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Published on Friday, May 19,
2023
By Victoria Torley
Well, here you are, having transplanted yourself from the North with all its seasons to Costa Rica which has only two, the rainy and the dry or, in some places, the rainy and the rainier. But, hey, it’s mostly warm and it’s the South, right? You can grow anything here!
Okay, that’s kind of true, depending on where you settled and how much work you want to do.
Asparagus, for example, takes a lot of work. Soil preparation, manuring, and then waiting and waiting for the first pickable crop, but then asparagus takes time anywhere.
Or how about tomatoes? Tomatoes are easy. Except they bleach out in the Costa Rican sun and hate wet feet . . .
You would think that with all this lush growth, trees that grow twenty feet in five years, things that spring up unplanted and unwanted that the soil here is really rich, right? Wrong. Oh so wrong.
We have some basic soils here. Sandy soil, clayey soil, and beautiful black soil that looks so rich you can almost taste the vegetables before you plant them.
Let me explain, it’s the rain.
All
that wonderful rain that washes the
nutrients right out of the soil.
It’s also the leaves from all those
trees. Up North, leaves rot out
quickly leaving behind perfect
hummus. Down here, mature leaves,
the ones that fall, often have a
waxy coating on them to protect them
from predation which is the reason
that howler monkeys eat primarily
new leaves and need large
territories. No, our waxy leaves do
not compost quickly or well unless
chopped up first. So,
what to do? If you
have sandy soil, you want some clay,
decayed vegetation, and manure. The
best clay – because it is already in
tiny particles comes from
leaf-cutter ant mounds. Just be sure
to mix it quickly before it
hardens. Manure?
You may have to mature your own, no
sacks of it like we bought from Home
Depot. Decayed vegetation comes from
kitchen scraps. Clay
soil? Some people will tell you
beach sand, but sand and clay make
bricks. I know from experience. For
clay, very very coarse sand and
maybe some of those red gravely
stones they use for walkways. Plus
manure and composted veggie matter. That
beautiful black soil? That takes
manure (get the picture of manure?)
and composted veggie matter. Now a
word about composting kitchen
scraps. Do not, not ever, let any
meat get in there. And be sure to
put your pile far from the house or
in a solid container. Why? You don’t
want to know about the rats. ![]()
Plant
of the week. The nance (Byrsonima
crassifolia) is a
small tree that rarely grows to
fifteen meters. It usually has a
multi-stemmed trunk and is in flower
now in the Arenal. Yellow flowers
turn orange as they age making the
tree quite attractive. The fleshy
fruit is yellow to red when ripe and
edible although it is most often
used to make an alcoholic beverage
or added to one as flavoring. ----------------- Professional's services and business U.S. Income
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