caught on. We sold as much as we could from 70+ plants but invariably I had to convert their growing area by adding coco-peat and boxing them in to form a bed.

It is from this bed of about 14 vines that the powerhouse of passion fruit production now stems. The vine itself accounted for the last of the second shade cover and eventually I built a caged covering onto which the passion fruit vines now roam.

We have made much of our passion fruit. Fruity cubes, passion water, sorbets, passionate tea mix, passion flower hot steeps are some of the products we have done so far and ice-cream is not far away.

The Moringa Kickstarter

In this dry season, our moringa tree has borne profusely. In our latest pruning effort we collected a large garbage bag of purely leaves alongside other bags of fruit in various stages. Picked in the afternoon with the intention of drying the next day, it got forgotten in the melee of things to do when the kids are home. By the time I found it on the third day it was already a high temperature wet mass quickly generating goo.

Heidi turned away in dismay but I knew I had found the compost heap kick-starter.

We had tried composting and failed several times in 2016 and I got tired of rotting kitchen scraps infested with housefly maggots. This wet goo hot mix is exactly what I need to infuse our scraps towards a new composting project. Will let you know how it goes!

A Grape New Tea

Innovation just shows up when you least expect it. I am sure in the vineyards surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, this may be commonplace; but upon pruning my moringa tree, I had to strip errant branches from my grape vine from their forays into the moringa tree. In the end the ground was littered with large, beautiful, green grape leaves. I admired them and picked them up, convinced that there must be a greater purpose for these.

I made a tea from the leaves, steeping them in boiling water, and the result has been a revelation. This no sugar tea forms a lovely taste of its own with no bitter herby aftertaste. I now commonly enjoy this with breakfast or after working outdoors. Sugar free makes it super-healthy.

Project Build: Pool Afternoons

The addition of our struggling cherry tree into the center of the back lawn/palm tree setting has produced several changes. The palms are now all but gone, with one lone ranger remaining obliquely overlooking the shaded garden.

The grass has died down in the formerly lush lawn and the cherry tree has exploded to fill the area with lovely, large cherries that have persisted across the better part of this dry season. We pick daily and I eat off the tree while I work.

We have identified the whole area for some focused time with the intention of finding a pool solution for the 5x12ft area left by the palm trees. The dogs have gone to town on making holes to sleep in. I guess the novelty of wheeled pallet doggie beds has worn off.

So I am on a quest to build a soaking pool beside the cherry tree and completely transform our space. After a hard sweltering day, we hope for pool afternoons.

If you need a little help and support in your own home gardening quest, Fresco Life offers a variety of home gardening services! Contact us at info@fresco-life.com with any requests or call and have a conversation with Gordon at 868-763-7063 today.