Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

you are living in the garden of eden    good luck

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From: artedwards65 <artedwards65@yahoo.com>
To: MittleiderMethodGardening@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 1:09 PM
Subject: [MittleiderMethodGardening] New member in Costa Rica


 

Hello all,
I have joined this group to learn how I could adapt this growing method to my area. Here where I live at 3,800 feet it is what is called a temperate climate, never below 58 nor above 85. Most mornings are around 60/65 with the highs for the day around 75. My home is 4 kilometers south of the cloud forest so we get clouds on the ground very often, here that is mixed with ground fog, and sometimes mist which all together is called neblina. The rain fall in my area is around the average of 100 inches a year. I now have a concrete raised bed garden 4'X16' under a clear poly roof. If interested in what I have done you can check my blog, http://www.agardeninparadise.blogspot.com/. I am open to all suggestions and comments. We are now in the windy dry season which can go for several days without rain, that runs from around the end of November to sometime in May. My garden serves two major purposes, me being retired on SS it is protection against what DC may do
to my SS, the other reason is the local farmers don't grow some things which we miss from the states such as bell peppers, okra (the wife loves it), spinach, Bok Choy and a few other things. The big one is heritage tomatoes; I have Box Car Willy tomatoes growing now. The local tomatoes are much like what is grown commercially in the states, just like eating wet cardboard, we like some good flavor in our tomatoes. Other local veggies like lettuce is very cheap, $.39 a head, potatoes around a buck a pound and so on, so it is much cheaper to buy them from organic growers (a little more money but without all of the pesticides). I am a retired mechanical engineer/neon shop owner while my wife retired from being a special education school teacher. We lived near Bakersfield California where things were just getting out of hand so we thought of moving but didn't really like the choices in the states, DC being a huge influence on that. A friend told me about
Costa Rica and after 3 years of research we moved here and have been here nearly 4 years and loving it. Oh yeah, the housing crash wiped out our nest egg so what was bought here was small and just over a 5th acre, we raise chickens for meat and eggs, tried turkeys but they were just too big for our space. There are a few places in the yard during the dry season where I will be raising some things like sweet corn, melons, green beans and a few other things which will be the where I will incorporate this growing method as well as in the raised bed garden.

Art

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