"It never rains but it pours...." - that well known idiom most likely was coined after some ravaging colonial 'explorer' spent a rainy season in monsoonal Asia. 💦
Steamy "green season" is when every established tree and vine with deep roots drinks deeply, and foliage literally grows 1 meter in 1 week. But seeds? Heart breaking. One deluge and they're all washed away.
Having had not the greatest success with our moringa trees in the long uber-dry hot season in the mountains where there is NO WATER for 6 months (not a drop!), we have been considering how to get our moringa established. Because once it is established and makes it through the first 2 seasons, it's prolific and one tree can feed half a village. And it's a numbers game. Plant 20 trees and nurture them well and maybe 5 will become really well established.
Being currently geographically isolated from our Organic Frontiers Project with both Covid19 border control issues and it being monsoonal rainy season (think impassable mountain roads), I asked myself what I could do, stuck here in a small Thai village waiting out the Covid 'thing' and waiting for November, when it will be time to get things in the ground.
And so I have developed a little moringa seed raising system - hoping to have 30 or 50 little trees ready by November. When it's not raining deluge style here, it's brutally hot right now. 35C-40C with burning sun - so the seed raising protection needs enough ventilation to not COOK the little guys. It also needed to involve not BUYING anything, since the Covid shutdowns have impacted our income severely.
And this is what I came up with.
A mini-partially ventilated "green house" made from an upcycled 5 liter plastic water bottle.
I started with 5 liter plastic water bottles that I collect from eco-green tourists who know about the work I do, and keep them for me. Cos we get our drinking water delivered in reusable glass bottles.
I cut the bottle in half. In the bottom piece I burn really good drainage holes. How do I do that? I have a stainless steel chopstick in my solo-mom tool kit. 😆 Heat it to white-hot on the gas burner and it slides through the plastic easily - just be mindful to not breathe the burning plastic vapors! The top piece I "fringe". Why? The monsoonal deluges come through with gale force winds. I need the top to sit very snugly, whilst also being able to be easily lifted off for transplanting later.
In goes the soil, and the seeds, which I cover with maybe 2 cms only of soil.
And on goes the lid.
I put them in a very sheltered spot, under a mango tree near the kitchen, where they will get great natural light but not burning sun, and where they will get natural watering every time it rains, but not exposed to the full force of the deluge. Don't forget to label them!
How has it worked in just 1 week??
My "alpha seed" is already nearly 4 inches tall!! Holy Moley!! And 12 others have germinated. In 6.5 days. I will need my machete soon! 😆
I am deliberately working on Less Care gardening, where things thrive without needing daily watering, attention etc, since I INTEND TO TRAVEL and our housemaid-house-sitter is not all that diligent on the regularity thing when no one is watching. 😆 These seeds have not needed ANY attention whatsoever, other than being asked to smile for the camera.
I'm planning to let them grow to 6-8 inches (hence the need to use BIG bottles) and then transfer each of them to their OWN little Growth Capsule. I will make the base part 2/3 of the length of the bottle and the cap section smaller, so that when the rains finish they can stay put in their upcycled pot until they're ready to take to the mountain and their forever homes in November.
How wet does it get here?? LOL. This is the road not far from our Mae Rim house (in Chiang Mai province) just a few weeks ago. After 1 day of solid rain.
So I'm doing what I can whilst the monsoon and Covid have their way, for a while, and I'm ALSO taking cuttings from our own big moringa tree here and getting some of those in pots too.
Feeling USEFUL even when Life Has Other Plans.
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