A Hauntingly Familiar Feeling

     It is a hauntingly familiar feeling. I've built a Garden only to now prepare myself to leave it behind. I've done it before ... I can do it again! God. Please help me do it again! 

Purple Passion Vines wound up to frame God's Garden sign.

     John was a big part in building this Garden in Siem Reap, Cambodia... especially at the beginning. Many young YWAM-ers have also given their strength to the project from time to time. It is truly amazing how a very poor soil can be dramatically improved just by mulching and adding compost. Another year and this garden would have nice humus rich soil.

     I've been involved with teaching, encouraging the making and using of compost elsewhere as well. The young people at UofN Puok Center have harvested plenty of compost from their 3-bin system. 

At UofN Language Center at Puok
Three of my favorite young people working hard and learning about making compost.

At UofN Language Center at PuokThis young man is happily lacing chain-link fencing onto the compost frame pieces.

     Who will look after the plants in this Garden? Will the next tenant appreciate the living soil we've steadfastly built? It looks like the Bananas, Wing + Yard Long Beans, Noni + Moringa Trees, Thai Basil and Holy Basil, Common Oregano, Chili Peppers and Yellow Passion Vines will keep on bearing for the next folks.

     May they be well fed!

     I come away with a more rounded knowledge of small plot food gardening in the Tropics.

       Some of the recent things I've learnt: 

~ Ants are the worst enemy. They bring a multitude of plant eating insects. The easiest way to control them is to get into the habit of boiling water in a kettle and pouring it over the ants as the muster for battle and all around their nesting areas.

~ Moths and butterflies, beautiful though they may be, all lay eggs and hatch out an amazing variety of leaf devouring caterpillars; I've captured and watched the morphing of several to see what they would become. John thinks I'm nuts but ... God created them just so I could seek to discover His creative genius.

Oleander Hawk Moth Caterpillar (Daphnis nerii, Sphingidae)

~ Compost is so easy to do! However ... It is impossible to involve your neigbours with community composting, gardening, produce and resource sharing when you cannot speak their language! Although most will accept produce even when you can't talk to them!

~ Strawberries really don't do well in the relentlessly hot Cambodian sun.

~ Wing Beans, if you can control the ants and thus the aphids, do really well. It is therapeutic to go out every day or two to re-direct the vines along a trellis and later to daily pick the Beans before they get too big for eating. We enjoy eating them sometimes but it is a joy to give most of them away!

~ Lemon Grass is easy to grow and even easier to give away. I still have no use for it except to chop up for mulching raised beds.

~ Flowering plants are my next assignment. Green is beautiful but somehow an all green garden lacks Pizzazz!

~ Yard Long Beans don't do well in the hot dry season but thrive near the end of the wet season. I pushed the limit by planting at the very beginning of wet season but ... I am hoping to eat a few before we leave.

~ Thrips are worst enemy #2. At the first sign of crinkly, yellowing leaves I reach for the Tobacco-Neem Leaf solution and head out to spray the affected plants. I am blaming the pomegranate blossom-drop on Thrips. I was too late figuring out how to prune and then spray these shrubs.

~ Moringa is a weed. If you leave the pods on the trees too long the seeds will fall to the ground and sprout up everywhere in a week or two. That's OK; the compost will take them! They do not like transplanting all that much. Drying of leaves is a chore but we enjoy the powder mixed in with our daily breakfast cereals. The seeds are very bitter-sweet but we have learned to eat them - 3 every day!

Moringa looking Skyward - the trunk is about 3" diameter.

~ S'leuk s'dow is actually Neem. It grows here! It took 2 ½ years of detective work to figure this out. Local markets sell the young leaf sprouts in July and people eat them in soups. The leaves when dried or very young can be crushed and soaked for a few days in water and then used as an insect repellent. This plant only blossoms once a year, the seeds sprout readily and they do not like transplanting once they are more than a foot or so tall. It takes years before the tree gives seeds to be pressed into oil. All my 20 or so plants will be given away soon.

Papaya Fruits developing.

It's a Pomegranate! The thrips got to it!

Bananas!

Yellow Passion Fruit Flower.

Newly formed Yellow Passion Fruit - How long to maturity?

Cypress Flowers are growing among the Wing Bean Vines for a splash of color!

     We have 44 more days to enjoy the fruit of our labors before someone else will benefit. This has been the story of my gardening life. To sum up my thinking ... I would say:

~ Always step lightly;

    ~ Leave a place better than when you found it and

          ~Take good care of God's beautiful + amazing creation. Ask him how; He'll tell you!

     The people who walk this ground after me have the same choice. I am only responsible for me and my actions! I hope that you, my reader, would follow my example.

:-)