Growing Garlic in the Tropics
Nov 12, 2012: We are growing garlic on the farm, which is a humid, hot, tropical climate. I haven’t heard of anyone growing garlic in our part of Costa Rica, but since our uneaten garlic bulbs seem to like to sprout on their own, it seems like they should grow here. A little research on […]
Turmeric
Turmeric is one of the easiest plants to grow that we have in the farm. These orange roots, which look like ginger, can just be stuck into the ground just about anywhere and they’ll grow. It’s so easy in fact that one of the world’s largest herb companies, Gaia Herbs, has 2 hectares of organic […]
Galangal – the Ginger of Thailand
Galangal is a rhizome of plants in the ginger family its roots stemming originally from Indonesia. Similar to it’s brother ginger, though lighter in colour and stronger in taste it is high in fiber, sodium, vitamin A and C. They are available as a whole rhizome, cut or powdered. The whole fresh rhizome is very […]
Making an Herb Garden – Herbaceous Goodness (Part IV)
And then there were herbs… With the rocks in place, the next step was to start building up the soil. I dug a hole and filled it up twice with water to check drainage and found that it wasn’t as bad as we thought it might be. Still, we dug about a foot down into […]
Papaya Seeds: DIY Black Pepper
Papaya: low in calories, high in dietary fiber. Packed with vitamins and anti-inflammatory enzymes. Growing on the farm. Extra tasty with a squeeze of lime. Also nice unripe, shredded, in curries. Que bueno. But wait! Don’t forget the seeds: high in (“good”) fat and protein and a good source of calcium, magnesium and phosphorus. (Source: […]
Making an Herb Garden – “Rockin’ It” – (Part III)
River rocks are very aesthetic– smooth and round and a beautiful gray-blue hue. Choosing rocks is like a puzzle; one challenge is lining up rocks such that their edges fit from the base to the top. We used larger rocks along the outer edges and slightly smaller ones lining the inner circle. When lifting heavy […]
Making an Herb Garden – The Design (Part II)
As one of the first volunteer projects on the farm we were given a rectangular plot of land and asked to create an herb garden. Geoff requested a formal layout for the garden, one that would be functional and hopefully productive as well as beautiful. I remembered from my Permaculture course a classic design called […]
Making an Herb Garden – Introduction – (Part I)
Making an Herb Garden: Introduction (Part 1) Check it out! We’re planting an herb garden. Our beautiful 8m x 15m space is a gentle slope adjacent to the volunteer house. When we lifted the black plastic protective sheet we found dried straw upon rice hulls upon a base layer of regular but hard-packed soil. Two […]
Wild Cilantro (Culantro Silvestre)
Culantro, as it’s called in Spanish grows wild here like a dandelion, but without the flower. Many people have it growing around their houses. The leaves are broad and serrated, a bit sharp even, and they’re much thicker than the cilantro we’re used to buying in the stores, but it tastes identical. Because it’s […]
