Thanks @LilJonB
Ask away if you have any doubts about anything…will answer to the best of my ability and would appreciate and accept any input from your side…
Thanks @LilJonB
Ask away if you have any doubts about anything…will answer to the best of my ability and would appreciate and accept any input from your side…
Thanks @Shaggy450r
Cradle and cot are ready…finalizing their permanent beds now…
I like @Upstate idea of catching water. Hauling water sucks .
I believe the inclination is sufficient…i sat through a storm to see where the accumulation point were…there were roughly 10 in total…put some more transverse poles and no more pooling…
The gradient is sufficient for drops to start rolling, meeting other drops and joining them until they form a thin stream and cascade off the side…also made a small trench on the sides to funnel the rainwater down and away from the grow…
Unfortuately it’s not so easy to find bamboo in my area…definitely sounds like the ideal material and resistant too…
Thanks so much for your help…
Great idea…what if i collect the rainwater on the highest side and lead a hose down with microholes and let gravity do the trick…i suppose maybe not such a good idea as irrigation will be continuous (although very little) and apparently the roots need some dry airing time…
The intention is to leave the cover on permanently…
Have taken care of pooling points by putting up more transverse poles…if the cover starts slacking with time and wind will be putting longitudinal cabling to stiffen it out again…found a 500m roll of optic fibre cabling in my neighbors trash and it instantly found new purpose and possession…
You can put a valve on to turn it on when you want to water. Let it fill between watering. Manually add your nutes. You can run a soaker hose throughout the grow area.
Around 250km due east of Manaus…
Have you thought about doing mounds and trenches at the bottom. It helps assure the soil where the roots are can get drainage and airation… I learned about it from an old Italian man. Basically you dig trenches in between your plants and pile up around their bases as they grow. It makes excess water drain out into the trenches, keeping the roots from drowning during the rains and you can use the trenches for irrigation too
Similar concept to hugelkultur. But you don’t have to add sticks, just the soil your digging out of the surrounding area.
So like, #1 would be your plants as it sprouted, even with surface level. #2 is after it has grown you dig trenches next to your rows of plants, or a circle around them and pile it around the stem.
Added roots in the pic.
I’ve been growing tomatoes this way for a decade now.
Fascinating, and definitely along for the ride!
Hope your beans arrive soon.
Thats a great idea. I’ve been growing in mounds for decades. Its the best IMO for wet areas. I have used a soaker hose, running down the middle of the mound, with plants on each side. Best bush yield I ever had. As long as drainage is good, the plants should be happy. Put the hole for your plastic tubing in the barrel at whatever height you think is good…for instance, a foot down from the top of the barrel, or even right at the top, depending on how many gallons a day you think you need, and how much it rains. Switch to a soaker hose once you get to the top of the incline where your plants start . If you feel that there will still be too much water this way, you can go from a solid plastic pipe to smaller tubing, drip irrigation style. Put a couple tilapia or other minnows in your Barrel to eat the mosquito larvae, if you think you will have problems with algae, put some sort of sucker in there that will eat it, or put a top on your Barrel to keep the Sun out and have a gutter downspout or something similar feeding the water into the barrel. I like to put a fish bubbler in my rain barrel to keep it oxygenated, but that might not be feasible out in the jungle. I usually make my Mound about a foot taller than the surrounding soil. You will save a lot of time watering plants once you get your system down. You don’t want to water directly at the base of the plant, but to the side of the plants, maybe a foot or two away. I even used mulch, which may seem crazy in a wet area , but it worked well. If you Mulch and it seems too wet, simply rake the Mulch away. Once you have your system up and running, it will be the Envy of all of us. Lazy Man’s gardening. My favorite!
By not putting an algae eater, could algae produce enough oxygen for a school of guppies?
Maybe. Good point. Just googled algae and most do produce O2. I guess I always associated algae with stagnant water. When I don’t use a bubbler, my water goes bad. But I could have one of those rare algae types that are anaerobic in there. Honestly, I’ve been a bit baffled about what happens to my water. I just know when I use a bubbler it doesn’t happen. Seems like with rainfall every day in the jungle, the water would be constantly refreshed with oxygen, and maybe the good algae would take over. We can sometimes go two or even three weeks during July or August with no appreciable rain. This is always when the water goes bad. One watering if the water is like this and my leaves begin to Yellow.
This is very cool. Got watch this develop for sure!
I’ve done this before with passion fruit plants…very delicate root systems that enjoy this added treatment…unfortunately all this was to no avail as the person i had to water the plants was found very wanting in this regard and all my plants ended up dying…
Once my plants are up and gowing will be doing this…it all makes perfect sense…apologies to Roger Waters…
Will definitely be giving this a bash…there are minnows usually used as live bait to catch peacock bass around my area…silvery-blue dart fish with a tongue-twisting moniker…uará-riní…altenatively piába and piabinha…i’ll be throwing these in…
Thanks very much @Vesti
Welcome along for the ride! @Floyd
Step 5
Across the river about 3kms downstream used to be an indigenous settlement roughly three centuries ago…their legacy mainly prevalent in large areas of blackened topsoil a meter or two thick in places…the famous Terra Preta of the Amazon Basin. Ashes thrown into the soil with pieces of broken pottery ensure a constant source of nutrients…funnily, until being informed the reason for the pottery by @Upstate, I always found myself utterly annoyed by the broken bits and pieces and threw them away angily as I contemplated the exaggerated clumsiness of our butter-fingered Indians…now my eyes have been opened!
In total 2 tons of this Terra Preta were transported by speedboat to my property, then carried overland in 50kg bags the 600 meter distance to the area of the grow…that makes 24 kilometers!
Incidently, the picture of the boat was the last ever taken as later that night after dropping off the soil, thieves whisked her away together with anchoring trunk and hasn’t been spotted since…
That really sucks the boat was taken. Looks like a nice boat too.
With all that black earth you brought in there, you are going to have a crazy crop!
Holy shit! That’s a lot of work hauling all that soil. Hope your grow is a success. Sorry about the boat, that’s a bitch!