October Garden Update

I haven't posted much about the garden lately - but it's not because we haven't been working at it. It's more because we've had so many failures lately.

I've learned, though. I now know that too much rain is not good for the garden. Probably lots of you already knew that, but sometimes I just have to try for myself and find out. Yep. Too much water = dead plants. Even though I'm gardening in raised beds with good drainage, my plants weren't able to overcome the sheer quantity (and probably also the driving force) of the rains we get during the rainy season, which is basically from late April/early May through October.

With the end of the rainy season in sight, we've started getting ready to really grow some food, maybe. Some plants need to have their seeds placed right into the ground, but others can be started inside and then transplanted.

Right now, I have green peppers growing in little pots:



There are also some sunflowers just starting to come up:




I learned a few weeks ago that there are wild berry bushes (I think they're raspberry, but they might be blackberry, and I don't really care which they are) growing on a mountain not too far from Gracias. I hired one of the pastors that comes into town for the pastor school, and who comes from a village on that mountain, to bring me some cuttings. I'm not knowledgeable about this kind of thing, and neither was this particular pastor. Here's what he brought me:




I've seen plants that looked deader than these come back to life, so I have hope that these will gradually grow into plants with berries. We'll see. Right now I have some sitting in water, and some planted in very wet dirt . . . I'll let you know what happens with these.